“The Heinies were puttin’ ’em over for fair and too damn close to be interestin’. Course everybody jerked on the old gas-mask. But Bill Conway was so excited and scared till he clean forgot all about his own mask—all he could do was sound that klaxon and shout, ‘Gas!’ The skipper came tearin’ out of his B. C. station, gas-mask and all. The first thing he saw was Conway without a mask. ‘Put your mask on, you boob, ’ain’t you got any sense? I’ll court martial you for disregardin’ orders.’ Conway drops the klaxon and pulls the mask over his bean and face _toot sweet_. “Corporal Reynolds, who was gas non-com., comes up about that time and asks Bill what the devil he sounded the gas alarm for. Bill says, ‘We’re gettin’ gassed.’ Reynolds, of course, was expected to know gas from ordinary fresh air, bein’ as how he was the gas non-com., so he pulled his mask off and sniffed ’round considerable. ‘Hell afire,’ says he, ‘there ain’t no gas.’ Everybody took off their masks and the skipper gave Conway extra fatigue for causin’ such a disturbance. “All durin’ the time that they was arguin’ ’bout the gas the old shells were sailing right over our heads and hittin’ pretty close. One guy got a splinter in the fat of his thigh and Deacon O’Tell’s underclothes were ripped off a line where he had ’em dryin’. But that was all the casualties we had that day. You see, the woods was mighty tall and strong there and they sorta shielded us from the fragments and hunks. “Things rattled on that way every day. We used to get shelled every afternoon ’round three or four o’clock. Couple of the boys got it pretty soon and they carted ’em off to a hospital. Never seen or heard of ’em since. “The _monjayin’_ was _pas bon_. Never got any sugar in the coffee, and as for milk—well, there wasn’t any ’round them diggin’s. O. D., that’s one thing that got my goat a long time. You read ’bout all this Hooverizin’ stuff. How the folks back home is doin’ without sugar—havin’ wheatless, meatless, fireless and all kind of days so the men at the front can get the best _monjayin’_ there is—and we was starvin’ a good many times. Course if we hadn’t been Americans we’d have kicked and raised an awful smell, but bein’ a bunch of Yankees and knowin’ what we was up against in this _guerre_, we just fooled ’em and kept on regardless. Now I ain’t sayin’ this so much for myself, cause I’m pretty hefty and can get along. But we had a bunch of little guys up there that weren’t more than a bunch of strings. Those kids used to stay up all night luggin’ ninety-five-pound shells—gettin’ wet most of the time—then dive into their cold bunks, _cushay_ ’bout two hours and get up to _monjay_. What the hell do you think they’d get? Maybe a thin slice or two of bacon—hardtack most of the time, black coffee with no sugar, and that’s all. Fat breakfast for a fightin’ man. You can’t blame nobody for them things except the people back at the ports and in the S. O. S. who are supposed to get the eats up to us.