It was Dory’s duty to reload the gun and push it forward in place for position, each time yelling “Ready!” One time the gun was shoved into place and the man on the right,—­Dory was on the left—­gave the “Ready!” and I fired.  The darkness was still thick and I could not see that Dory was pushing up on the gun with all his might, to bring it into place when I fired, and the recoil drove him back into the corner against a pile of ammunition, smashing his arm.  We assisted him, and one of the fellows volunteered to go with him to the dressing station, but Dory was game to the core; he was one of the most happy-go-lucky boys I ever met.  “Hell!  I will make it myself.  Stay here while the fun is on.  I wish to God I could stay too!”

We renewed our duel, but the heavier caliber shells were commencing to tell; number 3 gun was struck and part of the crew wiped out.  Our telephonist ’phoned headquarters for the weightier women to get busy, telling them of our plight, and inside six minutes the ladies of larger girth, the 9.02 howitzers, started debating the question with Fritzie so vigorously that inside of thirty minutes not a single reply was to be had from their guns.

“Stand down!”—­and cleaning our guns, gun pits and carrying ammunition, busied us.  In the midst of our work a dizziness seized my head, accompanied with a choking in the throat and lungs, and before I could cry out or warn my pals, I dropped.  I had unconsciously imbibed the potion when I removed my mask to relight the feed lamps, and it is one of the peculiar effects of this dose that it is some time after its inhalation that the harmfulness becomes apparent;—­so it was with me.  I was lifted onto a stretcher and carried to the dressing station near what is known as the Sunken Road.  The ground around the station was dotted with men suffering from attacks of a similar nature; there were 56 of us in all.

The doctor’s examination was brief,—­“Gas,” and I was laid alongside my brothers in misery.  We were ordered to keep absolutely quiet and on no account to leave our stretchers; but while lying there the unwelcome messages from the German guns began coming in our neighborhood; and the ever terrifying sound of their explosions brought the nerves of the men, already on edge, over the border line of reason, and a number of them struggled up from their cots and started running away, forgetting or ignoring the doctor’s orders.  The poor fellows paid dearly for it; some of them dropped in their tracks, dying, where they dropped; some died after they were brought back to the station, and some gave up the ghost when in England they lost the last remaining tissue of their lungs, due to the effect of their running.  “I mustn’t budge!” I kept repeating to myself, for my own nerves were at the jumping-off point and I thought the veins in my head would burst if I had to endure those explosion-roars another minute.  Happily they ceased as suddenly as they began.