Our first real experience with gas came in this sector. As I said before, we had been taught how to put on and take off our gas masks, how gas was used by the ancients, what methods had been used and abandoned in the present war, what the chemical components were, what the effects were, but not how to detect it when it was present in dangerous quantities. The result was that everyone was thoroughly apprehensive of gas and afraid he would not be able to detect it. We had all sorts of nice little appliances in the trenches to give the alarm. They consisted of bells, gongs, Klaxon horns, and beautiful rockets that burst in a green flare. A nervous sentry would be pacing to and fro. It would be wet and lonely and he would think of what unpleasant things he had been told happened to the men who were gassed. A shell would burst near him. "By George, that smells queer," he would think. He would sniff again. "No question about it, that must be gas!" and blam! would go the gas alarm. Then from one end of the line to the other gongs and horns would sound and green rockets would streak across the sky and platoon after platoon would wearily encase itself in gas masks. One night I stood in the reserve position and watched a celebration of this sort. It looked and sounded like a witches' sabbath. After a certain amount of this we worked into a practical knowledge of gas. We found that there were only two methods of attack we had to fear: one was by cylinders thrown by projectors, and the other by gas shelling by the enemy artillery. With the former, an attack was often detected before it took place by our intelligence, and it was possible to tell by a flare that showed up along the horizon on the discharge of the projectors when the attack commenced. With the latter, after a little practice, it was perfectly simple to tell a gas shell from a H. E. shell, as it made a sound like a dud. The difficulty with both types of attack was not so much in getting the gas masks on in time, as there was always plenty of time for that, but rather in holding heavily gassed areas, where burns and trouble of all sorts were almost impossible to avoid. It was in this Toul sector on March 11th that my brother Archie was severely wounded. The Huns were strafing heavily and an attack by them was expected. He was redisposing his men when he was hit by a shell and badly wounded both in the left arm and left leg. Major A. W. Kenner, M. C., and Sergeant Hood were shelled by the Germans while they were moving out the wounded, among them my brother, when, because of the stretchers they were carrying, they had to walk over the top and not through some bad bits of trench. To Major A. W. Kenner, M. C., and Captain E. D. Morgan, M. R. C., is due great credit, not only in this operation, but in all the work to come. They never shrank from danger or hardship and their actions were at all times an inspiration to those around them. CHAPTER VII MONTDIDIER