idly brought him through,
although it was five months before he was really himself again, and he
has since then gone back to the lines, where he was again wounded and in
the hospital, and has again gone back and is still doing his bit.

On the following morning, I returned to the battery.

CHAPTER XIV

THE DEAD SHELL[1]

A late September mist, more hazy than foggy in its character, enveloped
the line following a heavy deluge of nearly two days that had poured
almost a foot of water in our trenches, and in some spots where holes
had formed in the trench-bed the water came gurgling over the knee. On
the whole, however, conditions were very much less worse than wading in
the water up to one's waist, which was our common lot in the earlier
days of the war. As one of our wags had it, "Mud under me, water around
me and hell above me."

[Footnote 1: _A dead shell is one that explodes at a predetermined time
after it strikes--from one minute to several hours._]

For nearly a month Fritz had been inordinately busy with his "dead"
shells; we had no rest from his activities. If there was an interval of
time when we were not being served with the "dead" messages, the hiatus
was filled with whiz-bangs and gas. Whichever his fancy dictated, for us
it was the Devil's choice.

Following orders, under the friendly shelter of night's curtain, I was
leading my squad to our gun positions in the front line, about three
miles distant, and in slipping and sliding over the muddy ground, pitted
with holes in such a manner as to suggest to one's mind that the earth's
surface had been scourged with an attack of elephantine smallpox, we
could not help chuckling, in spite of the discomforts of our journey, at
the ejaculation of a Cockney Tommy: "Strike me pink, Sergeant, but Fritz
would think we was his pals if he only saw this goose-step work." This
was an allusion to the fashion we had to employ in picking our steps on
the lookout for holes. In this region the fair face of nature is
distorted in every conceivable way with holes and ditches, some of the
holes big enough to engulf a house, and it is no mere desire to avoid
the water in these holes that compels us to pick our steps in this
hell-swept part of the world; it is the first law of nature, self
preservation, for many a poor lad has been done to death in them by
drowning.

On this night my squad, including myself, was composed of 13 men, and
although none of the men, if th