Akin to shells in their effects are the now familiar bombs. These are of all varieties and sizes. They range from the small hand grenade that is about the size of an ordinary lemon and is simply heaved into the opposing trench by the soldiers, to the immense bombs weighing two hundred and fifty pounds that are thrown from trench mortars, or guns of short barrel and very wide mouths. It was a long time before the British army appreciated the value of bombs and we could not get a supply of them. The "Tommies" set to work to manufacture them in the trenches and a good many lives were lost there through premature explosions. Practice is absolutely necessary before a man is fit to be allowed to handle a live bomb. He should be trained first of all to throw a tin filled with stones, and learn the trick of letting it go at the correct moment. The first time a man throws a bomb he is simply anxious to get rid of it without any regard for the time the fuse has been burning. Most fuses now are five seconds and that time must be calculated to a nicety to get the best results. If a bomb is thrown too soon, the enemy may pick it up and throw it back--this has happened many hundreds of times. It should be retained in the hand during the first and second seconds at least and then thrown so as to explode OVER the enemy trench on the fifth second. Our men were taught to get out of the way of bombs coming into the trenches if they could--there is no use staying to be blown up under ordinary trench conditions--but if they were under such circumstances that they could not get out of the way they were supposed to catch them and throw them away, or throw them back as hastily as possible. Men become experts in this just as they do in catching base balls. Where a bomb could not be picked up and endangered the lives of men in the trench who could not get away from it, men have often thrown their bodies upon it, and thus, in a most gallant and self-sacrificing way, given their lives for their comrades. Of course catching them is out of the question when it comes to the large bombs. Absence of body then is better than all the presence of mind. When they actually hit the trench--which is a very difficult thing to do--they do frightful damage. But when they miss their mark they usually open up a lot of earth either before or behind the trench, and perhaps lay out a man or two with concussion. Of the same variety are aerial torpedoes which are simply bombs with flanges on their tails to give them direction. Sometimes the bombs that were sent over were not H. E. in the sense that they exploded a steel shell that sent its various pieces large and small hurtling through the air, but were simply large oil drums with a quantity of H. E. in them. Men were killed right and left, not from being hit with anything, but merely from having been in the neighbourhood when they exploded.