"It is the shell fire," wrote a correspondent, "which has made the Battle of Ypres a test of endurance such as no army has experienced before. Officers and men say that it has been ten times worse than on the Aisne. It has been persistent, and it has been deadly. Day and night there has been a succession of 'Oompahs,' 'Oompees,' 'Bowlers,' and 'Pipsqueaks'--'Oompahs' being the big shells, 'Oompees' the smaller ones, 'Bowlers' the projectiles thrown by trench mortars,[112] and 'Pipsqueaks' shrapnel. Atkins has a name for them all. The soil around Ypres is not a holding soil, but shifty and difficult to trench--unlike that on the Aisne--and constantly the trenches were being blown in by shells." * * * * * A private in the Honourable Artillery Corps tells an amusing story. "The first time we manned the front trenches," he says, "we had just got in--it was, of course, pitch dark--and we were peering cautiously about to see where we were. There were a few weird noises and strange lights, and I moved towards our corporal to ask him something, when suddenly a wild, unearthly wail went up apparently at my very feet. My blood ran cold, and I grasped him by the hand. 'What was that?' I cried. 'You're standing on a cat, I think,' he replied. And, indeed, I was! What it was doing there I don't know, but it remained with us off and on all day. "Later, when it was dark, there was a German attack on our left. We were ordered to man our trench, and then suddenly the order came along, 'Sights at zero,[113] and fire low.' We waited, quivering with excitement, when all at once I saw something feeling its way cautiously over the trench in front of me. I sprang up to bayonet whatever came. It was not only a cat, but the same old cat! Twice it had pulled my leg in twenty-four hours." [Footnote 110: See Vol. II., p. 7.] [Footnote 111: From _With French in France and Flanders_, by an Army Chaplain.] [Footnote 112: The _Minenwerfer_, or trench-mortar used by the Germans, has a range of some 500 or 600 yards, and throws a bomb loaded with high explosives, weighing up to 200 lbs. It is fired at extreme elevation from the bottom of a pit in the trench.] [Footnote 113: No elevation.] CHAPTER XVIII. MORE TALES FROM THE TRENCHES. A private of the London Scottish thus describes his experiences during the fighting at Messines on Halloween[114] and the following day:--