nted the murderous little weapon known as a machine gun.

I longed to get out on top of the ground. I wanted to lie at full length
in the grass; for it was June, and Nature has a way of making one feel
the call of June, even from the bottom of a communication trench seven
feet deep. Flowers and grass peep down at one, and white clouds sail
placidly across

"The strip of blue we prisoners call the sky."

I felt that I must see all of the sky and see it at once. Therefore I set
down my water-cans, one on top of the other, stepped up on them, and was
soon over the top of the trench, crawling through the tall grass toward a
clump of willows about fifty yards away. I passed two lonely graves with
their wooden crosses hidden in depths of shimmering, waving green, and
found an old rifle, its stock weather-warped and the barrel eaten away
with rust. The ground was covered with tin cans, fragments of shell-casing,
and rubbish of all sorts; but it was hidden from view. Men had been
laying waste the earth during the long winter, and now June was healing
the wounds with flowers and cool green grasses.

I was sorry that I went to the willows, for it was there that I found the
sniper. He had a wonderfully concealed position, which was made
bullet-proof with steel plates and sandbags, all covered so naturally
with growing grass and willow bushes that it would have been impossible
to detect it at a distance of ten yards. In fact, I would not have
discovered it had it not been for the loud crack of a rifle sounding so
close at hand. I crept on to investigate and found the sniper looking
quite disappointed.

"Missed the blighter!" he said. Then he told me that it wasn't a good
place for a sniper's nest at all. For one thing, it was too far back,
nearly a half-mile from the German trenches. Furthermore, it was a
mistake to plant a nest in a solitary clump of willows such as this: a
clump of trees offers too good an aiming mark for artillery: much better
to make a position right out in the open. However, so far he had not been
annoyed by shell fire. A machine gun had searched for him, but he had
adequate cover from machine-gun fire.

"But, blimy! You ought to 'a' 'eard the row w'en the bullets was
a-smackin' against the sandbags! Somebody was a-knockin' at the door, I
give you _my_ word!"

However, it wasn't such a "dusty little coop," and he had a good field of
fire. He had registered four hits during the day, and he proudly
d