On our way to the guns McLean brought a comb with him, leaving the other alongside his bed.  We had to pass the Major on our way, whose dugout was close to the hives, 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 telephonist’s hut and I threw it in to him,—­“Here, Graham, here’s some honey for you, it’s great,” and continued my run down to the guns, the bees still following us up.

McLean laid his comb on a pile of shells beside the gun, and the heat of the August day caused the honey to trickle over the shells.  I 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 inside of another minute we had the sternest kind of a battle on our hands, for thicker than ever the bees came swarming around the gun.

“Who in hell broke into those hives?” yelled the Major.

No reply; we were busily working and “hadn’t time” to answer.  The honey on our hands, coupled with the dust, made a grit that in opening and closing the breech caused the mechanism to 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 the breech each time to extract the empty cartridge.  All during the operation the Major was cursing like a madman at the men, whoever they were, that brought the bees into the business.

It was my duty to set the sight, and as I did so, each time, the bees would attack my hands and head, and in trying to attend to the sight and wipe the bees 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 with both hands and he couldn’t budge to brush off his attackers, as it was absolutely necessary to hold dead steady to enable us to do our shooting accurately.

“Grant, for God’s sake knock this bee off my neck,” he pleaded; “it’s stinging hell out of me”; but every time I made a move to help him, the Major roared, “Get that angle on, Grant; get your range on, McLean.”  And we had to take our medicine.  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 his hands.  This is a necessary accompaniment that the men passing the shells into the gun have to contend with, and ordinarily it is a sore and painful piece of business, but in conjunction with the swarm of the bees it was simply hellish.