From here we walked about a half mile to the most advanced post on that road. I’ll never forget that walk! The noise was terrific and the shells passing overhead made a continuous scream. Quite frequently we would hear the distinctive screech of an incoming shell. Then everyone would fall flat on his stomach in the road. Believe me, we were a scared bunch of boys! I was absolutely terrified, and I don’t think I was the only one. Well, we eventually got back to the car and to the base. At twelve o’clock that night the _Boches_ started shelling the town. You can’t imagine the feeling it gives one in the pit of one’s stomach to hear the gun go off in the distance, then the horrible screech of the onrushing shell, and finally the deafening explosion that shakes the plaster down on your cot. Our chiefs were at the outposts, and none of us knew enough to get out and go to the _abri_, so we just lay there shivering and sweating a cold sweat through the whole bombardment. Gosh, but I was a scared boy! Of a gas attack he writes: “We had to wear those suffocating gas masks for five hours,” and then: About three o’clock in the morning the car ahead of us at the post started out in their masks and in the pitch of blackness with a load. In about a half hour one of the boys on the car staggered back into the _abri_, half gassed, and said that they were in the ditch down in a little valley full of gas. So we had to go down and get their load. Believe me, it was some ticklish and nerve-racking job to transfer three groaning _couches_ from a car in the ditch at a perilous angle to ours, in a cloud of gas, and with the shells bursting uncomfortably near quite frequently. We finally got them in and got started. We got about a half mile farther on to the top of the hill going down into what is known as “Death Valley.” In the valley was a sight that was most discouraging. Seven or eight horses were lying in the road, gassed, some of them still kicking. A big _camion_ was half in the ditch and half on the road. An ammunition caisson that had tried to get past the blockade by going down through the ditch was stuck there. Remember that all this was just at the break of dawn, in a cloud of gas, with the French batteries making a continuous roar and an occasional _Boche_ shell making every one flop on his stomach. How we ever got through there I really couldn’t tell you. My partner told the Frenchmen who were vainly trying to straighten out the mess that we had a couple of dying men in the car, so they yanked a few horses to one side, drove the _camion_ a little farther into the ditch, and, by driving over a horse’s head and another one’s legs, I got through. On the whole, I’ve been quite lucky. Some of the other boys have had some really awful experiences.