The rain now commenced falling heavily and in the midst of our slumbers, an orderly happened along and woke me up.  I gave Mac a shove and he too woke up.  We were drenched and made for the barn.  We found the Old Man there with a lantern and told him we were going up in the loft, but he scowled and said we were not to go.  “To hell with you!”—­and up we went, finding five or six of the boys there taking advantage of the lull to snatch an hour’s sleep.  We quickly followed suit, getting hold of some straw and grain bags for a bed, and resumed our interrupted slumbers.

In the midst of our dreams “S.O.S.  Stand to!” was ordered, but we did not hear.  One of our fellows, as we later learned, came running up to the farmhouse and asked the farmer if he had seen any of our men.

“No,” he scowled, “there are none here.”

When we had our sleep out we made for the guns.  It did not take us long to see that a pretty thorough strafing had been going on, yet so dead beat to the utter exhaustion point were we, that we had failed to hear them.

“Where the hell were you fellows?” asked one.

“Asleep up there in the barn,” said I; “why didn’t you call us?”

“I did, I asked that old blankety-blank and he told me he hadn’t seen any of you fellows around there.”

“Well,” said I, “he knew that Mac and I were up there, because we told him we were going, although he didn’t want to let us go.”

Here the incident dropped and was forgotten for the time.  That afternoon Fritz attempted to come over our way and on a “Stand to” we jumped to the guns and drove him back, sending across 200 expressions of our good will in record time.  Then we “stood down.”  Following this we went through the usual routine of cleaning up our pet and making her ready for the next visitation, and while working away, friend farmer came along with one of his cows, a large white animal, leading it with a rope and permitting her to graze.  He walked along in front of my gun where it stopped and grazed awhile; going in like manner in front of each of the guns.  Then he led the animal over to the other side of the house, where it grazed in front of the French .75’s.

In the meantime we were working hard, getting our pets in shape, and someone asked who would volunteer for water.  We were all dirty, thirsty, greasy and tired, and I offered to go.  I ambled over to the farmhouse, stopping to speak to the Captain for a moment on the way, when I heard a shell explode; it had demolished No. 2 gun.

“Stand to!” yelled the Captain; then to the farmer, “Take that damned cow away.”  He hurried the cow off and put it in the barn, but he had no sooner gone than Kr-kr-kr-p!  Kr-kr-kr-p! and the Captain and I were knocked off our feet.  The water bottle was broken and I did not take time to get another but made for the guns.  They were hammering our batteries thoroughly now and I was told to take shelter.  I ran over to the farmhouse