I went to bed that night very homesick, wishing that the Kaiser was in
Hades and the war was over. For a long time I could not get to sleep
and an agitated rapping on my door made me start up quickly from a
restless slumber. My window was open and the choking fumes of chlorine
poured into the room while Madame rapped away, exclaiming, "Monsieur
the Colonel; the asphyxiating gas has arrived." I slammed the window
to, soaked a muffler in water and wrapped it over my mouth and nose
while robed in a dressing gown, I hastened down stairs. My own gas
mask, carefully placed in a corner, had been moved, and, in the dark,
I could not find it. I gathered the four women into the inner kitchen
and made them breathe through towels wrung out in a solution of
ammonium carbonate, which we were fortunate enough to find, while we
excluded as much gas as possible by wet towels placed over the cracks
in the doors.
It was a most unpleasant experience. As we were nearly seven miles
from the German line, it was quite evident that the gas must have been
discharged in tremendous quantity to have reached us in the strength
it did. I had visions of the Germans discharging gas for hours and
killing everything that breathed for miles back of the lines. It was a
horrible sensation to realize that you had been caught like rats in a
cellar and would slowly die of asphyxiation.
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