All the while I was fully conscious of the sounds and movements about me. I heard the rats scurry squealing into the corners. I scratched methodically on several inhabited portions of my anatomy. I listened to the muffled voices in the signal-corps room, which was just beyond the thin partition; the men on duty there with the trench telephones wore French masks that had neither nose-clamps nor mouthpieces. But, masks or no masks, signals and messages must go forward without delays. These lads of the signal stations, along with those "standing post" to give the warning, must add to the dangers that all face the extra ones that fall to the lot of men who are charged with the safety of their comrades. I listened to the soldiers stirring in the billets behind me—forty-seven bunks were there; and just across in the first-aid dressing-station I heard the stretcher party.
To all of these matters I was keenly alive while I adjusted my mask (I had on all my clothes), groped for the door opening out of my private sleeping-corner, which was almost exactly as large as the cot it contained, and stepped into the central room occupied by the Y. M. C. A. canteen. Here I found candles burning feebly.
Does this all sound like rare presence of mind and complete self-control? Do not be deceived. It was simply a case of nerves paralyzed with terror and of muscles responding mechanically to suggestions previously received. The acuteness of my perception and sense of hearing were evidences of acute fright.
The canteen soon filled with begoggled soldiers; we stood elbow to elbow, and waited. Was there gas in the room? I wondered. Hardly time for that, because of the heavy blankets sealing the entrance to the cellar; one stairway and one deep-set window were the only openings through which either air or gas could penetrate. These were closed at night. The dugout itself was a kilometer back from the advanced trenches, and on comparatively high ground. I remembered that on the preceding day an officer in discussing a possible gas attack had said that our position was very favorable. But of course the enemy might be sending over gas-shells in a bombardment of the batteries just behind us, in which case our hole in the ground might become a veritable deathtrap to any one without a mask.
The ruins high above us trembled with the vibrations from our own guns. I looked up, and noted that the arched roof of the cement wine-cellar which was the basis for the entire dugout, or rather system of dugouts, where we were quartered did not show even a crack. We were in one of the finest bomb-proofs in that entire sector. After more than three years the direct hits of high explosives had not penetrated it. To its original thickness and strength had been added the tumbled-in walls of the glorious old building which once stood above it. Now and then shells bursting near the entrance to our shelter forced in the heavy curtains with the rush of air following the explosion.
The firing from our own guns became more intense and rapid. What did it mean? Were we under general attack? Was a raid to be received, or were our lads to deliver one? Was our barrage—for the bombardment had assumed the intensity of curtain fire—a reply to German guns, or was it the initiating of a local offensive? I found myself getting out of hand, but remembered the alert officers out there in the greater danger, whose orders would answer my question soon enough.
Now another matter thrust itself upon my attention; my mouth and throat were full of saliva, and I didn't know what to do with it. At this point—and a vital one it is—my instructor had failed me. There are so many things to remember that it is surprising more is not forgotten. I became desperate. My predicament was far worse than a patient's in a dentist's chair with jaws clamped wide open and a rubber sheet jammed between his teeth. In the latter case one can signal with his hands, and indeed, under great provocation, a man has been known to kick the shins of his tormentor. But I knew that neither signalling nor kicking would now do me any good. There were questions, pressing questions, that I wished to ask; and I could not open my mouth to ask them. I could not even talk through my nose, for that was in a vise. My head now felt like a Noah's ark. It was a case of strangle or swallow. I decided that I had a choice between allowing the saliva to pour through the tube into the chemical can of the mask, or of somehow getting it down my throat. I took a deep breath, held firmly to the mouthpiece, and swallowed. Later I learned that I had done exactly the right thing.
Minutes passed, and my eyes began to burn, and my goggles became blurred. I heard muffled coughing, and a sweat broke out upon me; were we to be trapped without a chance for our lives? But no orders came, and we waited on. Being in a group and in the station of a special gas sentinel, I knew that we were to depend upon this sentinel for further instructions and not to "test for gas" ourselves. Testing for gas is done by filling the lungs to their utmost capacity through the tube, releasing the nose-clamp, pulling the mask slightly away from one cheek, and sniffing. If gas is still about, the odor will be detected unless the gas is odorless; and the lungs, being already occupied by air, will not be affected. However, if your test has revealed the presence of gas, your mask has now become filled with the poison, and this must be got out. After readjusting the nose-clamp the lungs are emptied, and refilled through the breathing-tube; then simultaneously the mask is pulled away quickly from the cheek, and the breath instead of being exhaled through the tube is blown violently into the mask itself. By repeating this rather hazardous operation several times the mask is entirely cleared.
But to return to the case in hand. I was fast becoming blinded by the moisture on my "windows." I now followed the instructions of my teacher, and brought out my "window-cleaner," the preparation which each man carries for thoroughly cleansing his goggles. Leaving the nose firmly held and continuing my strong bite on the mouthpiece, which is not unlike the mouth-hold in a football nose-guard, I pulled the bands off my head, the mask away from my cheeks, and with the speed of desperation cleansed the two glasses. After readjusting the mask, to free it from any possible gas I used the method described above.