were out; and he would
keep on blazing away--at last the scouts made a kick and we stopped him
firing when they were out--but he was awfully sore. "What am I here
for?--I'm not a dummy," said he. One night he had been blazing away
and had made Fritz sore, and Fritz had turned about three machine guns
on the spot where Mac was. The bullets were coming around him like
bees around a hive, but he couldn't hear them. At last he heard
something; Corporal Banks was coming along the trench at the time, and
Mac stopped him. "Say, Corporal, there's an aeroplane up there
somewhere," and he gazed up into the sky. "Come down, you fool, that's
machine gun fire," says Banks. We used to have lots of fun "chipping"
him, but all he'd reply was "Aw, you go to h----." One night Bink and
Bob were out on "a covering" party--their job was to take their rifle
and bomb and lie out in front of our men as they were putting out wire
in "No Man's Land,"--the idea is to prevent the party from being
surprised by the Germans. It was a wet cold night, and so the officer
gave them a drink of rum before they went; in fact, they asked him for
it. Well, they crawled out and lay down, and I guess the rum gave them
some "Dutch" courage, for after the boys had finished their wiring and
gone back to the trench, Bink and Bob thought it would be a good scheme
to crawl to the German lines and throw their bombs in. So forward they
crawled through his wire till they got up close and heard the Fritzies
jabbering; the rum had about worked off by this time, and instead of
throwing their bombs, they got cold feet and crawled silently back to
our lines--I guess it's as well they did, or I wouldn't have their
story to tell--they often laughed about it afterwards.

Shortly after this we moved off that front and we took over some
trenches from the Imperial troops in the Ypres salient. It was just
about the time that the Imperial troops took back the "International"
trench to the right of the "Bluff," and it was a much hotter place than
the one we were in before; we had to be right on the alert all the
time. We were in there a short time and back we went to M---- for a
rest, and in the meantime the Battle of St. Eloi commenced--it started
with the Northumberland Fusiliers ("Fighting Fifth," as they were
called) blowing up some mines under the enemy lines and occupying the
craters and a trench--they were then relieved by the "Sixth Brigade,
Canadians." It was