prising to see how flat a man can keep and still get along
at a good rate of speed. We kept straight away to the left and
presently got into wire. And then we heard German voices. Ow! I
went cold all over.

Then some "Very" lights went up and I saw the Boche parapet not
twenty feet away. Worst of all there was a little lane through
their wire at that point, and there would be, no doubt, a sap head
or a listening post near. I tried to lie still and burrow into the
dirt at the same time. Nothing happened. Presently the lights died,
and Bellinger gave me a poke in the ribs. We started to crawfish.
Why we weren't seen I don't know, but we had gone all of one
hundred feet before they spotted us. Fortunately we were on the
edge of a shallow shell hole when the sentry caught our movements
and Fritz cut loose with the "typewriters." We rolled in. A perfect
torrent of bullets ripped up the dirt and cascaded us with gravel
and mud. The noise of the bullets "crackling" a yard above us was
deafening.

The fusillade stopped after a bit. I was all for getting out and
away immediately. Bellinger wanted to wait a while. We argued for
as much as five minutes, I should think, and then the lights having
gone out, I took matters in my own hands and we went away from
there. Another piece of luck!

We weren't more than a minute on our way when a pair of bombs went
off about over the shell hole. Evidently some bold Heinie had
chucked them over to make sure of the job in case the machines
hadn't. It was a close pinch--two close pinches. I was in places
afterwards where there was more action and more danger, but,
looking back, I don't think I was ever sicker or scareder. I would
have been easy meat if they had rushed us.

We made our way back slowly, and eventually caught the gleam of
steel helmets. They were British. We had stumbled upon our left
sector. We found out then that the line curved and that instead of
the left sector being directly to the left of ours--the center--it
was to the left and to the rear. Also there was a telephone wire
running from one to the other. We reported and made our way back to
the center in about five minutes by feeling along the wire. That
was our method afterwards, and the patrol was cushy for us.

CHAPTER VII

FASCINATION OF PATROL WORK

I want to say a word right here about patrol work in general,
because for some reason it fascinated me and was my favorite game.

If you should be fortuna