But we weren't a bit slow at faking up bombs ourselves. I have known rusty nails, bits of shells, flints, cartridge cases, fragments of broken periscopes—anything, in fact, that came along shoved into a home-made jam-tin bomb. Once some of the chaps heaved over a 7-lb. jam-can filled with ham and bacon bones. You ought to have heard the jamboree in the Turkish trench when the unclean animal's mortal remains blew round their ears! They didn't half like being shot by pig. On another occasion some Australians informed me that they wanted "a hell of a knock-out bomb," as they had located a Turkish listening post close up to our front line trenches. I manufactured one of the "hair-brush" variety, using _two 15-oz. slabs of guncotton_, and packing round the explosive about three pounds of assorted projectiles; the whole thing I wrapped up in a whole sandbag and wound it round and round with barbed wire. When completed it looked a pretty little toy about the size of a respectable ham. I own I had some misgivings about being able to throw it the required length. However, the distance was only a matter of a few yards, and I got it fair into the desired spot. When she went off bang there wasn't much of that listening post left, while as for the Turks who manned it—well, I guess they're going still! "Quinn's Post" was always a rotten shop for bombs. At first the Turks had things pretty much their own way in that line. Time after time they cleared our front trenches by bomb-throwing, and then rushed the position; and I can tell you it called for some hard hand-to-hand fighting on our part to get them out again. But we always did it; good soldiers as they are they couldn't live in the same township with our chaps when cold steel was the order of the day. There isn't much fun left in life once you've had eighteen inches of rusty bayonet shoved through your gizzard. The Turks don't fear death; if killed in action they believe they go straight to Paradise and have a high old time with the girls. But you can't blame a man if he wished to have a little more practice on earth—nor for being a bit particular about the manner in which he started on the long trail. I reckon that's how it was with them. I don't blame them, either; it's a sloppy kind of death, the bayonet one. After a time we got top-dog in the bombing line. Our system was a simple one: for every bomb the enemy threw into us we gave him at least _two_ in return. He didn't like it a little bit. At first we used to throw the bombs back again as fast as they came in, the fuses being timed a bit too long; afterwards, however, that game didn't pay, quite a lot of poor chaps getting laid out through the things exploding in their hands. Dropping a sandbag or an overcoat on them took most of the sting out of the beggars, and it wasn't long till every third man's greatcoat looked as if it had been in a railway accident—or a cyclone.