Poison gas! Had the nation of _Kultur_ descended to such fiendish methods of torture? Yes, and to worse ones. It angered me. I had already pulled off my frock coat. I now shed my vest also. I was in process of preparation for the supreme battle--the moral struggle--to decide when a man's a man; to determine what attitude and inward action I should take in regard to this kind of thing. I could see that I must settle that problem sooner or later. CHAPTER IX WHEN JACQUES "WENT WEST" One of the most pathetic of the personal experiences which I had while I was in the service was in my association with a young poilu of about nineteen. I had become well acquainted with the lad and we had many an interesting talk together, he speaking in his inimitable French manner and I responding in my butchered-up attempt at that language. One day, however, after we had been speaking of how we were going to get the Germans, Jacques must have become a little careless, and when he went up to his fire step, raised his head a little too high, for he received an ugly skull wound. Some time afterwards I was by his side and, in a husky whisper, he told me he was seriously wounded. He asked me to bring him a pencil, and said he was afraid he was "done in." He then fumbled clumsily about in the pocket of his grand-tunic, or great coat, until he found a piece of paper. It was in reality a piece of cardboard on which was a photograph of himself taken with his mother some years before. It was old, faded, and discolored, and on the back of it he wrote a message which ran something like this: Dear Mother--It has been some time since I heard from you. You doubtless know that father and both brothers have been killed in the trenches some time ago. Now I am wounded also, and I may not be able to come to you, as I expected to do next week. But, Mother dear, even if I do not get to see you, don't feel badly anyway because you've given all for _La Belle France_, and I may see you some time--over there--beyond the range.--Lovingly, Jacques. Personally I had thought and hoped that his wound was not so serious and it would not be necessary for me to deliver the message to his mother. But he knew better than I. And three days later worse came to worst and poor Jacques "went West." The tragic duty of taking his body back to his lonely mother, somewhere in France, devolved upon me. I also handed her his message, but I could not remain. Her grief was too deep. I fairly ran away from that house.