When they couldn’t get us out that way, they tried gas. This was the worst horror, for many of our boys in the advance through the woods had lost their gas helmets. These had been torn away from their equipment by tall bushes or the low-hanging branches of trees. It is horrible enough to see a man struck down by bullet or shrapnel or bombed to pieces. But the gas victim is most piteously horrible of all. Only too many of our boys got this gas and it was harrowing to see them writhing in agony, their bodies swelling, their faces turning blue, their eyes becoming flaming red, bulging from the sockets, blood gushing from their noses and mouths. It was even more awful to hear their stuttered pleadings to their comrades to end their misery for them with a bullet or knife. I heard one of my poor men say: “Bill, put a bullet through me. You can’t stand and see your pal die like this. For God’s sake, Bill, buck up and do it!” We had not found the taking of Delville wood impossible. But nearly so. We had strength and determination and by this time in the war, a bitter hatred against the barbarians we knew to be guilty of such countless atrocities, against an enemy who doesn’t know the meaning of fighting fair. Yet the victory had been very, very costly in lives--too terribly costly. Of my original sixty men I brought back only fifteen. The casualties were so numerous as to change afterward military plans used in efforts to take a wood. We try now to outflank it, to cut the wood off from the other lines of communication. The heavy artillery sweeps the woods, trying to destroy the strong emplacements. Then we go on either flank and try and cut it off that way. Since Delville wood and Gonnecourt wood, which were similar actions and just as murderous and bloody, it has been calculated that by direct attack the cost is all too great. Incidentally in that action I was a very lucky man. Two bullets went through the skirt of my tunic and I had four bullet or shrapnel dents in my helmet. I think, as a matter of fact, they were all bullet dents from snipers in the trees. The handling of men in a wood fight is in all ways difficult. Men go plunging into unseen dangers through overzealousness. If the enemy runs away continue to fire at him, but do not chase him--follow him cautiously. The possible traps are too many for headlong pursuit.