Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/127

 could make out the French second and third line trenches, and here and there about Vigneville a "soixantequinze" shot out a jut of flame. The French had a number of sausages up, and we were able to pick out two Boche balloons, far behind their own lines. There were a few shells bursting in the valley and big puffs of smoke rose regularly from Mort Homme. The artillery never seems to stop work here.

Gilmore and I go souvenir-hunting regularly now. We explored the old munition depot yesterday which a Boche aviator blew up last summer. There were 40,000 loaded shells, both shrapnel and high explosive, stored there, and hundreds of empty casings, fuses, and douilles. They all went up together because of one measly bomb. We brought home a quart of shrapnel, and a number of compression bands.

Gilmore has found the tip of a "380," (it weighs about forty pounds) and also enough parts of a "75" to construct the whole shell. Everybody seems to have gone souvenir-crazy. Not only do we bring in all sorts of junk from the posts, but we spend every minute here making briquets, paper knives, aluminum rings, and various do-dads from Boche bullets. Whenever anyone brings in a hand grenade or a time fuse we always take the thing apart. It's taking a terrible chance, but we seem to forget the