Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1918-03-17

place of No. 3 in support Whfio lying
there I drew a patrol that was inter.
esting because it was different
The Souchez river flowed down from
Alkaline and Souchez villages and
through our lines to those of the Ger
mans, and on to Lens. Spies, either
in the army itself or in the villages,
had been placing messages IN bottles
and floating them down the river to
the Germans
Somebody found this out and .. net
of chicken wire had been placed across
the river in no mans land Some
one had to go down there and hsh
bottles twice nightly. 1 took this
patrol alone. The lines were rather far
apart along the river, owing to the
swampy nature of the ground. which
made livable trenches impossible.
I slipped out and down the slight
incline and presently found myself
in a little valley. The grass was rank
and high, sometimes nearly up to my
chin, and the ground was Shiny and
treacherous. I%Slipped into several
she'll holes and was almost over my
head in the stagnant, smelly water.
I made the river all right, but there
was no bridge or net in sight The
river was not over ten feet wide and
there was supposed to be a foot bridge
of two planks where the net was.
7 got back into the grass and made
my way down stream. / could dimly
make out the forms of two men
standing on the nearer end of the plank
bridge. They were, I should judge.
about ten yards away, and they hadn't
heard me. i got out a mills, pulled the
pin, counted two and pitched it. The
bomb exploded, perhaps five feet this
side of the men. One dropped and
the other ran.
After short wait I ran over to the
German. 1 searched him for papers
found none. and rolled him into the
river
After few days in the quarHes we
were moved to what was known as the
warren. so-called because the works re
senlbled a rabbit warren This was on
the lower side and about in the middle
of Virny ridge, and was extra dangerous.
1t did seem as though each place was
I, worse than the last The warren was a
regular network of trenches burrows
and funk holes, and we needed them all.
The position was down hill from the
Huns and they kept sending over and
squeaks," ''whiz-bangs' and "minnies. -
The 'pip-squeak'' is she'll that starts
with a silly pip" goes on with Sillier
"squeeeeee' and goes off with a mau's
size bang.
The ''whiz-bang' starts with a rough
wilirr. like flushing cock partridge, and
goes off on contact with a tremendous
bang 1t is not as dangerous as it sounds,
but bad enough.
The minnie is about the size of a two
gallon kerosene can and comes somer-
saulting over in a high arc and is concen-
trated death and destruction when it
lands. It has one virtue-you can see it
coming and dodge. and at night it most
CONSIDERABLY leaves a trail Of sparks
The boche served US full portions Of all
three of these man-lillers in the warren
and Kept US ducking in and out pretty
much all the time, night and day.
1 was lucky enough after the first day
to be put on sappeTs duty. The sappefs.
or engineers are the men whose duty it is
to run mines under no mans land and
plant huge quantities of explosives. There
was great amount of mining going on
all the time at Vimy ridge from both sides
Sometimes Fritz would run a sap out
reasonably near the surface and we would
counter with one lower down. Then he'd
go US one better and go still deeper. Some
of the mines went down and under hun.
dreds of feet. The result of all this wa
that on our side at least the sappers wers
Undermined and a good many infantry
were drafted into that service.
l had charge of gang and had to fill
sandbagS with the earth removed from
the end of the sap and get it out and pile
the bags on the parapets. We were well
out toward the German lines and deep
under the hill when we heard them dig
ging below US An engineer officer came
in and listened for an hour and decided
that they were getting in explosives and