then the greatest thrill of all--when we were ordered to France.

The 24th of April was a beautiful spring day of quivering sunshine,
which made the soggy ground in the part of Belgium where I was fairly
steam. The grass was green as plush, and along the front of the
trenches, where it had not been trodden down, there were yellow
buttercups and other little spring flowers whose names I did not
know.

We had dug the trenches the day before, and the ground was so marshy
and wet that water began to ooze in before we had dug more than three
feet. Then we had gone on the other side and thrown up more dirt,
to make a better parapet, and had carried sand-bags from an old
artillery dug-out. Four strands of barbed wire were also put up
in front of our trenches, as a sort of suggestion of barbed-wire
entanglements, but we knew we had very little protection.

Early in the morning of the 24th, a German aeroplane flew low over
our trench, so low that I could see the man quite plainly, and could
easily have shot him, but we had orders not to fire--the object of
these orders being that we must not give away our position.

The airman saw us, of course, for he looked right down at us, and
dropped down white pencils of smoke to show the gunners where we
were. That big gray beetle sailing serenely over us, boring us with
his sharp eyes, and spying out our pitiful attempts at protection, is
one of the most unpleasant feelings I have ever had. It gives me the
shivers yet! And to think we had orders not to fire!

Being a sniper, I had a rifle fixed up with a telescopic sight, which