cture; "My
word, mother will be pleased," he said, turned over and was sound asleep
instantly. I know Sammie slept because he never remarked on my taking a
short cut to the trenches through the window.

Another time when a Hun bomb dropped in the officers' trench and failed
to explode, Sammie, who was but two feet away, tried to lift it, failed,
and then lay full length upon it, believing it to be of the "delay
action" variety; when our Major, a bomb expert, appeared on the scene a
few moments later and laughingly declared the bomb a "dud," Sammie's
embarrassment expressed itself in "My word." If the detonating apparatus
of this bomb had been all that the Huns intended it to be, Sammie would
have returned to minute specks of dust and his name would have been
added to the long list of dead heroes; but since the bomb was a "dud,"
Sammie was made the butt of his friends' wit.

Sammie was always philosophical. He was once ordered to take a new
machine on a very long raid. We had all examined this new aeroplane and
declared it a "dud"; so we cheered Sammie up as well as we could by
drinking his health and inquiring into his taste in flowers. Undismayed,
Sammie took the machine off the ground, with the wheel held into his
stomach; the rigging of the machine was such that it would fly on an
even plane longitudinally if the wheel was kept back as far as possible.
By all the laws of aeronautics this aeroplane should have crashed before
leaving the ground, but it did not. Sammie climbed it to five hundred
feet in an hour and a half. As Sammie now had seven and one half hours
petrol left and was still four hours away from his objective, it would
have been quite justifiable for him to return without going any farther;
in fact, it was the only reasonable thing for him to do; but Sammie
always trusted to luck rather than reason, and his luck did not fail
him. One engine "conked" and he was forced to turn back. He fired his
forced landing signal when approaching the aerodrome, but the aerodrome
was being bombed by the Huns in a very thorough manner and Sammie had to
land in complete darkness, the inevitable result being a crash. Sammie
extricated himself from the wreckage, found that both of his companions
were dead, rescued one of the machine guns from its damaged mounting,
together with several drums of ammunition and practised his marksmanship
on the enemy planes until an enemy bomb ruined his clothes and left him,
after a few mon