Lieutenant Lyman S. Frazier, an excellent officer, who finished the war as major of infantry, commanded the machine-gun company of my battalion. He was very keen on indirect fire, but we could get little or no information on it. One evening, however, he grouped his guns, made his calculations as well as he could, and then fired a regular barrage. As soon as the demonstration was over he galloped out as fast as he could to the target, and found to his chagrin that only one shot had hit. Where the other 10,000 odd went we never knew. We had many incidents that were really humorous with the men in the guard mount. A young fellow, named Cobb, who lost his leg later in the war, was standing guard early in his military career. A French girl passed him in the dark. He challenged, "Who is there?" She replied, "_Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?_" Young Cobb didn't know French, but he did know that when in doubt on any subject you called the corporal of the guard. So he shouted at the top of his voice, "Corporal of the guard, queskidee!" We emphasized the manual of formal guard mount as a disciplinary exercise. One of the regulations is that when the ranking officer in a post passes the guardhouse, the sentry calls, "Turn out the guard--commanding officer," and the guard is paraded. We had lived so long by ourselves that although we sometimes had the colonel in the same town, when we were in the Montdidier sector, I never could persuade them to pay any attention to him. They had it firmly rooted in their minds that the ceremony was for me and no one else. Occasionally a German airplane would come over and bomb the towns in the area. This furnished a real element of excitement, as we had anti-aircraft guns set up. The one trouble was that we could not tell at night which was a German and which was a French plane, with the result that if we should happen to hit one it was as likely that we would hit a French one as not. We were saved this embarrassment by never hitting one. Later, in the Montdidier sector, I remember hearing how, in a burst of enthusiasm, the gun crew of one of our 75's had fired at an airplane, and by some remarkable coincidence had torn a wing off and brought it down. On rushing out to inspect it they found it contained a very irascible Frenchman. CHAPTER VI EARLY DAYS IN THE TRENCHES "How strange a spectacle of human passions Is yours all day beside the Arras road, What mournful men concerned about their rations When here at eve the limbers leave their load, What twilight blasphemy, what horses' feet Entangled with the meat, What sudden hush when that machine gun sweeps And flat as possible for men so round The quartermasters may be seen in heaps, While you sit by and chuckle, I'll be bound." A. P. H. (_Punch_).