“Me for that lid!” announced Sissy.
“How are you gonna get it?” enquired his friend.
“The only way I know of. Going over the top and fetching it.”
Sam stared meditatively through the loophole, and remarked carelessly:
“You’ll wait till it gets dark, I guess.”
Human nature is a curious thing. Sissy Smithers was reckoned a quiet youth. In civil life he earned a romantic but unheroic livelihood by selling ladies’ hosiery. But his friend’s perfectly casual and reasonable observation stung him to the roots of his being. His face flamed. Without a word he scrambled upon the firing-step, heaved himself over the parapet, walked quite deliberately to the barbed wire, and brought back the helmet. The helmet had a chip in it. The chip was made by a German sniper as Sissy lifted the helmet out of the wire.
The Boche employs other vehicles of frightfulness besides artillery. The Flying Pig, for example. This engaging animal is really an aerial mine, about six feet long. It appears suddenly high in the air above No Man’s Land, propelled thither by some invisible and inaudible agency behind the German line, and descends upon us in a series of amusing somersaults. Having reached its destination it explodes, with results disastrous to the landscape. A single Flying Pig can do more damage than a whole artillery bombardment. But it possesses one redeeming feature. You can see it coming. When you do, the correct procedure is to decide quickly where it is going to come down, and then go somewhere else. It is an exhilarating pastime, but attended by complications when played by a large number of persons in a narrow trench—especially when differences of opinion exist as to where the animal really intends to alight.
Then there is gas. But gas is more of a nuisance than a danger in these days, since we are all—even the horses—equipped with a special breathing apparatus, and carry the same night and day. Our newest mask, too, is a great advance on its predecessors. The chief trouble about gas-masks hitherto has been the formation of mist on the inside of the goggles. Now, by the happy inspiration of some nameless benefactor in the Service of Supply, the breathing tubes are so arranged that the filtered air, when it arrives, passes right over the inner surface of the eye-pieces, clearing the glass at every intake of breath.
Mustard gas is another story, because it attacks the skin—unless you happen to be a coloured gentleman, and then apparently you do not mind so much.
But our busy time is at night. Supplies come up; casualties go back. Trench repairs have to be executed in places inaccessible by daylight. Sandbags innumerable have to be filled and set in position.