On the day that we arrived, our attention was drawn to an Algerian who seemed to be an inmate of the house.  He could speak some English and seemed to spend most of his time cleaning his revolver.  On the first afternoon I asked him why he was there and to what regiment he belonged.

“The Algerian-African troop.”

“I understood they were in the trenches,” I said.  “Are you with the infantry?”

“Yes,” he replied, “I am.”

“Are you wounded?”

“No.”

“Then why are you not with your men?” I insisted.

“I was lost in the retreat,” he answered.

“Why don’t you go and look them up?”

“I did, but I can’t find them.”

Then he asked me if we were getting ammunition up.

“Oh, yes, lots of it,” I said.

“When are you going to fire?”

“Oh, pretty soon,” I said.

“What are you going to shoot at?” he asked.

I told him we were going to plug the German trenches and the buildings around there, that we had orders to blow them up as they were filled with machine guns.  He grinned from ear to ear, saying, “Good!  Good!  Shoot them all!  Which ones you shoot first?  I want to see them fall.”

I pointed out the ones my battery was going to demolish and his big white teeth were exposed in another grin, as he nodded approvingly, and walked off.

That same afternoon my gun leveled the buildings assigned to me for demolishment and knowing beyond all shadow of a doubt that they were filled with men and machine guns, I watched through the glasses to see the gray-clad inmates popping out of the doors and windows.  Judge of my astonishment!  Not a solitary soul left the building my gun had destroyed.  I watched each one of them in turn and in turn was awarded nothing for my pains.  From others, however, hundreds of men rushed and as they scurried away our guns shrapneled them, dropping them by the score.

A sort of a subconscious connection between my conversation with the Algerian and the effect of my gun fire found lodging in the back of my head, but it was not until later that it became a direct consciousness.  Another thing that set me thinking was what seemed to me to be an undue familiarity between this Algerian trooper and our farmer; he had the entree of the house, apparently could go and come as he pleased, drinking coffee with the inmates, sleeping there nights and making himself generally at home.  I didn’t think much of it at the time, but later events made these trivialities very significant indeed.

The bombardment was now commencing to have its effect on me, and McLean and I were both tired out; we were dead beat and looked around for a quiet spot where we could rest.  Billy McLean was my especial pal ever since I had set foot in France.

“Here is what the doctor ordered,” he said, as we went off down the hedge a bit and came to a little opening in the bush into which we both crawled.  It requires no effort for a man who has been sustaining the sound, shock and work of a bombardment, to fall asleep anywhere, any time, and we were soon Murphyized, as Mac expressed it.