building,
some five hundred yards in our rear, I found eight of them. Inside the
building was a dead French soldier who, as we figured it out, had
accounted for the eight boches before they got him. This place was
called Sniper's Barn.

While our artillery had been considerably increased, it was still far
below that of the enemy in number or size of guns, and the ammunition
supply was so short that each gun was limited to a very few rounds a
day. It was only during the following summer that the English caught
up with the Germans in artillery. This, naturally, did not tend to
cheer up the men. It was aggravating, to say the least, to have the
other fellow sending over "crumps" without limit, and be able to send
back nothing but six or eight "whizz-bangs." ("Crump" is the general
name for high-explosive shells of from 4.1 up, but the commonest size
is the 5.9 or 150 mm.)

Having been so successful at the strafing at Messines, our Colonel was
anxious that we continue the game here and I was delegated to locate a
good position and "go to it." After going over all the ground back of
our lines, I decided to try the experiment of placing the gun in a
small hedge which ran across the lower end of an old garden or
orchard, in front of Sniper's Barn; that is, on the side toward the
enemy. It looked rather foolhardy, at first glance, for the place was
in plain sight from the German lines and only about five hundred yards
away at the nearest point; but I remembered our experience at our
first strafing place and depended on Heinie to jump to the conclusion
that we were in the farm buildings, and devote his attention to them.
It worked; he "ran true to form," as a race horse man would say, and
while we maintained a gun, and sometimes two, in that place for six
months, and the boche shot up the barn regularly during all that time,
there was never a shell, apparently, directed at our position, and
except for an occasional "short," none burst near us.

From there we would shoot, day and night, often, at the first, having
our targets where we could "see 'em fall," a very unusual occurrence
for a machine gunner, save during a general engagement. Of course we
would have to get into the position before daylight and remain until
dark as the way to and from it was exposed to view from "across the
way."

Here we worked out many of the constantly recurring problems which
confront the machine gunner in the field, and which are, as a rule,