A similar instance that I heard of, this time in a practice attack in a camp in England, concerned a very poor specimen who pretended to be badly gassed. He was taken to the orderly room on a stretcher; but unfortunately for him the medical corps sergeant recognised him as a man who had fallen out during a march a short time before, and knew all about him. Meantime the man was feigning unconsciousness, but the sergeant winked at the medical officer and said: “It’s a pity that order about sick leave prevents men from going home in a case like this unless they live in London. What this poor fellow needs is a couple of weeks in his own home.” The corpse thereupon sat up and said: “That’s all right, sir. I live in Bow. When can I go?” As in all the previous attacks an analysis of the casualties showed that where the helmets had been kept in good condition and had been used properly and in time they had given perfect protection. The casualties were all due to preventable causes--some of them lamentable, others humorous, had it not been for their tragedy. Many men were gassed through taking off their helmets too soon. It is really up to the officers and noncommissioned officers who have attended a course at a gas school to decide when the atmosphere is safe, and it is not nearly so risky to do this as it sounds. All that is necessary is to let a little air in from the outside by cautiously opening up the face piece of the mask--or the skirt of the helmet in the case of the old gas bag--and sniffing cautiously. Of course if it is not done cautiously and there happens to be a lot of gas about, the rash man suffers. A number of men were gassed through going into unprotected dugouts before they had been ventilated or through wandering into pockets of the gas after the attack. They should have been on the lookout for these patches, as the gas notoriously keeps close to the ground at night, and sheltered places are bound to remain unhealthy for much longer periods than the open. It is curious that by some vagary of the wind the cloud farther back hopped over some houses that were used as billets and affected neither the inhabitants nor the unprotected animals on the ground, whereas some fowls that were roosting in the trees and on the tops of the houses were killed. One instance that shows how carelessness spells casualty in gas warfare was that of a working party of thirty or forty men who were busy on railway work a mile or two behind the line. They had taken off their coats and gas helmets and placed them on some trucks, but when the alarm was given and a rush was made for the helmets the trucks were found to have gone.