All these things combined to make it the most miserable, soul-torturing night we had ever experienced. And, to add to it all, our artillery was in a hollow nearby where the gas was so thick that it prevented our gunners from retaliating, making it all take, and no give. We all learned that night what it felt like to long to desert. We learned that there are times when a man who is brave enough to be a coward deserves sympathy. But, thank God! there are few such men in our armies. The brave man and the coward, both, at times, experience the same sensation of fear, the coward allowing the emotion to conquer him, while the brave man grits his teeth and carries on. For nearly five hours we endured this misery, wondering when we would have inhaled enough of the poison to put our names among the casualties. One of the strange things that struck me during that long night was that I heard no word of censure or condemnation of the Germans who were the cause of our suffering. We cursed war in general; we cursed Vimy and all that pertained to it; we cursed the inactivity of our artillery; and we cursed the gases; but the misery was taken as one of the fortunes of war, and no one wasted his breath in vain attempts to beat the Germans with his mouth--as Lord Roberts expressed it at the beginning of the conflict. Often when I am five thousand miles away from the firing line, sitting, perhaps, in a smoking-car, and listening to the abuse of our enemy, I think of this circumstance. After nearly three hours of the wretched gassing, I had been lying for some little time in the upper of two bunks, wearing my mask, feeling very much smothered, and wondering if it were pleasanter to die quickly from the gas or slowly from the mask. For the masks give a most uncomfortable feeling of impending suffocation. Finally, I decided that I preferred the gas to the mask. I pulled it off, swore softly to myself, and muttered that I chose a quick death in preference to a slow one. "Same here, doc," said a jolly voice from below me. "I took off my bally mask some time ago, and have been lying here wondering how long you were going to endure it."