a spent bullet, which on
reaching hospital he found in his left-hand breast pocket. Private
Plant, Manchester Regiment, had a cigarette shot out of his mouth, and a
comrade got a bullet into his tin of bully beef. "It saves the trouble
of opening it," was his facetious remark.

One of the Royal Scots Fusiliers was saved by a cartridge clip. He felt
the shock and thought he had been hit, but the bullet was diverted by
the impact owing to a loose cartridge. Had it been struck higher up all
the cartridges might have exploded. Another letter mentions a case where
a man got two bullets; one struck his cartridge belt, and the other
entered his sleeve and passed through his trousers as far as the knee,
without even scratching him. Drummer E. O'Brien, South Lancashires, had
his bugle and piccolo smashed, his cap carried away by a bullet, and
another bullet through his coat before he was finally struck by a piece
of shrapnel which injured his ankle; and another soldier records thus
his adventures under fire: (1) Shell hit and shattered my rifle; (2) Cap
shot off my head; (3) Bullet in muscle of right arm. "But never mind, my
dear," he comments, "I had a good run for my money." Staff-Sergeant J.W.
Butler, 1st Lincolns, was saved by a paper pad in his pocket book; the
bullet embedded itself there.

Sapper McKenny, Royal Engineers, records the unique experience of a
comrade whose cap was shot off so neatly that the bullet left a groove
in his hair just like a barber's parting! He thinks the German who fired
the shot is probably a London hairdresser.

Private J. Drury, 3rd Coldstream Guards, also had a narrow escape, being
hit by a bullet out of a shell between the left eye and the temple. "It
struck there," he relates, "but one of our men got it out with a safety
pin, and now I've got it in my pocket!"

The amusing escapade of "wee Hecky MacAlister," is told by Private T.
McDougall, of the Highland Light Infantry. Hecky went into a burn for a
swim, and suddenly found the attentions of the Germans were directed to
him. "You know what a fine mark he is with his red head," says the
writer to his correspondent, and so they just hailed bullets at him.
Hecky, however, "dooked and dooked," and emerged from his bath happy but
breathless after his submarine exploit.

But while the men in the trenches applaud all the brilliant exploits of
their fellows, and laugh and jest over the lively escapes of the lucky
ones who, in Atkins's phrase