e worth for about fifteen
minutes. After that night the Germans opposite kept very quiet when we
were in the trenches. A few days later we heard that General Von Kluck
had been wounded opposite our lines. We wondered if we had hit him.

The friends of the regiment at home were kind enough to present our
battalion with Khaki Tam O' Shanters which we used in the trenches.
They were a splendid headdress and we had very few casualties during
our various turns of duty in the front line, which good fortune we
ascribed to this headdress. General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien was very
much taken with the "tam" as a trench cap.

On the morning of March 8th, while Major MacKenzie and I were having
coffee, the Germans began shelling our quarters. We were in an old
brick house on the Rue Pettion and our breakfast was rudely disturbed
by several loud reports. One of the orderlies came in to say that
German shells were falling in the field in front of the house. We went
out to see what was happening. The Germans were firing salvos of four
shells at a time and "searching" for my humble quarters. First four
shells fell about fifty yards apart about five hundred yards away to
the right looking to our rear. Then four more came closer. Salvo
followed salvo but a number of the shells failed to explode. After
they had raked out our front yard we heard four burst behind our
quarters and we knew that the next bracket would get our happy home.
It did. Four struck the barn and the quarters occupied by Captain
McGregor and his staff fifty feet away from where we stood. We feared
that our cows were gone, done to death by miserable Hun gunners. When
we took over these quarters the Scots Guards were good enough to turn
over three cows in good milking trim to our headquarters. These three
cows were all that were left on the farm of a fine herd of brown Swiss
cattle. The rest of the herd were scattered about the fields with
their feet sticking up in the air, and it was our unpleasant duty to
later on bury them darkly at dead of night. We forgot our three
milkers for the moment, however, as we heard the whistling of more
shells and orders were given for everybody to duck and get under
cover. Two shells struck the house and tore about two inches off the
tile ridge at intervals of about ten feet apart. They fell in the
ditch in front of the house but failed to explode. Four more fell to
the right, and then the gunners began to rake back and forward,
droppi