I was feeling a bit better after a few weeks at the base, though the knowledge that this was only temporary relief was with me all the time. One day I walked out of the mess to begin the afternoon’s work on the drill ground. I had to pass by the place where bombing instruction was given. A group of men was standing around the table where the various types of bombs were set out for demonstration. There was a sudden crash. An instructor of the Royal Irish Rifles had been giving a little unofficial instruction before the proper instructor arrived. He had picked up a No. 1 percussion grenade and said: ‘Now, lads, you’ve got to be careful with this chap. Remember that if you touch anything while you’re swinging it, it will go off.’ To illustrate the point he rapped it against the edge of the table. It killed him and another man and wounded twelve others more or less severely. XVIII I rejoined the First Battalion in March, finding it in the line again, on the Somme. It was the primrose season. We went in and out of the Fricourt trenches, with billets at Morlancourt, a country village at that time untouched by shell-fire. (Later it was knocked to pieces; the Australians and the Germans captured and recaptured it from each other several times, until there was nothing left except the site.) ‘A’ Company headquarters were in a farmhouse kitchen. We slept in our valises on the red-brick floor. The residents were an old lady and her daughter. The old lady was senile and paralysed; about all she could do was to shake her head and say: ‘Triste, la guerre.’ We called her ‘Triste la Guerre.’ Her daughter used to carry her about in her arms.