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: