“For nearly an hour nothing happened. Occasionally I noticed heads peering from the Boche trench, trying to see into the empty trench which was hidden from them by a slight rise of the ground just before it. They would have been a splendid mark for a sniper, but I had other work this time. Suddenly a group of about forty Boches crept from the wood, rapidly followed by the best part of a company. I telephoned: ‘Enemy advancing led by a detachment of flamenwerfer,’ for I had recognized the devilish apparatus carried by the foremost group. When the latter were about eighty feet from the empty trench, they halted in a hollow just below the rise of ground, and then, with appalling suddenness, a dozen jets of white and yellow flames darted up to fall plumb into the trench. The dense smoke hid the Germans from me for a time, but, thanks to my mask, I was able to gasp information to the battery. “A few moments later I had a glimpse of what hell must be like. Our gunners had the range to an inch, and a torrent of shells burst right among the flame-throwers, exploding the containers. Great sheets of flame shot up, one jet from a container just grazing me, burning my clothes so that my ribs were scorched rather badly. But it was impossible to escape. The ground was a sea of fire. In the midst of it the Germans, like living torches, were dying horribly. One man spun round like a top, not even trying to run away, until he fell in a pool of flame. Others rolled on the ground, but the blazing liquid ran over them everywhere, and I could smell the sickening odor of burning flesh. “I don’t think any of the fire-throwers escaped. Their screams, heard despite the cannonade and rifle fire, seemed to continue terribly long. The company behind them was panic-stricken. As the smoke lifted, I saw them moving back to the wood, and our _mitrailleuse_ did severe execution, spreading added slaughter over that scene of horror. “I was nearly fainting with the fumes and the pain of my burns. The Captain sent a patrol, which found me hanging limply in the tree fork. They had trouble getting me, but luckily the Germans were too staggered to interfere.” HE JESTS AT SCARS A Bomb Thrower and Tank Master Who “Paid His Way in Huns”