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Nothing of any importance happened in the next few weeks, things were pretty quiet on the line; of course it was raining most of the time and we were up to our knees in mud and water. We were four months without seeing the sun, and we were beginning to think that Fritzie had gotten his range and blown him out.
I grabbed him and brought him back and stuck him into a hole out of the way of flying splinters. "You won't leave me, will you, if you have to go back?" he cried. "Not on your life," said I. "But don't be afraid Fritzie is not going to chase us out of here." Just then somebody came along and said that the Germans had broken through on our right.
The part of the line where we were had superior artillery positions and observation posts, and any time Fritzie opened up, our artillery soon silenced him. It used to be a case of "You let me alone, and I'll let you alone." The trenches were in awful shape in spite of the continuous working parties, each rain made them a little worse.
By this time every Tommy along the line is standing on the firing-bench, head and shoulders above the parapet, quite forgetting his own danger in his excitement, and shouting at the top of his voice. "'Ow's that one, Fritzie boy?" "Gooten morgen, you Proosian sausage-wallopers!" "Tyke a bit o' that there 'ome to yer missus!" But Fritzie could be depended upon to keep up his end of the game.
"Fritzie makes a lot better practice than that, at times. Do you see this?" He put his finger upon a triangular hole a few inches above his head. "I got that last week. We don't mind so much going up, but it's rather annoying when you're bringing down your load of wounded."
This was the routine that we followed that winter; one week in the trenches, one at the supports, and one on rest. We had been up to the trenches three times before we had our first brush with Fritzie; the Battle of Loos was being fought to the southward, but things had been comparatively quiet with us.
Tommy enjoyed these extremely hazardous adventures which he called "Carryin' a 'app'orth o' 'ate to Fritzie," a halfpenny worth of hate, consisting of six or a dozen hand-grenades which he hurled into the German trenches from the far side of their entanglements.
But we kept on going till some one ran out of the darkness shouting, "You cannot get past the railway, Fritzie has been throwing over gas shells and the gas is thick in the valley, all our artillery is gassed."
They had been shelled for hours and their casualties were very heavy, as their only protection was shell holes. Then Fritzie started to come over, but they gathered in a bunch and bombed him back, and then the mines went up and that finished them. When Fritzie came over the few that were left were half buried and dazed, and had lost their rifles, so they were taken prisoners.
We could easily see them coming through the darkness, for the fuse burned and left a trail of sparks. One would have thought they were rockets, if he hadn't seem them before. Then Fritzie opened up his artillery, and things got very warm indeed. We had several casualties, but once more our little bunch was lucky.
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