Good-by."

He went back through Ypres on the way to Hooge, and the mine-crater
where his Irish soldiers were lying in slime, in which vermin crawled.

Sometimes it was the enemy who mined under our position, blowing a few
men to bits and scattering the sand-bags. Sometimes it was our men
who upheaved the earth beyond them by mine charges and rushed the new
crater.

It was in July of '15 that the devils of Hooge became merry and bright
with increased activity. The Germans had taken possession of one of the
mine-craters which formed the apex of a triangle across the Menin road,
with trenches running down to it on either side, so that it was like the
spear-head of their position. They had fortified it with sand-bags and
crammed it with machine--guns which could sweep the ground on three
sides, so making a direct attack by infantry a suicidal enterprise. Our
trenches immediately faced this stronghold from the other side of a
road at right angles with the Menin road, and our men--the New Army
boys--were shelled day and night, so that many of them were torn to
pieces, and others buried alive, and others sent mad by shell-shock.
(They were learning their lessons in the school of courage.) It was
decided by a conference of generals, not at Hooge, to clear out this
hornets' nest, and the job was given to the sappers, who mined under
the roadway toward the redoubt, while our heavy artillery shelled the
enemy's position all around the neighborhood.

On July 22d the mine was exploded, while our men crouched low, horribly
afraid after hours of suspense. The earth was rent asunder by a gust of
flame, and vomited up a tumult of soil and stones and human limbs and
bodies. Our men still crouched while these things fell upon them.

"I thought I had been blown to bits," one of them told me. "I was a
quaking fear, with my head in the earth. I kept saying, 'Christ!...
Christ!'"

When the earth and smoke had settled again it was seen that the enemy's
redoubt had ceased to exist. In its place, where there had been a
crisscross of trenches and sand-bag shelters for their machine-guns and
a network of barbed wire, there was now an enormous crater, hollowed
deep with shelving sides surrounded by tumbled earth heaps which had
blocked up the enemy's trenches on either side of the position, so that
they could not rush into the cavern and take possession. It was our men
who "rushed" the crater and lay there panting in its smoking soil.

Our