Page:Lieutenant and Others (1915) by Sapper.djvu/85

 one morning and find a German officer hating in a corner. The next morning you might find a young calf or a land mine. You never knew. All this uncertainty, coupled with the fact that the right flank of this trench was fifty yards from the one on its right, and that its left rested on a cess-pit, made the general decide on drastic measures.

He had another one dug behind, and ordered that it should be filled in. And in view of the fact that it was only forty yards from the Germans it all had to be done at night. Furthermore he suggested that it would indeed be nice if I could place half a dozen land mines in the filled-in trench. Dissembling my pleasure at this horrible suggestion, I retired from his dug-out, relapsing hurriedly into a Johnson hole as a sniper opened a rapid and unpleasantly accurate fire on me. As a result of my cogitations I found myself at about ten that night crawling up a hedge towards the trench in question, while behind me came a cursing subaltern and several grunting men armed with shovels. In the rear a dozen stalwarts carried the land mines.

Now the idea of a land mine is very simple.