Gas at Night
In the early days it was very difficult to get officers to realize the absolute necessity of night drill in the adjustment of the mask. For various reasons, including surprise, gas attacks were probably eighty to ninety per cent of the time carried out at night. Under such conditions confusion in the adjustment of the mask is inevitable without a great deal of practice before hand, especially for duty in trenches with narrow spaces and sharp projecting corners. There are numerous instances of men waking up and getting excited, who not only gassed themselves, but in their mad efforts to find their masks, or to escape from the gas, knocked others down, disarranging their masks and causing the gassing of from one to three or four additional men. The confusion inherent in any gas attack was heightened in the latter stages of the war by heavy shrapnel and high explosive bombardments that accompanied nearly all projector and cloud gas attacks for that very purpose. The bombardment was continued for three or four hours to cause exhaustion and removal of the mask and to prevent the removal of the gassed patients from the gassed area.