In the group was a splendid type of army chaplain. He came over almost at the start of the war and had seen a great deal of the open warfare at the commencement of hostilities. He said: “My friend Fritz is not through; he’ll try to do some more yet.” As the smoke died down and the cracking stopped, the enemy decided that an attempt would be made either to carry out salvage of whatever they had hit or else we would try to get the wounded away. So without any preliminary warning the whole area was covered by a battery fire of _whiz bangs_, and the shrapnel bullets came down like rain, several men being hit. The fire eventually died down and the wreck was allowed to cool off. The “Archies” are used so much to keep the aeroplanes up, and next to the loss of his boots the officer in charge was worried by the fact that the enemy would send an aeroplane over to see what they had hit. It was very necessary to keep the planes away, because at this time there were one hundred and fourteen batteries of artillery in the neighborhood. Later on the battery commander came down, and as he looked at the red-hot armor plates he said: “Five thousand pounds gone up in smoke. Sorry I missed the fireworks.” The Divisional general called him up at the dugout and gave him areas for the distribution of the four anti-aircraft guns and cars comprising his battery. After he was through the commander replied: “Very good, sir, that will be done with all the guns except the third gun.” The voice over the wire became very dignified, a preliminary to becoming sulphuric. “What do you mean, all but the third gun?” “Because, sir, the enemy has just ‘crumped’ the third gun and all that remains of it is scrap iron.” One of the battalions has a fine victrola in the officers’ mess dugout with a good selection of records. I have heard Caruso accompanied on the outside by an orchestra of guns. It was a wonderful mixture. Speaking of canned music reminds me we have a small portable trench machine, which closes up like a valise, easily handled and carried about. One man near had a box full of needles distributed in his back by a bomb; he considers himself disgraced; he says it will be kind of foolish in years to come to show his grandchildren twenty-five or thirty needles and tell them that they were the cause of his wounds. The Tommies play mouth organs a great deal and it is much easier to march to the sound of one, even ’Ere we are; ’ere we are, ’Ere we are agin. We beat ’em on the Marne, We beat ’em on the Aisne, We gave ’em ’ELL at Neuve Chapelle, And ’ere we are agin— sounds well with the addition of a little music.