The instructor then proceeds to throw another bomb. As, counting three, he throws the bomb down, he proceeds quickly to put a sheet of corrugated iron on it.
'Now,' he cries, 'run like hell!'--and he showed them the example.
The bomb, exploding, sends fragments, throws the torn iron all around, and the men have learnt another strange lesson in regard to the behaviour of bombs.
Notwithstanding the confident handling of bombs by this expert, I am privately of opinion that men should beware of 'the familiarity which breeds contempt' in the matter of bombs.
There was a man in our Brigade who had just returned from a bombing school with his head stuffed full of all sorts of knowledge about the manufacture and use of bombs. He had a small collection of them, and one morning in the shadow of the Calvary at the cross-roads-at Fleurbaix, having an audience, he held forth on his new subject, illustrating his remarks by fiddling with a small screw-driver at a bomb which he professed to know all about. Suddenly it exploded, wounding him sadly. 'A little learning' had for the moment 'made him mad.'
To get back to our Bombing School. After the instructor's talks, the men in turn would hurl bombs from one trench to another, until they were no longer 'bomb-shy.' As a matter of fact, a good bomber is just as good a 'life' in the army as any other expert. Indeed, a man may lose his life through the absence of a bomb or the knowledge of how to use it.
In the words of our instructor, 'The cure for the bombing craze is--"A hair of the dog that bit you."'
The Germans are good bombers, and when, in their counter-attack, they come down a trench throwing bombs, the only way is to bomb them back and out again.
He used to say, 'The Boches began this blooming bombing business,' only his adjectives were sometimes profane. 'What we have to do is to give them a fair sickening of it. Bomb their Zeppelins[Zeppelins], bomb their submarines, bomb their dug-outs'--then, in one final outburst, he would say, 'Bomb the Boches; and if you don't believe what I say, ask the Chaplain.'
If they ask me, how can I contradict him?