CHAPTER VI

BITS OF BATTLE


On the way over to the barn, where the shell hit the 48th, a piece of a
tree limb smashed into the ground at my feet, following the familiar
whiz just overhead of a large gun missive, with its accompanying wind
gust, and at the same moment something struck with a thud the tree from
which the splinter had come. Glancing up, I noticed a shell lodged in a
fork of the two main branches, that had stuck there without exploding.
For a shell to explode, it is necessary that the nose of the fuse,
containing the detonator, shall come in contact with a solid substance,
in order to make ignition and cause the explosion. This had not been
done; owing to the intervention of kind nature in the shape of the
crotch in that tree catching and holding the shell fast in a firm
embrace, we were saved from that additional disaster and death.

A dried-up creek that was being used by us for a trench on the Ypres
sector was crossed by a wooden bridge about thirty feet long. This
bridge was used as a means of transport at night and by Red Cross men in
the daytime, and was very useful; it was most important that it be kept
in constant repair. I was detailed in charge of the repair party. One
day during the great Ypres battle, about ten o'clock in the morning, the
bridge was smashed and I took my party up and made the necessary
repairs. We had hardly returned to cover when the bridge was smashed
again, and again we rushed out and fixed it up. As we ran, three men
forged ahead of me and got to the middle of the thirty-foot structure; I
was about twenty feet behind them, the rest of the party immediately