S.O.S. Stand to! | Page 9

playing on their northern flank. The objective of the British Tommies was the city, which they took, but at a terrible toll; 6,000 Indian troops, mostly Ghurkas, were slain. The fearful mortality exacted from these troops was due to their impetuosity; they do not know fear; it was impossible to hold them; they rushed out before their time and some of them suffered from the fire of our own guns. It was in this fight that our own famous and gallant regiment, the "Princess Pats," was decimated, sustaining a loss of over 700 men. This magnificent body of fellows went into the war 1,150 strong and at the last roll call but 22 of the original men answered. The price paid was too much for what was accomplished.
We were then ordered to billets and stayed there until April 20th, when we were ordered to Ypres, arriving there April 21. My battery was stationed at St. Julien, one and a half miles northwest of the city. Here I was detailed as observer, my duty being to get into the front-line trench and from the most advantageous nook that I could find, try to discover whatever I could about the movement of the enemy, communicate my knowledge to the telephonist who would in turn send it to headquarters.
Late in the afternoon I reported to the telephonist that a big fire was in progress somewhere on our left, as an immense smoke cloud was rising there and coming toward us. As shells had burst his wire, rendering it useless, he started out to deliver the message by word of mouth, running on top of the parapet as he started. That was the last I ever saw of him; he did not come back; Fritz was coming and ahead of him rolled the sinister-looking cloud on our left. Then happened the strangest thing! The line trembled from one end to the other, as the Algerian troops immediately on our left, jumped out of their trenches, falling as they ran. The whole thing seemed absolutely incomprehensible--until I got a whiff of the gas. They ran like men possessed, gasping, choking, blinded and dropping with suffocation. They could hardly be blamed. It was a new device in warfare and thoroughly illustrative of the Prussian idea of playing the game.
When the great yellow clouds came rolling toward us, orders were roared to wet our handkerchiefs and stuff them in our mouths, and half choked and blinded we held for a day and a half. The buttons on our uniforms were tinged yellow and green from the gas, so virulent was the poison.
Cooks and everybody else had been ordered into the line, as the giving way of the Algerians necessitated our lengthening out so as to take over their ground. Scotty of Mons fame was in the trench bay a few yards away from me, and when the cloud had passed by I saw him rolling on the ground, apparently blinded, tears streaming from his eyes. I helped him to his feet and when he got his voice back his courage returned and, yelling, "Let the barbarians come," he seized his rifle, rushed to the parapet and fired point blank every cartridge in his rifle in the direction of Fritz.
At the end of the second day another wave of hell's atmosphere came across, more deadly than any of the others, followed by a smothering fire from the German batteries, and the Germans broke in upon us on our right and left. Yard by yard we retreated, fighting as we went, and they occupied some of our front trenches--for a time.
[Illustration: A Chlorine Gas Attack from the Trenches]
That night Scotty and I received orders to report to a French dressing station for treatment. I half-dragged and half-walked him to the doctor; I had a feeling that he ought to have been able to make the trip without my help as I was certain he wasn't suffering any more than I was. After we left the doctor and got outside the dressing station, Scotty swayed from side to side, groaning like a man who had lost his last hope on earth, and the doctor told him to get away as quickly as he could as he was playing the devil with the nerves of the men who were lying around there half-dead from the poison fumes. He staggered over and sat down beside me on the side of the road, still wringing his hands. I remonstrated with him and told him that bad as it was it could not be anything like Mons, and to my amazement he stopped his moaning all at once and said with a twinkle in his eye, "Let's beat it to the dugout; the doc won't see us." We took the chance and started. On