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Updated: June 10, 2025
"Ham gets the fish, I get the berries, and we all get the stomach-ache, see?" "Let's look at the fish" shouted every one. "Bet they are only minnies," cried Phil. "Minnies, your grandmother," scornfully replied Ham. "I have one there that's a foot and a half long if it's an inch. The others aren't so big."
And the huge minnies were throwing old limbs out of No Man's Land into the frontline trench, and shells were rasping down through the air that seemed to resist them until it was torn to pieces: they burst and showers of mud came down from heaven. Aimlessly, as it seemed, shells were bursting now and then in the air, with a flash intensely red: the smell of them was drifting down the trenches.
Placing my apparatus in the comparative safety of the dug-out, I accompanied him outside. Fortunately for us these interesting novelties could be seen coming. Men are always on the look-out for "Minnies," and when one has been fired from the Bosche it rises to a height of about five hundred feet, and then with a sudden curve descends.
In literature strange analogies occur in ages and races remote from each other, as, when the mother in the old North country Scotch ballad sings to her child, and says: "The wild wind is ravin, thy minnies heart's sair, The wild wind is ravin, but ye dinna care."
If I had the 'wind up' it might be another matter; but I do not, strange to say, even dread the time when we shall go back into the line! I think it rather exciting. One is inclined to feel a little 'windy' when shells and 'minnies' are bursting dangerously near, or when a machine-gun spurts out of the gloaming; but there is a certain element of excitement about it all.
Or one of the pale green willers that bent over my head as I sot on the low plank foot-bridge, with my bare feet a-swingin' off into the water as I fished for minnies with a pin-hook The summer sky overhead, and summer in my heart. Oh, happy summer days gone by gone by, fur back you lay in the past, and the June skies now have lost that old light and freshness.
I have seen them in impotent fury fire at him every missile they had, including "pine-apples" and "minnies"; but he bears a charmed life, for, though he returned and repeated his performance four times for our benefit, he did not receive a scratch. I went over the German lines with him for instruction in aerial observation. He said to me: "Do you see that battery down there?" I replied "No!"
The Warren was a regular network of trenches, burrows, and funk holes, and we needed them all. The position was downhill from the Huns, and they kept sending over and down a continuous stream of "pip-squeaks", "whiz-bangs", and "minnies." The "pip-squeak" is a shell that starts with a silly "pip", goes on with a sillier "squeeeeee", and goes off with a man's-size bang.
They were swimming through the waters. Near the banks were little baby fishes, hundreds of them, called minnows. They had a nickname too, "minnies." Out farther, once in a while, the children saw a fish shining like gold. It was a sunfish or "sunny" as they sometimes called it.
Just before we got back an ugly instrument of death familiarly known amongst the boys as a 'minnie' burst about the spot where our work was. That was not encouraging! But we went back and set to again. One or two more 'minnies' burst not far from us while we were there. You should have seen us duck! And the flares continued rising and falling.
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