During the course of the feasting the Sergeant-Major arrived on the scene.  “Well, for Heaven’s sake!  Who was the guy that got the mushrooms?” He was informed that I was the lucky individual and he asked me if I would show him the way, and I was just directing him when “Stand to the battery!” intervened, and we bolted for the guns and opened up.  “Fifty rounds gunfire” was ordered; then “Second fire ten seconds,” then “Second fire five seconds,” then “Gunfire steady”; next, “Independent fire ten seconds”; then came the order for a sweeping fire to enable our infantry to dig in in a trench they had just taken, and to prevent Fritz 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 as an airplane hovered about, and the pace getting too deucedly hot, we started for the trenches; it was a ditch-trench half full of water which came to our waists, and in it we paddled our way until we got to a fairly good trench, and on the journey down imprecations of all kinds were hurled on the head of the offending Sergeant-Major.  “Where is that damned fool of a Sergeant-Major?” asked one; “It was his gathering those mushrooms in the open that started Fritz.”  Just at that moment down the ditch came the Sergeant-Major limping; he had been slightly wounded in the leg by a bit of shrapnel, but he was hanging onto his mushrooms.

“’Ere, Grant, take this, will you, till I fix me leg,” and he handed me the mushrooms and started undoing his puttee where the blood was soaking through.  When he had bound up his wound I handed him his dainties and he held them up admiringly.

“It was a bit dangerous, doncher know, but, blow me tight, if I wouldn’t do it again to get a beauty like that,” holding up the large one he had shown me when he was gathering them.

“You bleedin’ idiot,” I said, “don’t you know a mushroom when you see it?  That’s a toadstool!  I passed it up.”

CHAPTER XI

SCOTTY COMES BACK AT THE SOMME

The German lines were on the hills; every time we took a position it was always uphill, until we got over Pozieres Ridge and then our work was downhill for the time.  We arrived at the firing line on the 29th of August, 1916.  The accompanying map will convey a general idea of the object intended to be attained by the great drive.  The German organization in this district was fed by railroads having terminals at Bapaume and it was clearly evident that with this city in our possession the supply organization of the enemy would be largely demoralized.  Hence the plan.  Bapaume lay southwest from our trenches a matter of 15 miles; intervening were the towns of Labazell, Pozieres, Courcelette and Martinpuieh,—­all on the Albert-Bapaume road.