The bombing officer had a good deal of sport with his rifle-grenades, and as I was hand in glove with him I enjoyed some of his fun. A favorite place for the firing of our rifle-grenades was at Devon Avenue, for most of Fritz's retaliation came to the Tommies whose flank joined ours at this point. One day their major came along to us in a great rage, and wanted to know why we were always stirring up trouble--couldn't we let well enough alone? He complained in the end to our brigadier, but the answer he got was: "What are you there for? What's your business?" After this, whenever we had our strafe on this flank, they would squeeze up to their centre leaving fifty yards unmanned between us. These men were brave enough, and in a raid the same major held the trench with great bravery under a severe bombardment and attack by a strong force. We also had an armored train that we were very proud of. At least, that is what we called it, but it was only a little truck with six rifles fastened on it for firing grenades. We ran this along rails down the trench, and would fire a salvo from one place and then move to another by the time Fritz had waked up and was replying with "pine-apples and flying-fish," as his rifle-grenades were dubbed. One day I was ordered to locate the enemy's "minenwerfer" positions, as his "minnies" were getting on our nerves. These huge shells, although they very seldom caused casualties, for they are very inaccurate, would nevertheless make the ground tremble for miles as they buried themselves sometimes fifty feet deep in the soft ground before they exploded. When these were about our boys would watch for them as they could plainly be seen in the air. We would watch their ascent, sometimes partly through a cloud, and, as the shell wabbled a good deal, we could not be exactly sure where it was going to land until it was on the downward curve, then we would scatter like sheep, and as it would generally be two or three seconds before it went off, we had time to reach a safe distance. The real trouble was that no one could sleep when they were coming over, as each of them had all the force of an earthquake. I have picked up pieces of the shell two feet long by a foot wide, jagged like a piece of galvanized iron that had been cut off with an axe.