When first I met her it was a lush, lovely day in June; the birds were singing, the grass was green, the earth teemed with life, vegetable and animal, and the froglets hopped around in the communication trenches. Some cheery optimist was whistling “Down by the Old Mill Stream,” and another equally cheery individual was potting German sniping plates with an accuracy worthy of a better cause. It was, in sooth, “A quiet day on the Western Front.” And then _she_ came. Stealing towards me silently, coming upon me like a brigand in the leafy woods. I did not see her ere she was descending upon me, but others did. There came distant yells, which I failed to interpret for a moment; then, glancing upward, I saw her bobbing through the air, her one leg waving, her round ugly head a blot on the sky’s fair face. The next thing that happened was that the trench gathered unto itself wings, rose and clasped me lovingly from the neck down in a cold, earthy embrace, the while the air was rent with an ear-splitting roar, like unto a battery of 17-inch naval guns firing a salvo. After that I respected Minnie; I feared her--nay, I was deadly scared of her. Of all the nasty things “old Fritz” has invented, the Minenflamm is perhaps the nastiest of all. She is purely vicious, utterly destructive, and quite frightful. The very slowness with which she sails through the air is in itself awe-inspiring. I never see Minnie without longing for home, or the inside of the deepest German dug-out ever digged by those hard-working German Pioneer blighters, who must all have been moles in their respective pre-incarnations. Minnie reminds one of Mrs. Patrick Campbell in _The Second Mrs. Tangueray_: all fire and flame and perdition generally. If you are a very wide-awake Johnny, absolutely on the spot, don’t-you-know--you may hear her sigh ere she leaves the (temporary) Vaterland to take flight. It is a gentle sigh, which those verblitzender English artillery-men are not meant to hear. If you _do_ happen by chance to hear it, then the only thing to do, although it is not laid down in K. R. & O. or Divisional Orders (you see they only _hear_ about these things), is to silently steal away; to seek the seclusion which your dug-out grants. Later, if you are a new officer, and want to impress the natives, as it were, you saunter jauntily forth, cigarette at the correct slope, cane pending vertically from the right hand, grasped firmly in the palm, little finger downwards, cap at an angle of 45°, and say: “Minnie, by Jove! Eh what? God bless my soul. Did it fall over heah or over theah?” Which is a sure way of making yourself really popular.