"Yes, sir, you can mix it up better with something handy—to think that British soldiers would come to fighting like assassins!" said the sergeant. "You must be spry on such occasions. It's no time for wool- gathering."
Not a smile from him or the subaltern all the time. They were the kind you would like to have along in a tight corner, whether you had to fight with knives, fists, or seventeen-inch howitzers.
The sergeant took us into the storehouse where he kept his supply of bombs.
"What if a German shell should strike your storehouse?" I asked.
"Then, sir, I expect that most of the bombs would be exploded.
Bombs are very peculiar in their habits. What do you think, sir?"
It was no trouble to show stock, as clerks at the stores say. He brought forth all the different kinds of bombs that British ingenuity had invented—but no, not all invented. These would mount into the thousands. Every British inventor who knows anything about explosives has tried his hand at a new kind of bomb. One means all the kinds which the British War Office has considered worth a practice test. The spectator was allowed to handle each one as much as he pleased. There had been occasions, that boyish Scottish subaltern told me, when the men who were examining the products of British ingenuity—well, the subaltern had sandy hair, too, which heightened the effect of his blue eyes.
There were yellow and green and blue and black and striped bombs; egg-shaped, barrel-shaped, conical, and concave bombs; bombs that were exploded by pulling a string and by pressing a button—all these to be thrown by hand, without mentioning grenades and other larger varieties to be thrown by mechanical means, which would have made a Chinese warrior of Confucius' time or a Roman legionary feel at home.
"This was the first-born," the subaltern explained, "the first thing we could lay our hands on when the close quarters' trench warfare began."
It was as out of date as grandfather's smooth-bore, the tin-pot bomb that both sides used early in the winter. A wick was attached to the high explosive, wrapped in cloth and stuck in an ordinary army jam tin.
"Quite home-made, as you see, sir," remarked the sergeant. "Used to fix them up ourselves in the trenches in odd hours—saved burying the refuse jam tins according to medical corps directions—and you threw them at the Boches. Had to use a match to light it. Very old- fashioned, sir. I wonder if that old fuse has got damp. No, it's going all right"—and he threw the jam pot, which made a good explosion. Later, when he began hammering the end of another he looked up in mild surprise at the dignified back-stepping of the spectators.