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Updated: June 8, 2025
We called them "Plum Puddin's." I don't know what Fritzie called them, but he got them whether he called them or not. They had long steel handles and were easily thrown; no doubt the Germans were just as busy dodging ours as we were getting out of the way of theirs.
When he's gone over the top with bomb and bayonet for the express purpose of "doing in" the Hun, he makes a comrade of the Fritzie he captures. You'll see him coming down the battered trenches with some scared lad of a German at his side. He's gabbling away making throat-noises and signs, smiling and doing his inarticulate best to be intelligible.
In a few minutes down the communication trench came a wounded man walking, jubilant in spite of his wounds. "Fritzie tried to put one over on us," he exclaimed, while the doctor was dabbing with iodine and tying up his wounded arm, "but I think he's got another guess coming. You ought to have seen our officer," he added. "The first one in the bunch to be 'at 'em. With a bayonet, too, mind you.
At last we came to the communicating trench, and just as we reached it Fritzie sent a salvo of shells across one or two of the boys caught it the rest of us kept on our way. We followed the trench, scrambling over parts that were blown in, and stumbling over the dead that were lying everywhere.
Finally we thought we had lost enough time, so I went back to work and Mac started down "Suicide Road" for another load of sandbags and planks for the tunnel. He had about a mile to go, and the road he was on got its name from the fierce shelling that Fritzie gave it every night.
We were using the Ross rifle, and we fired it till it jammed; then we grabbed some Lee-Enfields that had been left behind by the E. C. R.'s. Fritzie seemed doped, and he came forward carrying full kit and trench mats. They were evidently surprised to find any one alive, for when we began to fire they stared around stupidly.
Some of the chaser's crew shook hands with the boys assigned to the superdreadnaught before they went up her side. "Good luck! If you get a chance, smash a Fritzie battleship for me!" were some of the wishes that followed Whistler Morgan and his companions aboard the superdreadnaught. The boys from Seacove and their companions reported to the chief master-at-arms, while Mr.
'Is pal got sniped an' Fritzie took 'is shoes. They're awrful short o' shoes. Kippers, 'e s'ys, 'I'll not l'y down me rifle till I plunk a German and get 'is shoes. Two d'ys arfter 'e comes crawlin' back through No Man's Land and the color sergeant arsks 'im did 'e carry out 'is resolootion.
It was a big trench mortar, and we soon found that if you saw it in time you could dodge it. Fritzie had a special spite at the "Glory Hole," and every little while he would strafe it. About this time we received our first supply of trench mortars, and I assure you we enjoyed using them. They were big round balls weighing about sixty pounds, and they looked something like the English plum pudding.
It was a pathetic little burial plot, filled with the bodies of women and children who had been killed in German bombardments of the town. And thus for more than three months, while we were waiting for Fritzie to "come out," we adapted ourselves to the changing conditions of trench life and trench warfare, with a readiness which surprised and gratified us.
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