McLean laid his comb on a pile of shells beside the gun, and the heat of the August day caused the honey to trickle over the shells. I commenced pointing the gun while Mac worked the range drum; the angles were passed to us and inside of a minute we were firing, and inside of another minute we had the sternest kind of a battle on our hands, for thicker than ever the bees came swarming around the gun.
"Who in hell broke into those hives?" yelled the Major.
No reply; we were busily working and "hadn't time" to answer. The honey on our hands, coupled with the dust, made a grit that in opening and closing the breech caused the mechanism to stick, and the honey clinging to the shells caused the breech chamber to stick, making the shell cases jam in the gun after being discharged, forcing us to pry open with a sharp pick the breech each time to extract the empty cartridge. All during the operation the Major was cursing like a madman at the men, whoever they were, that brought the bees into the business.
It was my duty to set the sight, and as I did so, each time, the bees would attack my hands and head, and in trying to attend to the sight and wipe the bees off at the same time, my work was harder than can well be imagined; but poor Billy's case was even harder, he had to keep a steady hold of his range drum with both hands and he couldn't budge to brush off his attackers, as it was absolutely necessary to hold dead steady to enable us to do our shooting accurately.
"Grant, for God's sake knock this bee off my neck," he pleaded; "it's stinging hell out of me"; but every time I made a move to help him, the Major roared, "Get that angle on, Grant; get your range on, McLean." And we had to take our medicine. Parker, who was passing shells, was in the same plight as the rest of us; his hands were covered with the sugary fluid that had settled between the copper splinters of the driving bands on the shells and the slivers were slitting his hands. This is a necessary accompaniment that the men passing the shells into the gun have to contend with, and ordinarily it is a sore and painful piece of business, but in conjunction with the swarm of the bees it was simply hellish.
A change of angle was momentarily expected from the observer; we had been looking for it for some minutes, and the Major was beginning to rave and rant, very much like a theater manager when the star has not yet put in her appearance and the impatient audience on the outside are giving vent to catcalls. He could stand it no longer and ran as fast as his legs would carry him over to the telephonist's hut; there he found Graham crouching alongside of his telephone in the folds of a blanket over his head and face. It was the usual field telephone that we used, in conjunction with a telegraph buzzer, and Graham was endeavoring to deliver his messages and fight off the bees at the same time, while bringing to his aid the smoke of a fag that he was endeavoring to puff into the faces of his antagonists in the hope that it would help some.
The Major bellowed, "You damned jackass! take off that blanket. What do you mean?" Graham threw off the blanket and started working his buzzer, but the bees had as little regard for the rank of the Major as they did for that of Sergeant Graham, and three or four of them kept pinging away at him, but as long as the Major was there his splendid discipline enabled him to do his work. He got into communication at once with the trenches, gave us our new targets and we kept on with our work until darkness prevented further registering that night, although the twilight still prevailed.
"Stand down!" came the order. "Clean up guns and lay on S.O.S. lines for the night," meaning to load the gun with a fuse shell timed for a certain range, or to burst on percussion, just as the target requires, safety catch down, sight set, range on range drum and the gun laid on a predetermined point to be covered, in both cases being the front line trench, although it might be a machine-gun emplacement, barbed-wire, bombing post, crossroads or observation station. For a front-line trench and an attack started by the enemy, the S.O.S. signal is passed from the trench, either through the telephonist in the trenches, or by means of colored star shells. Immediately upon receipt of this signal by our S.O.S. sentry or the telephonist at the battery, we get the order "S.O.S. stand to the battery," and in the space of four seconds from the time we receive that order, our first shell must be exploded in the German lines under pain of the severest penalty. If a man were taking a wash, he would have to jump out of the water and get to the guns as quickly as God and nature would permit him.
Before retiring for our billets, Mac and I decided that we might as well get some more honey, as we felt that the bees had done about all that they could to us and we were deserving of a little further reward for what we had endured, and arming ourselves with smoke helmets, we made a further sortie on the camp of our winged enemies. As fast as if I were ramming home a shell, I lifted off the hive while Mac pulled out a couple of combs swarming with bees. We thought we were making a good job of it this time and getting away scot free, when suddenly I felt a stab under my coat sleeve and almost at the same moment Mac had the same experience and we broke into a run for the billet. By the time we got there we were being stung frightfully on our bodies, as the bees had made their way up under our shirt sleeves and we ripped off our coats and shirts, fighting the common enemy at the same time. The boys in the billet beat it outside while we "carried on."
After a vigorous battle we seemed to have the foe beaten into submission and the fellows returned; then we had a feed of honey, hung up the remainder on the wall and retired for the night. Mac retired to his bunk first and had scarcely settled down when he emitted another snort, then a yell; the bees had settled in between the blankets of his bed and were renewing their onslaught on his helpless body.