"Then would you mind telling your Canadian transport drivers to stop
going up and down this road; they insist on doing it, and I can't stop
them."
"There is a big battle up in the salient," I said. "Shells and many
other things are needed; our men have been sent for them and know what
they want; I wouldn't interfere with them if I were you."
He looked at us as though we were hopeless idiots, and we drove on.
The motor ambulance convoy, which we had been asked to have sent
forward, had already gone, and our last errand was done. Putting on
our headlights and opening the throttle, we tore homeward, reaching
Merville at eleven o'clock.
When we arrived at the Mess, Captain Ellis, who had been anxiously
waiting, said that we looked grey, drawn and ghastly, partly perhaps
from the effects of the poisonous gas. We had an intensely interested
listener as we recounted our experiences and drew plans of the line as
we thought it probably existed at the moment. Whether the Germans
could get through or not was the dominant question. Nothing lay
between them and Calais but the Canadian Division, and whether the
Canadians could hang on long enough in face of this new terror of
poison gas until new troops arrived, no one could even venture to
guess. We felt that they would do all that men could do under the
circumstances, but without means of combating the poison it was
doubtful what any troops could do.
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