"Well, Pete, what have you found out this time?"
Pete sat himself down on the firing step of the trench and gave him all the information that he had. Suddenly the senior noticed that a pool of blood was collecting where Major Peters sat.
"Well, yes," Peters answered slowly, "guess they got me that time," and he rose and strolled carelessly along to the R.A.P. where his wounds were found to be serious enough to put him out of action for a few weeks. The Germans had thrown a bomb at him.
The major loved dearly going into dangerous zones, just wandering off to see what he could see. After we had taken Vimy Ridge, but not yet progressed beyond it, we had outposts on the German side of it, looking down on Vimy and other German positions, 400 or 500 yards away. A good deal of sniping was going on against us, as our men were so much exposed on the side of the hill, where they had very little protection except an odd shellhole or a few feet of shallow trench here and there. Our battalion was holding this line, and I, on the day Vimy village was taken, April 13th, had occasion to make a hurried trip along this whole front, At one spot, where a trench two feet deep was the only protection from possible sniping or shell fire, Major Peters stood, leaning back against the parados, two-thirds of his body exposed, hands in pockets, gazing pensively across at the Vimy ruins.
"What are you trying to do? Get your bally head blown off?" I demanded.
Without looking around, or otherwise changing his position, he replied in his slow voice:
"I don't think there's anyone there to blow my head off." This shows his judgment, for he was right, as it proved a little later when our scout officer, followed by a single platoon, entered it. But it showed also his carelessness as to danger, for at the moment he was only guessing, or surmising, that there was no one in Vimy, and at any moment he might have found it out to his sorrow.
A few minutes after this the accidental explosion of a Mills bomb killed one man, wounded two officers severely, and six men almost as severely, and I was kept busy for some time attending to them. Having finished, I found Major Peters near me, looking longingly toward Vimy, into the ruins of which our scout officer, Lieutenant A----; our O.C. battalion, Major E----; and a platoon in charge of ever-smiling Lieutenant G---- had all disappeared. Major Peters was apparently impatient to go across, though he had no right to do so without orders. Leaving the wounded to be evacuated by my always trustworthy and fearless assistants, Corporal H---- and Private B----, M.M., and their stretcher bearers, I joined him. Though I had even less right to go across than he, we dared each other to go, and off we went. An odd shell was falling about and it was quite characteristic for Pete to remark, slowly and seriously,--