run forward until you are cut down. And when you have, so to speak,
been thrown in the stream for the others to cross over, and the trench
is taken, and you are put out of the way under a few inches of French
earth, then, perhaps, inasmuch as experience shows that it isn't worth
while to try to keep a trench unless you have captured more than three
hundred yards of it, the battalion retires and starts all over again.

We had walked on down the trenches, turned a bend where two trees had
been blown up and flung across it, when there was a dull report near by,
followed a moment later by a tremendous explosion out toward the enemy's
trench. "Unsere Minen!" ("One of our bombs!") laughed a young soldier
beside me, and a crackle of excitement ran along the trench. These
bombs were cylinders, about the size of two baking-powder tins joined
together, filled with dynamite and exploded by a fuse. They were thrown
from a small mortar with a light charge of powder, just sufficient to
toss them over into the opposite trench. The Germans knew what was
coming, and they were laughing and watching in the direction of the
English trenches.

"Vorsicht! Vorsicht!"

There was a dull report and at the same moment something shot up from
the English trenches and, very clear against the western sky, came
flopping over and over toward us like a bottle thrown over a barn.

"Vorsicht! Vorsicht!" It sailed over our heads behind the trench, there
was an instant's silence, and then "Whong!" and a pile of dirt and black
smoke was flung in the air. Again there was a dull report, and we sent
a second back--this time behind their trench--and again--"Vorsicht!
Vorsicht!"--they sent an answer back. Four times this was repeated. A