Everybody started laughing at McLean's plight, but no sooner were the rest of us settled down till we too had a battle on our hands; and in the middle of the fray, Fritz started shelling our billets with gas shells, one of the missiles going clean through the tile roof and knocking the tiles down on our heads. Then came a salvo—six shells—followed by several others. "S.O.S." was signaled and "Stand to," and out we raced for the guns, sans shirt, sans everything, bumping into the trees on our way and falling in shell holes in the orchard.
The gas they were putting over at this time was more dangerous than any I had yet experienced, it having a more direct effect on the lungs than any they had yet given us. It had started to rain and the darkness was black, but we reached the guns within scheduled time, and under great difficulty we exploded our shells; but most of our work in that discharge was guesswork.
It soon cooled down and we again sought our billets after laying the guns on "S.O.S." and even the pain from the stings of the bees did not prevent us getting into dreamland in short order.
At 3:30 in the morning I went out to visit the last guard shift, as was my duty. Then, dawn breaking over the land, I went out to see what damage the shells had done, and on the way I stumbled into a crop of the most delicious mushrooms. Off came my helmet and I filled it to the brim and hastened to the cookhouse with them; he had just got his fire started and I asked him if he would oblige me by cooking them for me, as I wanted them for my gun crew, and he gladly complied with my request.
Then cookhouse was called and the crew came to breakfast and when each man got his portion of the mushrooms served him, his astonishment was as great as when he got the honey. So that between the honey and the dewy dainties I had gathered, together with a couple of jars of pickled pork and two small jars of rolled butter found in one of the vacated cellars by an industrious member of our crew, you can imagine the excited condition of our minds that morning at breakfast.
During the course of the feasting the Sergeant-Major arrived on the scene. "Well, for Heaven's sake! Who was the guy that got the mushrooms?" He was informed that I was the lucky individual and he asked me if I would show him the way, and I was just directing him when "Stand to the battery!" intervened, and we bolted for the guns and opened up. "Fifty rounds gunfire" was ordered; then "Second fire ten seconds," then "Second fire five seconds," then "Gunfire steady"; next, "Independent fire ten seconds"; then came the order for a sweeping fire to enable our infantry to dig in in a trench they had just taken, and to prevent Fritz getting it back. Our work was accomplished and "Stand down and lay on day lines!" was ordered and I was cleaning the sight of my gun and wiping off the effects of the gas fumes when the Sergeant-Major came along and asked me to indicate where I had gathered the mushrooms; I pointed the spot out to him, and he made a bee line. In a couple of minutes I heard him calling and I looked up, "Here's a beauty you missed, Grant; you must have been blind," and he held up a mushroom as large as a breakfast plate. I laughed and replied, "Yes, you are lucky, Sergeant-Major." Then Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! and Fritz started getting busy again as an airplane hovered about, and the pace getting too deucedly hot, we started for the trenches; it was a ditch-trench half full of water which came to our waists, and in it we paddled our way until we got to a fairly good trench, and on the journey down imprecations of all kinds were hurled on the head of the offending Sergeant-Major. "Where is that damned fool of a Sergeant-Major?" asked one; "It was his gathering those mushrooms in the open that started Fritz." Just at that moment down the ditch came the Sergeant-Major limping; he had been slightly wounded in the leg by a bit of shrapnel, but he was hanging onto his mushrooms.
"'Ere, Grant, take this, will you, till I fix me leg," and he handed me the mushrooms and started undoing his puttee where the blood was soaking through. When he had bound up his wound I handed him his dainties and he held them up admiringly.
"It was a bit dangerous, doncher know, but, blow me tight, if I wouldn't do it again to get a beauty like that," holding up the large one he had shown me when he was gathering them.
"You bleedin' idiot," I said, "don't you know a mushroom when you see it? That's a toadstool! I passed it up."