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By Root 1683 0

Platoon officers roused their men and called the roll, rifles were inspected with special care, hot tea was handed out. Later, towards zero hour, there would be a rum ration, and meanwhile the men were warned to keep their heads down. The bombardment was well under way, the enemy guns were sending back shell for shell and here in the support line there had already been some casualties. Captain Agius, making his rounds to see for himself that all was well, was constantly called back to the signallers’ dug-out. Messages were arriving thick and fast. The one they had all been waiting for was logged at six minutes past four: ‘Zero 5.50. Please acknowledge.’ But long before zero they were overtaken by disaster.

The shell fell well in front of the trench, but it was near enough to cause the men to duck involuntarily and let out a collective sigh of relief when the fall-out subsided. It was several minutes before Lieutenant Taylor of the Royal Engineers came staggering down the sap and almost collapsed into Agius’s arms. He was incapable of speech, he was green and gasping, and he was waving a message which he apparently wished Agius to wire to brigade headquarters: ‘Am somewhat gassed,’ it read, ‘but will attempt carry on at time stated if you wish. Wind one mile per hour southerly direction.’ Taylor was quite obviously unfit to ‘carry on’, and in no state even to tell what had happened but it was not hard to guess that the shell had hit the gas cylinders in the trench ahead and already there was a whiff of gas in the air. There was nothing to be done but to call for stretcher-bearers, to rewrite the illegible message adding ‘Lieutenant Taylor incapable of carrying on’ and dispatch it by runner.

Even before Agius could go forward to find out what precisely had happened another message arrived, scribbled with frantic haste, blurred and spattered with raindrops, but its purport was plain enough. ‘To Captain 3rd London: one battery of cylinders destroyed by bomb 4.35. Several men gassed slightly, one seriously.’ It was signed ‘Figg Acting Sergeant RE’.

It was the first of Figg’s urgent calls for help, and even before Agius had mustered a party of volunteers to go forward another arrived. The messenger’s eyes were bulging and streaming as he stumbled out of the sap. ‘Must have twenty men at once to cover remaining gas batteries with sandbags. Figg Acting Sergeant RE.’

Pulling on his gas-mask, Agius went forward to see the situation for himself. It was desperate. The trench was badly knocked about. Despite Figg’s valiant efforts gas was seeping steadily from the damaged cylinders. One after another, as the gas spread, men were collapsing wild eyed, vomiting, gasping for breath, and it was obvious that Sergeant Figg himself was on the point of collapse.

Agius’s men did their best. It was hard labour working in suffocating gas-helmets to rebuild the broken trench, to tear sandbags from the sides of the sap, to heave them to the forward post, to pile them round the cylinders in a blinding smog of concentrated fumes. Man after man succumbed. The guns were thundering, time was running out, the gas was still escaping from the damaged cylinders. Now it was hanging thick in front of the trenches and drifting lazily northward enveloping more of their own line as it went, drifting everywhere but towards the Germans.

At zero hour the Gurkhas waiting to go donned gas-helmets and charged through it. It was a bad start.

Capt. W. G. Bagot-Chester, MC.

Clouds of gas blew backwards and we had to tuck our helmets which we were wearing all the tighter. I was wearing two helmets one over the other, but in spite of these my throat became very sore. Even before we started one of the gas men in the traverse in which I was standing keeping an eye on my watch became overcome while working his removal sprayer and was lying at my feet groaning horribly. I was counting the seconds and when I gave the signal to cross the parapet I think we were all glad to get out of our trench full of gas. The air in front was thick with gas and smoke from the smoke bombs