It was not long before blind or unexploded shell--“duds,” we call them--were collected and sent back for examination. This is one of the disadvantages of using gas shell--your opponent can always keep track of what you are doing. Sooner or later a fuse will not function or a bursting charge will not explode and your watchful enemy carefully collects the shell, and has for examination a considerable amount of the poison material. I say “carefully collects,” for it is no child’s play dealing with shell which may go off in your hands on the slightest provocation. However, it has to be done, and as it is the gas officer’s pidgin he manfully shoulders his task and the shell and has it brought in. Very frequently the fuse fails to act because a powder pellet holding up the striking needle has not burned away; but I remember one case where the gas officer of one of the armies took back a big dud gas shell. It meant transporting the weighty souvenir in a not particularly well sprung car over very bumpy roads, and he was quite relieved to arrive at his destination--the field laboratory. Here it was reverently taken to bits by the experts. Imagine the gas officer’s horror to find he had been bumping along for several hours in the company of a shell the powder pellet of which had burned away and whose only safety device was the weakest of weak creep springs on which the striker rested. A hard knock or a drop of six inches would almost certainly have exploded it. The laboratory officers, who are experts at the game, may have to go up to the Front themselves to solve important duds which are regarded as dangerous and require expert attention. In one instance the officer concerned--in civil life a very celebrated professor at one of the London colleges--went up to the salient and explored about a mile and a half of trenches and finally located his prey--a fine dud 4.2-inch howitzer gas shell--out in the open. Though the place was pretty unhealthy he “climbed the bags” and made a careful examination of the shell where it lay, finally bringing it back in with him. I forget whether he drew its sting on the spot, but in any case it was a pretty good effort, especially for a man no longer in his first youth.