Just before dinner a stretcher-party brought in a man who had been painfully, though not seriously, injured by the explosion of a "75." His helmet had deflected the fragment. He was standing in the door of the bomb-shelter when he fired the gun, but one ear had been nearly severed and his neck had been deeply cut. After he had been fixed up I put him on a box by the little stove, and gave him some hot tea. He was shaken and nervous. In just such a situation the secretary has his "big chance." The boy said: "This will sure kill my mother. She's a frail little thing, never could stand trouble; when she hears I'm hurt, she'll just lie down and die." I came back with "Don't you believe it. That isn't the way it works at all. When your mother hears of this, she'll say: 'Thank God, he's _only_ wounded. Now I know he's safe for a little while.'" And I went on: "You have _yours_; comparatively few men ever get two wounds, and after nearly four years of war still there aren't enough wounds to go around." But it didn't do the business. Then I asked him where he lived, and he said, "The Bronx." "I'll tell you what I'll do, old man," I said; "I'll call her up as soon as I reach New York, and later I'll go and see her." Bang! he blew up! Down into his hands went his sore head, and then he was better. He was just a boy after all and through it all. But what a boy! When I went up to "mess" that day, an orderly pointed out to me through a crack in the camouflage a ruined plane a kilometer away in the open and under constant observation from both lines. In it was the body of a famous German flier. Things had been too hot for our men to go out and bring in the remains. Mt. Sec towered above us, nine hundred feet high. We knew that it was a vast nest of German guns. Like Gibraltar it stands in front of Metz. But it is not impregnable. Twice the French have demonstrated that; and, when the hour strikes, Mt. Sec will not turn these allied armies back. I felt something cold touch my hand, and, looking down, saw a kindly-eyed, well-fed dog inspecting me. These dogs are the only "original settlers" left on the line. They were lost in the first rush, I suppose; and now, cared for by the fighting men, they watch the walls that daily dwindle, and wait with dumb loyalty for the return of their masters. One of the men brought me a "beautiful" fragment of a mustard-gas shell. His little gift helped a lot, for it told me that I was beginning to "arrive." Later I received the nose of a shrapnel "made in Germany"; the shrapnel broke above the dugout, and the nose dropped "dead" in the entrance. Another fellow, a youngster who must have fibbed a lot to get into the army, pulled a Testament out of his _upper left-hand pocket_ to replace it with something else, and then said, as he thought out loud, "Nope," and back went the book. There is an unadmitted tradition that the "book" keeps German steel away from the heart, and it does in more ways than one.