After the battle, I resumed my place at the gun and the usual day's work. Two days later I was detailed to watch for airplanes and was sitting crouched under a culvert, when the familiar humming struck my ear. I could not at first locate it, and crawled out to have a better look skyward, but still failed to place it. Presently the humming stopped, and I thought it had departed, and seized the chance to go to the cookhouse for a cup of tea. When almost there--Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! a slather of German guns had opened upon ours and the fellows fled pell-mell from the gun pit and made for the culvert, taking shelter underneath. They were there about a minute when a shell landed straight on the culvert, going through eight feet of cement and brick, blowing everything in all directions and killing 15 out of the 16 men who had taken refuge there. Less than sixty seconds had elapsed since I left the spot. When the battle was at its greatest height a wonderful discovery was made. Complaint had been made about the horses dropping on the road on the way up. Some thought it was cramps, others, colic; the veterinary officers were quite puzzled. One night 18 loads of ammunition, three horses to a load, were on their way to the guns and ten of the horses dropped. The vets then took it for granted there must have been poison in the feed, and an examination disclosed that little steel oats were in the grain. The oats had come from the United States and they had been deposited in the grain there. The discovery was so important that the O.C. offered a prize of five francs to every man discovering these death-dealing pellets in a bag of oats. The bellies of the horses were secure forevermore, as far as these pills of Kaiser Bill were concerned; those five francs did the trick; every grain of the feed that went down the animals' throats first passed an individual examination through the hands of every money-hungry Tommy in the bunch. After the third battle of Ypres had cooled down, we were permitted to go to the rear as far as Poperinghe, for the purpose of giving ourselves a scouring, as we were filthy with dirt and lousy with lice. My particular chum on this journey was the little telephonist, Fox, who had been through every big battle up to that time, including the Sanctuary Woods carnage. We got to the wagon lines, eight miles off, by stealing rides on any passing vehicle upon which we could fasten a tooth or a finger nail,--ammunition wagon lorries, ambulances, supply wagons,--as we were thoroughly tired out.