1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [277]
It was not easy to carry the long pipes through narrow trenches and round traverses but somehow it was accomplished. By 20 September all the cylinders had been carried to the front line and installed by the Royal Engineers in specially dug emplacements, well sandbagged for protection. It had taken many hours of labour and much cursing and swearing to undo the tight domeheads which might easily have been untightened at Gorre. The special gas squads were in charge now and it would be their job to discharge the gas when the moment came. In the course of gas-mask drill officers passed on to the infantry some rudimentary instruction on the effect of gas which they themselves had gleaned sketchily from demonstrations. In the weeks before the battle company officers were sent off in batches for instruction.
Capt. W. G. Bagot-Chester, MC.
Sept. 5. Today being a holiday, Company Commanders had to go to St Omer to see how to kill our fellow creature with gas. So four of us and some from other regiments started off in a motor bus at 8.45 a.m., arriving at the place of demonstration at 12 noon, where we were taken on to a heath where the gas apparatus had been prepared in a trench. Two cylinders were emptied for our benefit, and several smoke cartridges lit which gave forth volumes of smoke. After lunch in St Omer we started back at 4 p.m., and our driver took us hell for leather back, so that we took in returning about half the time as on our way onward previously.
Walter Bagot-Chester’s ‘holiday’ had ended more happily than Lieutenant Waterlow’s. Several days later he was still suffering the effects.
Lt A. Waterlow.
I had instructions to attend a lecture on gas at Houchin in the afternoon and so I borrowed from battalion HQ one of the signaller’s bikes, which was a great deal too small for me, and made my way back through Noeux-les-Mines, past the bombing school on its western outskirts – where live bombs were bursting perilously near to the road – to the practice trenches at Houchin where the gas lecture took place. There was a large gathering there, including General Barter and members of his staff. After the lecture we all had to pass through the gas. They had a cylinder of gas on the edge of one of the trenches, hissing it out in our faces as we passed along the trench in single file. We only had the plain helmets on, with the piece of mica for a window, and my helmet was by no means gas proof. After getting a whiff of it which made me cough, I held my breath, but the queue in front was very slow in moving and I got held up with the cylinder blowing the stuff right into my face! But I wasn’t chancing a second breath of it, so my lungs were nearly bursting when eventually I got clear. General Barter carefully tied a gaily coloured silk handkerchief round his head before donning his helmet – a mirth-provoking sight.
Troops out of the line were marched to a scale model of the battlefield constructed well away from prying eyes. It covered almost a whole field and was large enough for platoons and even half-companies to walk across the ground that represented their front and, more particularly, the enemy front that lay beyond and the unknown country that would be theirs when they advanced to beat the enemy back. Small mounds of earth were heaped up to represent hills, chalk was sprinkled with careful precision to show the trench-lines, and even the slag-heaps were represented by small piles of coal and buildings by half-bricks. It was far from being a facsimile of the battlefield, but at least it was better than the few yards of ground