Surgeon In Arms — Ch 7 Gassed!; Ch 8 Relief

GASSED!

About a month after the Canadians had taken Vimy Ridge we relieved the ---- Canadian Battalion in the town of Vimy, where our battalion was in support to another battalion holding the front lines some distance in advance.

Our Regimental Aid Post on our previous stay in this town had been in the cellar of a brewery near the railway station.

Since we had left the shelling in the neighborhood had become so severe that this cellar had been abandoned.

It had caught fire and all the woodwork had burned up.

Out of curiosity I visited this old cellar on our arrival at Vimy and found it still hot as hades from the heating up of the brick and cement.

It was absolutely uninhabitable.

So we were forced to search for other quarters.

The officers of No. ---- Canadian Field Ambulance, with that camaraderie so prevalent out there, invited us to share with them a couple of old cellars to which they had gone on deserting the brewery.

We accepted gladly.

One of their two cellars they used as sleeping and eating quarters, the other as a dressing station where they were kept exceedingly busy attending the wounded.

The Germans had the range of Vimy to a nicety, and with true German love of destruction they poured five hundred to a thousand shells into the ruins daily.

Whenever the Germans are driven from a village, their practice is to ruin it by high explosive shells sent from their new line of defense.

And these two cellars were about the center of the Vimy target.

The previous day two officers of the field ambulance were standing a few feet apart in a little room off from the cellar used as sleeping quarters.

A table stood between them, on which were two lighted candles.

Suddenly through the floor above came a four-inch shell, just missing the table, and sinking into the floor.

Fortunately for the two officers it did not explode--it was a dud.

The rush of air caused by the shell extinguished one of the candles.

The other remained lighted.

It may be understood easily that the officers felt a bit unnerved.

After staring at the hole in the floor for some moments, Captain M---- picked up the lighted candle in one hand and the extinguished one in the other and endeavored to light one from the other.

His hands shook so that he could not make the candles meet.

After a number of vain attempts to bring them together he gave it up.

His nervous system was so shaken that he was sent to the rest station on two weeks' leave.

We arrived shortly after the shell had gone through the cellar.

Captain M---- himself told us of it, and his humorous description of his attempts to get the candles within six inches of each other was ludicrous in the extreme.

After an appetizing supper eaten in the cellar with the officers of the field ambulance, we medical officers took turns attending to the many wounded who were arriving.

All went well till eleven o'clock that night, when we heard the whirr of gas shells coming in our direction.

As they burst close to us, we soon smelt their penetrating, pineapple odor.

The Huns continued to pour them in large numbers in our direction, and, as the town of Vimy is in a hollow at the foot of Vimy Ridge, the atmosphere soon became laden with the poison gas which, being heavier than air, sinks to the bottom of any hollows.

The air in our cellars became saturated with the filthy, death-dealing gases in spite of the wet blanket which we hung over the entrance to prevent their entering.

Had we been able to stay in the cellar and keep the blanket tightly placed over the entrance, our misery would have been much less, but wounded were coming in from all directions and we had to keep going in and out, in turns, to the cellar in which we did our dressings.

The gas kept thickening every minute.

To add to the discomfort these gas shells contained two gases.

One entered the lungs, causing congestion of their tissues followed by inflammation, suffocation, and death if a sufficient amount were inhaled; the other, lachrymatory gas--called tear shell gas by the soldiers--which not only inflames temporarily the conjunctiva of the eyes, but is cursedly irritating while it lasts.

Naturally we quickly adjusted our gas masks.

But, as it was fifty feet from one cellar to the other, and we dared not flash lights to pass over the stone and mortar of the fallen walls, we found it necessary to remove our masks for moving, as well as for the purpose of tying up the wounds in an acceptable manner.

Thus, by midnight, our eyes were as red as uncooked beefsteak and they felt as if they had been sandpapered.

Our lungs on each respiration felt as though they were gripped in a closing vise.

The gas masks act by filtering the inhaled air through a chemical, which neutralizes the poisonous materials in the gases.

When we removed them we had severe attacks of coughing which were relieved only by breathing through the mouthpiece of the masks.

Hours dragged slowly by.

Still the whirr of approaching shells and the soft thud of their bursting continued.

Misery?

Never elsewhere had we experienced anything akin to it--the inflamed eyes; the suffocation in our lungs; the knowledge that inhalation of sufficient of the gas would put us into Kingdom Come.

We knew that we could easily get out of this poisonous atmosphere by climbing to the top of Vimy Ridge, only a few hundred yards behind us.

But we did not, for that would be deserting our posts.

All these things combined to make it the most miserable, soul-torturing night we had ever experienced.

And, to add to it all, our artillery was in a hollow nearby where the gas was so thick that it prevented our gunners from retaliating, making it all take, and no give.

We all learned that night what it felt like to long to desert.

We learned that there are times when a man who is brave enough to be a coward deserves sympathy.

But, thank God!

there are few such men in our armies.

The brave man and the coward, both, at times, experience the same sensation of fear, the coward allowing the emotion to conquer him, while the brave man grits his teeth and carries on.

For nearly five hours we endured this misery, wondering when we would have inhaled enough of the poison to put our names among the casualties.

One of the strange things that struck me during that long night was that I heard no word of censure or condemnation of the Germans who were the cause of our suffering.

We cursed war in general;

we cursed Vimy and all that pertained to it;

we cursed the inactivity of our artillery; and we cursed the gases; but the misery was taken as one of the fortunes of war, and no one wasted his breath in vain attempts to beat the Germans with his mouth--as Lord Roberts expressed it at the beginning of the conflict.

Often when I am five thousand miles away from the firing line, sitting, perhaps, in a smoking-car, and listening to the abuse of our enemy, I think of this circumstance.

After nearly three hours of the wretched gassing, I had been lying for some little time in the upper of two bunks, wearing my mask, feeling very much smothered, and wondering if it were pleasanter to die quickly from the gas or slowly from the mask.

For the masks give a most uncomfortable feeling of impending suffocation.

Finally, I decided that I preferred the gas to the mask.

I pulled it off, swore softly to myself, and muttered that I chose a quick death in preference to a slow one.

"Same here, doc," said a jolly voice from below me.

"I took off my bally mask some time ago, and have been lying here wondering how long you were going to endure it."

Looking down I saw the smiling face of Captain S----, a chaplain, who had been there the previous day, burying some of our brave boys who had paid the greatest price that man can pay.

He was a most courageous chap, always good-humored under any circumstances, and the gas had not lessened his courage.

We joked for a few moments, then we tried, without success, to argue courage into a little cockney for whom this was a cruel initiation into the firing line, and whose "wind was up," as the boys express it when a man's nerve is about all gone.

I don't know what happened to the little cockney in the end, but my last memory of him was that he was still arguing that this was no place for a white man, with which sentiment we all agreed.

Shortly we were glad to reapply our masks, as the air became almost thick enough to cut with a knife, and that vise on our chests kept tightening.

Though the night seemed a thousand years long, it finally came to an end just as our nerves were at breaking point.

The gas masks had been on our faces for the better part of five hours.

What sighs of relief we gave as those abominable shells ceased to come over, and in their place we heard the crump of high explosive shells!

Dame Nature completed the blessing by pouring down a drizzling rain which dissolved the gases and cleared the air, the rain then lying in opalescent pools in the shell-holes.

How glorious God's fresh air seemed to us after that atrocious experience!

With what pleasure we laid aside our masks, though they had without doubt saved our lives!

How exquisite to feel that the grains of sand between our eyelids and eyeballs seemed to be absorbing!

And what a satisfaction to know that, despite the agony of it all, we had done our bit like men; for the greatest gifts that God can give are those necessary for the playing of a man's part!

Day was breaking when two runners came from the officer commanding B Company, to tell me that he wanted me to come over to the railway embankment, where his dugout was, to see a number of his men who were suffering severely from the gas.

To come for me these boys had to cross a field for three hundred yards where the enemy were dropping Jack Johnsons--immense high explosive shells.

The boys had nearly been caught by one of them, and they thought it unwise to recross the ground just then, as the shells were still falling.

I leaned against the ruins of this old stone building, and watched the shells exploding for some minutes.

Gas attacks have a most depressing and demoralizing effect on everyone.

I have never made a trip with as little pleasure as that I felt at the thought of this one before me.

A medical officer can, but very rarely does, refuse to go to cases.

He may insist on having them brought to him, as there is only one medical officer to a battalion, and his death may make it awkward for his unit till he is replaced by another surgeon from the nearest field ambulance.

However, though there was no let-up to the shelling, there was no alternative but to go.

So I called the runners and my corporal and we started over.

Whether it was due to the depressing effects of the gassing that we had gone through I know not, but at any rate this was the only occasion during my service at the front on which I had a real presentiment that death was going to meet me.

Distinctly do I remember expressing to myself the following inelegant sentence: "I believe this is the last damn walk that I am ever going to take!"

But, fortunately, presentiments seldom materialize.

Our trip across that field was without even a narrow escape.

The shells obligingly burst not closer to us than two or three hundred yards, and we reached B Company headquarters in safety.

There a number of men were in rather a bad condition--as a matter of fact, one was dying--from the effects of a shell which had struck directly into their dugout.

It killed one man by impact and gave the others such a concentrated dose of the gas as to put them into a dangerous condition.

As a result of this gas attack many of our men had to go to the hospital, and those of us who escaped that were depressed for several days.

Gassing weakens the morale of troops.

Men do not fear to stand up and face an enemy whom they have a chance of overcoming, but they do hate dying like so many rats in a trap, when death is due to a gas against which they cannot contend except by keeping out pure air and breathing through masks a mixture of carbon dioxide, poison gas, and air.

Fighting with gas is cowardly and is against the rules of civilized warfare.

Only a race which cares for naught but success, no matter how attained, would employ it.

True, we now retaliate in kind, but we should never have considered this method of warfare as worthy of civilized man, except in self-defense.

If you are fighting a wild beast of the jungle, jungle methods are in order.

I, for one, believe that retaliation is the only method to combat an enemy who has shown himself ready to use any means to attain his end.

CHAPTER VIII RELIEF

When one battalion goes out of the line it is relieved by another, and no section or company of a battalion may go from its point of duty until a corresponding section or company has relieved it.

Reliefs, except on very quiet parts of the line, are usually carried out by night to keep the enemy from being aware that they are going on.

A severe shelling during a relief is always more likely to cause many casualties than at other times.

Battalion H.

Q.

goes out last.

As each company or section is relieved it notifies H. Q.

, and when all are relieved, H. Q.

takes its departure, having handed over all necessary documents and information to the incoming battalion.

Because the human nervous system can stand only a certain amount of abuse battalions can be kept in the line only a certain length of time, which depends upon the activity upon that front, upon the exposure of the lines to the enemy, and so the extra nervous strain, or sometimes upon the urgency of advance or retreat.

A relief may be very welcome, or very unwelcome, depending upon the same things, but also to a certain extent upon the quality of the dugouts in the lines, and the kind of accommodation outside.

For, strange to say, the dugouts in the lines may be preferable, even with their added danger, because, on arriving at your rest station, your battalion may find, instead of the good billets they hoped for, a few forlorn-looking one-inch board huts, with only one-half the required accommodation, the temperature below freezing, and no stoves; or you may find only tents; or you may find virgin forest in which you are to build your own camp, while the rain comes down with monotonous persistence.

It is midnight in the late winter, and the adjutant, Major P----, and I are just leaving H.

Q.

dugout on our way to reserve billets.

The trenches are very dark, the light from the stars overhead not reaching to their depths.

We throw down a glare from a flashlight, and a Tommy's voice angrily cries: "'Ave a 'eart there, myte; d'ye think ye're the only man in the army?

Douse the glim."

So we douse it, and decide that the best way to keep peace in the army is to pick our way along.

Gradually our eyes become accustomed to the dark, and instinctively our feet keep on the trench mats as we twist and turn along the trenches.

An occasional flare or star shell from the front lines aids us for a moment, but plunges us into deeper darkness afterwards.

Our feet slip on the semi-frozen mud of the mats, over our heads in both directions shells sing at intervals, and we hear the pounding of the guns and bursting shells before and behind us.

In the quieter moments we can hear a quarter of a mile away the rattle of transport wagons on the hard road as they bring their nightly loads of ammunition and food to the dump where we are going and where we expect to find our horses.

We arrive at the dump, and here one might think he was in the midst of a large city market just before the dawn.

Limbers, general service wagons, pack mules and men make a jumble of hurrying, scurrying workers.

No lights dare be shown for fear of drawing the shells of the Germans, who have the range of this dump and have been shelling it during the day.

Someone tells us our horses are just around a bend in the road, and we make our way there, and find the grooms holding the animals, which have become cold and restive with waiting.

Mounting, we start on a five mile ride along a hard stone road, dodging and picking our way among transport wagons and foot soldiers all along it.

The road is bordered with trees which look like phantoms in the sighing night breeze.

The stars are twinkling brightly and peacefully; to our left the big guns flash and roar and their shells sing overhead, and on the other side flares are being thrown up by the battalions in the line.

The north star is well up to our right, so we are riding due west.

We approach a corner where we turn a little northward.

Flashing from the window of a small house on the corner is a light that should not be there.

The adjutant who is a strict disciplinarian draws up his horse opposite the sentry and proceeds to "strafe" him for negligence.

(How many new words during the next few years will be the result of the war!

) We take the road to the right and a couple of miles in advance we see the dim shadows of those ancient and architecturally beautiful towers on the hill of Mont St. Eloy.

The Huns have for some days been trying to complete their ruin, recently destroying a corner.

At 2 a. m.

we arrive at wooden huts just behind the towers.

Our Colonel, who had preceded us, with that fine thoughtfulness that characterized him, had arranged that a battalion in some adjoining huts supply us with tea and toast--a banquet after our cold night ride.

By 3 a. m.

we are sleeping fast on the floor in our Wolseley kits, as we are to rise at 6 a. m.

, for by 7 a. m.

the battalion is to be on the march to a wood four miles back.

As the camp we are in was shelled yesterday by the Germans, causing thirty casualties, we had better get out of range while we can.

At the appointed hour we are all up, our kits are rolled and piled on a transport by our batmen, and a hurried breakfast of bacon, bread and tea partaken of.

I see a few sick and send a couple to the field ambulance, the battalion marches away, the camp is inspected to see that all is spick and span,--for each battalion must always leave a clean camp behind it--and we are on the road to map location W 17 c 4 9, the only description we have of our new home.

As we start we pass the bodies of five dead mules, victims of yesterday's shelling.

The roads are crowded with soldiers, horses, and motor transports of all sorts.

It is a bright cool day--Sunday by the way--and a picturesque scene meets the eye.

In addition to the busy, hurrying roadway traffic, the fields show life of varying forms and pictures of interest to a seeing eye.

On one side in a field stands a battalion forming three sides of a square.

The fourth side is filled by the regimental band playing, "Lead, Kindly Light," the padre standing beside them.

It is an open air church service.

As far as the eye can see are military huts, tents, drilling soldiers, and piles of ammunition, but in the distance, overtopping all, is the spire of a church, dumbly supplicating us to send our thoughts upward to the Prince of Peace, as everything on earth seems to tell us to give our minds to the Gods of War.

And sailing high above the church steeple are two military aeroplanes, like guardian angels ready to protect their loved ones.

Beyond them in the dim distance hangs the lazy, sausage-shaped form of an observation balloon.

Above the earth, on the earth, and under the earth, one sees war, war, war!

Here and there one passes white limestone farmhouses of France with red tiled roofs, the buildings forming a square about the court.

The latter is filled to overflowing with its ever-present pile of manure, at one side of which always stands the well, raised, it is true, a little above the manure dump, but built of brick and mortar through which in many cases permeate the fluids from this cesspool in the center.

A

medical friend of mine once told me that the peasant farmer objects to chloride of lime being put on the manure, as it gives a disagreeable taste to the water!

Then as far as the eye can see the fields that are not employed for military purposes are tilled and cultivated.

How it is done is something very difficult to understand, for one never sees anybody working in them except an aged man and woman, or a young child.

Those in the prime of youthful manhood are all fighting for their adored country, la belle France.

On the corner of one of these cultivated areas stands one of those small, stone shrines so common in France.

This one was erected, so it said in carved letters, in 1816, "to the honor of his beloved child, Eugenie de Lattre, by her father."

The date unconsciously carries one back to the great Napoleon.

If he could rise from his magnificent tomb in the Invalides and look about him in the midst of a war which dwarfs his famous battles into insignificance, what would his thoughts be?

No longer would he see his famous guard on prancing steeds and with flowing plumes charging bristling British squares, as they did in his last great fight at Waterloo.

He would find them in somber, semi-invisible garb, standing shoulder to shoulder with their one-time hated enemies, the latter clad in plain khaki, both facing the same foe, the Prussian, whom he had once humbled by marching into Berlin, but who had later helped the British defeat him at Waterloo.

And many he would see groveling in the earth in trenches, dugouts, and tunnels, like so many earthworms.

Some few he would discover who, with the French love of the spectacular, are sailing thousands of feet in the air, or leagues under the surface of the sea.

We pass through a village, Camblain L'Abbé, where we go into the town major's to inquire about water supplies for our men.

The town major, a Canadian of fifty, reminds one of us of an old friend of the same name in Chicago, one of the many Canadians who has made good--very good--in the United States.

It is a brother!

So, it is being continually shown that this war has made the world an even smaller place than it was before.

Our information obtained, we move on to our new camp, a virgin forest one-half mile above Camblain L'Abbé, where there is no sign of tent, hut, or dwelling of any kind.

But the men are already lolling happily on the bare ground, ignoring the pounding of our guns a few miles north and inhaling with anticipatory pleasure the fragrant odors of stew, steaming in the Battalion field cookers just below the brow of the hill.

The busy work of turning an open forest into a camp to be occupied by one thousand men for a week or more is already in progress.

The tents have not arrived, but brigade has promised to get them along shortly.

Plans are being made as to where each company is to be, where orderly room will be most convenient, what is the best position for the H.

Q.

and the other officers, where the cook houses, cookers, water carts, latrines, refuse dumps, canteen, batmen's quarters, medical inspection tent, shoemaker, tailor, transport department, and the hundred and one other departments and sections are to be located.

You see, it is not as easy as it sounds to take a thousand men and encamp them in a proper manner.

Gradually the chaos is subdued, and as tents and half-built huts come they are quickly placed in their proper positions.

While it is all in progress one is likely to stumble over the Colonel who has stolen half an hour from his busy work to sit on the ground and eat some bully beef, biscuits and chocolate, and who insists on everyone else doing the same;

or to bump into the corpulent form of the R.

S.

M.

--regimental sergeant major--who is everywhere, directing everything, in the way that only a R. S.

M.

can do, though his crossest word is usually grumbled through a smiling ruddy face, for his heart is proportionate to his large size.

The day advances, night is coming on, and the tents have arrived only in sufficient numbers to cover one-third of the officers and men.

Fortunately the sun still shines, though the March air is getting colder.

A sleep in the open air promises to require extra blankets which do not exist in the camp.

However, everyone smiles, and there is at least a gradually, though slowly, increasing amount of cover for the men of the battalion.

Some of the men, wiser perhaps through previous like predicaments, are choosing the sheltered side of a small hill, and are digging shelters for themselves over which they are putting coverings of boughs.

As it turns out they are wise, for in the end only sufficient coverings come for two-thirds of the battalion, and consequently, a few officers and quite a few men sleep in the open with only a blanket and their overcoats for covering.

And Nature, the deceitful jade, who had smiled kindly upon us all day and promised us a dry, though cold, night, about midnight and for two days succeeding poured torrents of rain down upon us.

The sick parade grew larger and the ground became lakes of mud.

The cook-houses--so-called--which were only fires built in hollows, had their fires so drowned that we all ate primitive diet as well as lived most closely to nature.

Everyone, as usual, had his consolation in laughing at the discomforts of the others, till order came out of chaos in the days that followed.