ne when wisely used.

At Merviller I was delivering a load of supplies to the Y.M.C.A. hut.
A quarter of a mile to my right a deafening explosion was accompanied
by a mass of debris thrown high in the air. "A German bomb!" was the
first thought. And we waited expectantly to see where the next one
would strike. When there was no second, I drove around to investigate.
On a side street I found a crowd of soldiers and French civilians
already gathering. The Red Cross ambulance had "beat me to it," and
the surgeons were already working over the mangled bodies of four
American soldiers. The street was littered and unexploded hand
grenades lay everywhere. Two soldiers had been carrying gunny sacks
filled with grenades when one accidentally exploded, it in turn
exploding others until the wreckage was complete. A military
investigation would report the cause of the accident and the damage
wrought, and thus an incident of war would quickly become history.

THROUGH A GERMAN BARRAGE

On my last Sunday with the flivver I drove with Secretary Armstrong to
our hut at Pettonville. In the forenoon we helped Secretary Reisner in
the canteen. Then we closed, ate a lunch, and, loaded down with cakes,
raisins, cigarettes, and tobacco, started for the trenches. As we
neared the front line the Germans began shelling the woods toward
which we were headed. While we did some lightning calculating, we
never slackened our pace but went through to the battalion
headquarters. There a sniper volunteered as guide to the trenches. We
passed several company headquarters and gave out our supplies to the
men as they stood in the line with their mess kits.

When we left the first-line trenches we walked or crouched through
woods, where the bark of the trees toward the enemy was riddled and
broken by bullets, shrapnel, and shell; then through trenches which
had been abandoned but which ran far out into No Man's Land and
furnished splendid avenues to our Petty Posts. No. 4 was the first,
and was so exposed that only one man at a time was permitted with the
guide. Secretary Armstrong went first. While we were examining the
graves of German aviators who had been killed when their planes
crashed to earth, a rifle bullet whistled over our heads. We had been
seen by a German sniper, so we quickly crouched low behind the trench
wall. I found myself right over the grave of one of the Germans, and
was rewarded by finding on it a piece of German shell, grim par