With all of us comic incidents in plenty occurred. Our most notable characteristic was our seriousness, and, running it a close second, our ignorance. I remember one solemn private who threw a hand grenade from his place in the trench. It hit the edge of the parapet and dropped back again. He looked at it, remarked "Lord God," slipped in the mud, and sat down on it just as it exploded. Fortunately for him it was one of the light, tin-covered grenades, and beyond making sitting down an almost impossible action for him for several days following he was comparatively undamaged. Often the comic was tinged with the tragic. We had men who endeavored to open grenades with a rock, with the usual disastrous effects to all.
Once Sergeant O'Rourke was training his men in throwing hand grenades. I came up and watched them a minute. They were doing very well, and I called, "Sergeant, your men are throwing these grenades excellently." O'Rourke evidently felt there was danger of turning their heads by too much praise. "Sor-r-r, that and sleep is all they can do well," he replied.
In order to get the men trained with the rifle, as we had no target material, we used tin cans and rocks. A tin can is a particularly good target; it makes such a nice noise when hit, and leaps about so. I liked to shoot at them myself, and could well understand why they pleased the soldiers.
Why more persons were not killed in our practice I don't know, as the whole division was in training in a limited space, all having rifle practice, with no possibility of constructing satisfactory ranges.
BEFORE THE OFFENSIVE
Drawn by Captain W. J. Aylward, A. E. F.
Some officers in another unit organized a rifle range in such a position that the overs dropped gently where we were training. One eventually hit my horse, but did not do much damage.
Lieutenant Lyman S. Frazier, an excellent officer, who finished the war as major of infantry, commanded the machine-gun company of my battalion. He was very keen on indirect fire, but we could get little or no information on it. One evening, however, he grouped his guns, made his calculations as well as he could, and then fired a regular barrage. As soon as the demonstration was over he galloped out as fast as he could to the target, and found to his chagrin that only one shot had hit. Where the other 10,000 odd went we never knew.
We had many incidents that were really humorous with the men in the guard mount. A young fellow, named Cobb, who lost his leg later in the war, was standing guard early in his military career. A French girl passed him in the dark. He challenged, "Who is there?" She replied, "Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?" Young Cobb didn't know French, but he did know that when in doubt on any subject you called the corporal of the guard. So he shouted at the top of his voice, "Corporal of the guard, queskidee!"