A fuse is attached, burning several
seconds so as to allow the crew to get well out of the way, as their
risk is as great as those they fire it at. When I had seen the gun, I
was not surprised that rarely did they know within a hundred yards of
where the shell was going to land, only expecting to get it somewhere
behind our lines.

While I am talking of trench-mortars, I must tell you about the "blind
pig." This was a huge shell with which we frequently got on Fritz's
nerves. When it was first used there was some doubt about its accuracy
and the infantry were cleared out of the trenches in its immediate
front before it was fired. The first shot landed on our support
trenches, the next in No Man's Land, and the third on Fritz's front
line. Each time it seemed as if a double-powered Vesuvius were in
eruption, and when the artillery got to know its pranks there was no
need for us to get out from under. The aeroplanes reported that when
the "blind pigs" went over, some Fritzes could be seen running half an
hour afterward. Fritz does not like anything new; for example, they
appealed to the world against our brutality in using "tanks."
Christmas Day, 1916, one of our aviators, with total disregard of the
rules of war, dropped a football on which was painted "A Merry Xmas"
into a French town infested by Germans. As it struck the street and
bounced up higher than the roofs they could be seen scuttling like
rats, and maybe, to-day, _that_ airman is haunted by the ghosts of
those who died of heart-failure as a result of his fiendishness.

This airman is a well-known character among the troops in Flanders,
known to all as "the mad major." His evening recreation consists in
flying but a few hundred feet above the enemy's trenches, and raking
them with his machine-gun to show his absolute contempt for their
marksmanship. I have seen them in impotent fury fire at him every
missile they had, including "pine-apples" and "minnies"; but he bears a
charmed life, for, though he returned and repeated his performance four
times for our benefit, he did not receive a scratch. I went over the
German lines with him for instruction in aerial observation. He said
to me: "Do you see that battery down there?" I replied "No!" His next
remark was, "I'll take you down," and he shot down about five hundred
feet nearer. We were getting pasted by "archies" much more than was
pleasant, so when he next shut off his engine, to speak to me,