The writer has a friend who entered a shell-hole near the head of
a communicating trench which ran from a military road to battalion
headquarters. He descended to lay a foundation for a Y. M. C. A. hut,
and was completely overcome as soon as he stooped to begin work. A
gallant French soldier, seeing the danger, leaped into the crater, and,
standing as nearly erect as he could, pulled the unfortunate man to his
feet. He held him there until others came to his assistance. My friend
went to the hospital for three weeks.
Much of the acute pneumonia and pleurisy, and thousands of cases of
tuberculosis, reported among the Allies are superinduced by gas. For
days men doctor persistent colds, only to find at last that the "stuff"
has somewhere scorched them. I had been five days from the front,
and was scores of miles removed from the scene of my last possible
exposure, before my case was pronounced "gas-poisoning." For several
days my "cold" had been increasingly annoying. My lungs were sore, my
throat burned, my vocal chords were affected, and I coughed deeply.
The mucous membrane of the mouth, throat, and nose became painfully
inflamed, and even bled; my head ached constantly, and my eyes on the
sixth day completely crossed. I could not have got more than a touch
of the stuff. I have absolutely no recollection of any particular time
when the thing might have occurred; indeed, I had congratulated myself
that I had been unusually prompt to use my mask and exceedingly careful
to take no chances.
Two months later a thorough examination resulted in the following
report: "Röntgen examination of the thorax showed increased density of
both apices, left more than right; marked thickening of right hilus."
All of which means, according to the obliging man of science, that
the lungs were left with scars as lungs are scarred from pneumonia or
incipient tuberculosis.
In the writer's slight case the depressing nature of the poison because
of its action upon the organs of respiration and the nerve-centres was
particularly noticeable. For weeks I experienced the constant sensation
of smothering, felt "full" and "stuffed," as the proverbial "stuffed
toad" looks. At night, when I could sleep at all, I suffered dreams of
horror, and awoke struggling for a full breath; then always followed
appalling wakefulness. My appetite returned slowly. I was favored with
the best of care, enjoyed a delightful ocean voyage at just the right
time, and had a perfect general physical condition to begin with. I
have the assurance that my glimpse into what so many blessed sons of
the republic must behold with wide-open eyes will leave no permanent
evil after-effects. But it will cause me to see forever the travail of
those who must experience the birth-throes of the new and better world,
and the picture of Democracy's youthful martyrs will not fade from my
eyes while the flowers of memory put forth and bud.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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