move to
another by the time Fritz had waked up and was replying with
"pine-apples and flying-fish," as his rifle-grenades were dubbed.

One day I was ordered to locate the enemy's "minenwerfer" positions, as
his "minnies" were getting on our nerves. These huge shells, although
they very seldom caused casualties, for they are very inaccurate, would
nevertheless make the ground tremble for miles as they buried
themselves sometimes fifty feet deep in the soft ground before they
exploded. When these were about our boys would watch for them as they
could plainly be seen in the air. We would watch their ascent,
sometimes partly through a cloud, and, as the shell wabbled a good
deal, we could not be exactly sure where it was going to land until it
was on the downward curve, then we would scatter like sheep, and as it
would generally be two or three seconds before it went off, we had time
to reach a safe distance. The real trouble was that no one could sleep
when they were coming over, as each of them had all the force of an
earthquake. I have picked up pieces of the shell two feet long by a
foot wide, jagged like a piece of galvanized iron that had been cut off
with an axe.

Well, I had to locate the position of these mine-throwers, and the
easiest way to do it was to make them fire and have observers at
different points to get bearings on the exact position from which the
shells were thrown. They were easy to see, as they were accompanied
for the first fifty yards with showers of sparks like sky-rockets. But
Fritz can be very obstinate on occasions, and all our teasing with
rifle-grenades failed to make him retaliate with anything larger than
"pineapples" (light trench-mortars). In desperation, I sent to the
brigade bombing officer for some smoke and gas-bombs. Even these
failed to rouse his anger sufficiently when--Eureka!--we discovered
some "lachrymose" or "tear" bombs. These did the trick and over came a
"rum-jar" as the "minnie" shells are generally called. I had eight
batteries on the wire, and we gave that "minnie" position a pretty warm
time. By the same methods I located nine of these German
trench-mortars on that front. Later on we captured one of them and I
was surprised to see what a primitive affair it was. It consisted of a
huge pipe made of wooden staves bound round and round with wire. The
charge is in a can like an oil-drum and dropped in the pipe, and then
the shell dropped in on top of it.