Martinsburg W Va evening journal. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1913-1920, 1918-03-25

the orderly room before the captain,
who either Furnishes him with &c. Il"
or sends him before the o. G.. (officer
commanding battalion). The captain
Of the company can only award &c. b."
Tommy many a time has thanked
the king for making that provision in
his regulations.
To gain the title of "smart soldier"
Tommy has to keep clear of the crime
sheet, and you have to be darned smart
to do 1t.
have been on 1t few times, most
ly for yankee impudence."
During our stay of Two weeks in
rest billets our captain put us through
course of machine-gun drills, trying
out. new stunts and theories.
After parades were over, our guns
crews got together and also tried out
some theories of their own in reference
to handling guns. These courses had
nothing to do with the advancement of
the war, consisted mostly Of causing
tricky jams in the gun, and then the
rest of the crew would endeavor to 10
cate as quickly as possible the cause
of the stoppage. This amused them
for few days and then things came to
a standstill.
One of the boys on my gun claimed
that he could play a tune while the
gun was actually firing, and demon.
strated this fact one day on the target
range. We were very enthusiastic and
decided to become musicians.
After constant practice / became
quite expert in the tune entitled "All
Conductors Have Big Feet"
When | had mastered this tune, our
two weeks rest came to an end, and
once again we went up the line and
took over the sector in front of c.
wood
At this point the German trenches
ran around the base of hill, on the
top of which was dense wood. This
wood was infested with machine guns.
which used to traverse our lines ut
WILL and sweep the streets of little
village, where we We're bllleted while
In reserve.
There was one gun in particular
which used to get our goats, it had the
exact range of our elephant" dugout
entrance, and every morning about the
time rations were being brought up, its
bullets would knock up the dust on the
road; more than one Tommy went
West or to Blighty by running into
them.
This gun got our nerves on edge,
and Fritz seemed to know it, because
he never gave us an hours rest. Our
reputation as machine gunners was at
stake; we tried various ruses to locate
and put this gun out of action, but
each one proved to be failure, and
Fritz became q worse nuisance than
ever. He was getting fresher and more
careless every day, took all kinds of
liberties with us-.thought he was in
vincible.
Then one of our crew got brilliant
idea and we were all enthusiastic to
put 1t to the test.
Here was his scheme:
When firing my gun, I was to play
my tune, and Fritz, no doubt, would
fall for it, try to initiate me as an
added insult. This gunner and two
others would try, by the sound, to To-
cate Fritz and his gun. After having
got the location, they would mount
two machine guns in trees, in little
clump of woods to the left of our ceme-
terry, and while Fritz was in the middle
Of his lesson, would open up and trust
to luck. BY our calculations, 1t would
take at least week to pull off the
stunt.
If Fritz refused to swallow our bait,
1t would be impossible to locate his
special gun, and that's the one We were
after. because they all sound alike, a
slow pup-pup-pup.
Our prestige was hanging by a
thread. In the battalion we had to en-
dure all kinds of insults and fresh re-
marks as to our ability in silencing
Fritz. Even to the battalion that Ger
man gun was sore spot.
Next day, Fritz opened up as usual.
let him fire away for a while and
then butted in with my "pup-pup-pup-
pup-pup-pup." / kept this up quite
while. used two belts of ammunition.
Fritz had stopped firing to listen. Then
he started in; sure enough, he had
fallen for our game, his gun was trying
to initiate mine, but. at first he made
horrible mess of that tune. Again I
butted In with few bars and stopped.
Then he tried to copy what ! had
played. He was good sport all right,
because his bullets were going away
over our heads, must have been firing
into the air. / commenced to feel
friendly towardshlm.
This duet went on for five days.
Fritz was good pupil and learned
rapidly, in fact, got better than his
teacher. / commenced to feel jealous.
When he had completely mastered the
tune, he started sweeping the road
again and we clicked it worse than
ever. But he signed his death warrant
by doing so, because my friendship
turned to hate. Every time he fred he
played that tune and we danced.