"Will you look after 'Jip' for me, Buddie?" "I will be glad to, Father," he replied. "Your sister used to be my teacher in the Ogden school, Chicago!" How small the world was! To find that Bois-le-Pretre was just around the corner from Chestnut and North State Street! Grim and terrible, however, was the work just ahead. Entering that forest was like going into some vast fatal Iroquois Theatre saturated with death-dealing gas. It was even then being swept by a tornado of screaming, bursting shells, scattering far and wide fumes of mustard and chlorine, a single inhalation of which meant unspeakable agony and death. But our brave boys were there with souls to be prepared, and poor mangled bodies were there, reverently to be buried! It was supreme test for the gas mask! That frail piece of rubber alone stood between us and death. The slightest rent or leakage would be fatal, as injury to the suit of the deep sea diver. These masks had been issued in sizes 3, 4 and 5. Some fitted better than others; others bound painfully about the temples. We had been trained to adjust them quickly from "alert" to the face in seven seconds, and woe to him who breathed before the clasp was on his nose, the tube in his mouth, or the chin piece properly in place. Under ordinary conditions, they were supposed to filter the poisonous air for thirty-six hours. It was extraordinary conditions, however, rising either from faulty adjustment, rubber strain, or mechanical injury that usually proved their undoing. On that October day I had remained in the gas waves but four hours and felt I had escaped without injury. Such, however, proved not my good fortune. My mask had evidently not functioned properly and that night of torture to body, head and eyes was accounted for in the simple words of the kind Doctor Lugar: "Chaplain, you are gassed." A few days' nursing and care at the Field Hospital restored strength and vigor needed for a new and even more interesting encounter. On the afternoon of Sunday, October 25th, I had held services at three o'clock in a dugout at Vieville-en-Haye. Carefully hidden in a forest immediately south of this village were then located three of our large guns. The boys had proudly named them, "President's Answer," "Theda Bara" and "Miss McCarthy." They were throwing high explosive shells along the Metz highway. The enemy was frantically replying with eight-inch Howitzers from points some six kilometers north, dropping shells at two-minute intervals into Vieville-en-Haye and its environs. As there was much gas along this front, I had left "Jip" at home and was using a Harley-Davidson cycle side-car Lieutenant Trainor of Headquarters had kindly loaned me--further giving me daring Corporal Plummer of Aurora, one of the most skillful of his chauffeurs.