. We took up our position in a beautiful orchard, its trees laden down with apples, and along the hedge on one side of the orchard were ten beehives, humming and throbbing with busy bee life. U

purpose we got a "stand down." The apples clustering on the trees looked as tempting to us as did the apple of our first father and before we started registering, every man in the battery had mentally made his tree selection as the one he wou

aying, "Take this till I get another, the damned bees are stinging me." Thousands were around him. I took it and started on the dead run for my billet, about 400 yards away, and in a minute or two Mac followed with another comb. The fellows greeted us with exclamations of delight and surprise; many of us had been two years in the battle line without ever having seen, let alone tasted, such a delicious morsel. Every man in the billet fell to, munching the honey with expressions of sheer joy; every fellow in the bunch had his face and hands littered with the sticky joy like so

and by that time he had an inkling of what was going on and he yelled, "Grant, throw that honey down; you too, McLean." As he yelled his orders I was passing the te

commenced pointing the gun while Mac worked the range drum; the angles were passed to us and inside of a minute we were firing, and i

into those hives?

stick, and the honey clinging to the shells caused the breech chamber to stick, making the shell cases jam in the gun after being discharged, forcing us to pry open with a sharp pick t

off at the same time, my work was harder than can well be imagined; but poor Billy's case was even harder, he had to keep a steady hold of his range drum wit

icine. Parker, who was passing shells, was in the same plight as the rest of us; his hands were covered with the sugary fluid that had settled between the copper splinters of the driving bands on the shells and the slivers were slitting

iving vent to catcalls. He could stand it no longer and ran as fast as his legs would carry him over to the telephonist's hut; there he found Graham crouching alongside of his telephone in the folds of a blanket over his head and face. It was the usual field telephone that we used

he Major as they did for that of Sergeant Graham, and three or four of them kept pinging away at him, but as long as the Major was there his splendid discipline enabled him to do his work. He got

ugh it might be a machine-gun emplacement, barbed-wire, bombing post, crossroads or observation station. For a front-line trench and an attack started by the enemy, the S.O.S. signal is passed from the trench, either through the telephonist in the trenches, or by means of colored star shells. Immediately upon receipt of this signal by our S.O.S. sentry or the tel

inged enemies. As fast as if I were ramming home a shell, I lifted off the hive while Mac pulled out a couple of combs swarming with bees. We thought we were making a good job of it this time and getting away scot free, when suddenly I felt a stab under my coat sleeve and almost at the same moment Mac had the same expe

p the remainder on the wall and retired for the night. Mac retired to his bunk first and had scarcely settled down when he emitted ano

lling our billets with gas shells, one of the missiles going clean through the tile roof and knocking the tiles down on our heads. Then came a salvo-six shells-followed by several o

t on the lungs than any they had yet given us. It had started to rain and the darkness was black, but we reached the guns wi

g the guns on "S.O.S." and even the pain from the stings of the

e, and on the way I stumbled into a crop of the most delicious mushrooms. Off came my helmet and I filled it to the brim and hastened to the cookhouse with them; he

he got the honey. So that between the honey and the dewy dainties I had gathered, together with a couple of jars of pickled pork and two small jars of rolled

getting it back. Our work was accomplished and "Stand down and lay on day lines!" was ordered and I was cleaning the sight of my gun and wiping off the effects of the gas fumes when the Sergeant-Major came along and asked me to indicate where I had gathered the mushrooms; I pointed the spot out to him, and he made a bee line. In a couple of minutes I heard him calling and I looked up, "Here's a beauty you missed, Grant; you must have been blind," and he held up a mushroom as large as a breakfast plate. I laughed and replied, "Yes, you are lucky, Sergeant-Major." Then Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! and Fritz started getting busy again a

rooms and started undoing his puttee where the blood was soaking through. When h

f I wouldn't do it again to get a beauty like that," holding

you know a mushroom when you see it