as informed that I was the lucky individual and he asked
me if I would show him the way, and I was just directing him when "Stand
to the battery!" intervened, and we bolted for the guns and opened up.
"Fifty rounds gunfire" was ordered; then "Second fire ten seconds," then
"Second fire five seconds," then "Gunfire steady"; next, "Independent
fire ten seconds"; then came the order for a sweeping fire to enable our
infantry to dig in in a trench they had just taken, and to prevent Fritz
getting it back. Our work was accomplished and "Stand down and lay on
day lines!" was ordered and I was cleaning the sight of my gun and
wiping off the effects of the gas fumes when the Sergeant-Major came
along and asked me to indicate where I had gathered the mushrooms; I
pointed the spot out to him, and he made a bee line. In a couple of
minutes I heard him calling and I looked up, "Here's a beauty you
missed, Grant; you must have been blind," and he held up a mushroom as
large as a breakfast plate. I laughed and replied, "Yes, you are lucky,
Sergeant-Major." Then Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! and Fritz started getting
busy again as an airplane hovered about, and the pace getting too
deucedly hot, we started for the trenches; it was a ditch-trench half
full of water which came to our waists, and in it we paddled our way
until we got to a fairly good trench, and on the journey down
imprecations of all kinds were hurled on the head of the offending
Sergeant-Major. "Where is that damned fool of a Sergeant-Major?" asked
one; "It was his gathering those mushrooms in the open that started
Fritz." Just at that moment down the ditch came the Sergeant-Major
limping; he had been slightly wounded in the leg by a bit of shrapnel,
but he was hanging onto his mushrooms.

"'Ere, Grant, take this, will you, till I fix me leg," and he handed me
the mushrooms and started undoing his puttee where the blood was soaking
through. When he had bound up his wound I handed him his dainties and
he held them up admiringly.

"It was a bit dangerous, doncher know, but, blow me tight, if I wouldn't
do it again to get a beauty like that," holding up the large one he had
shown me when he was gathering them.

"You bleedin' idiot," I said, "don't you know a mushroom when you see
it? That's a toadstool! I passed it up."

CHAPTER XI

SCOTTY COMES BACK AT THE SOMME

The German lines were on the hills; every time we took a position it was
always uphill, until we got