By ten o’clock in the morning fully two-thirds of the company had been blinded, and about this time Lieutenants Crane, Dowling and Levi, and Captain Hurley one after the other went blind and were led back, followed later by Lieutenant Burns.
Throughout the day the men continued to go blind, until by seven o’clock only about thirty were left, almost all of whom were in the front line, under command of Lieutenant Tom Martin, and they were so few that it was necessary for them to go on post for four hours at a stretch, with two hours off, and some of them, including Tom Hickey, Barney Furey, John McLoughlin, Pat McConnell and Jerry O’Connor were on post for as long as six hours at a time.
At seven o’clock Lieutenant Hunt Warner, with Lieutenant Zipp, appeared with reinforcements, consisting of forty men from Company M. Lieutenant Warner was put in command at Chevert with Sergeant Embrie of Company K, as second in command; Sergeant Von Glahn of Company M, was put in command at C. R. 2, where the gas was at that time especially heavy; and Lieutenant Zipp was put in command at Changarnier, with Corporal Joe Farrell, who knew the sector thoroughly and spent the night going from one post to another, as second in command, Lieutenant Tom Martin at Changarnier being in command of the whole company sector.
That evening about dusk the men in the front line heard an explosion in the rear and looked back in time to see the battalion ammunition dump go up in a blaze of glory, on seeing which all broke into applause and loud cheers. It was thought that the Boches might be so foolish as to think the evening propitious for a raid, and all posts were manned and all were ready to give him a warm reception, but he failed to show up.
At seven next morning the French appeared and the relief was completed by about nine o’clock, when the survivors set out for Lunéville, where they were taken in hand by Lieutenant Arnold, who ordered them all, much against their protest, to a hospital where they were surprised to find that they were casualties, their injuries consisting principally of burns on the body, which had just begun to show up, and which kept most of them in the hospital for at least a month.
On their arrival at the hospital they found there some of the French troops who had relieved them on that morning and who had already become casualties because of the gas which lingered in the area.
The men killed, besides McCoun, were Salvatore Moresea, whose body was found by the French in No Man’s Land the day after the Company was relieved, Carl Braun, of Headquarters Company, hit by bullet, with Robert Allen, Walter Bigger, and Lawrence Gavin, who died in the hospital within a day or two as a result of the effect of the gas on their lungs. About four hundred of our men were put out of action in this gas attack including practically all of K Company, many of M, and some from Headquarters, Supply and Medical.
The event had one consoling feature, and that was the superb conduct of the men. They had been told most awful stories of the effect of gas. When they found that their whole position was saturated with it, they felt that their chances to live through it were slender, and that they would surely be blind for a long time. And yet not a single man quit his post until ordered. There was no disorder or panic; the men of Company K were forced to quit their position, but they quit it one by one, and every man was a subject for a hospital long before he left. And the Company M men coming up to take over the position, and seeing the blinded and tortured soldiers going back, had courage in equal measure. Soldiers that will stand up to it as these had done under the terrors and sufferings of that night can be relied on for anything that men can be called on to do.
LUNÉVILLE
March 23rd, 1918