before
resulting from an overdose of green apples.

When the digging was done, the cannoneers passed the afternoon in sleep.
In the evening the battery fired. Heavy shelling on the road behind,
after midnight, was accompanied by another call to the guns to fire
again. The caissons, which had gone back after more ammunition after
they had come up with the pieces, came up with their second load in the
midst of darkness. The first two reached the position without delay,
but the others, halted by the constant shelling on the road, had to wait
till nearly daybreak before it was safe to venture up.

Rain fell next day. But the big tarpaulins belonging with the guns were
stretched as a tent under the camouflage, and gave comfort to the men so
long as they were not called upon to fire. The bread that came with
meals--carried in cans from the kitchen in the woods--was green with
mould, from the long journey in inclement weather from the bakeries. The
coffee tasted like quinine, since the water to be found was so bad that
it had to be strongly chlorinated. But a big sack of mail came to the
battery that day, and all troubles were forgotten in the joy of hearing
from home.

That day, August 5, Sergeant McElhone left the battery to go back to the
United States as an instructor, an opportunity that made him the envy of
everyone while they congratulated him on his good luck. Corporal Monroe
succeeded to the charge of the Second Section, Herrod taking his place
as gunner.

All that night and the next day, the battery maintained a steady fire on
the enemy, destroying machine gun nests, entrenchments and available
shelter in preparations for an advance across the Vesle. From 4:30 till
after 8 p. m. August 6, we dropped a slow barrage on the town of
Bazouches, to the left of Fismes.

At noon next day the Second Battalion went forward to a position almost
overlooking the river. The movement was not without danger. For the
bright day, with enemy aeroplanes overhead constantly, exposed the
batteries to discovery, particularly when they galloped up an open
hillside into position. A blanket covering two still figures just beside
our path, several others farther away without such cover, and white
bandages gleaming on the bodies of some of the battalion of engineers
who, with pontoon bridges, were waiting in readiness in the woods below,
were evidence that the shells which whirred over and burst a ways beyond
us were not always so far fro