With Cavalry in 1915 / The British Trooper in the Trench Line, Through the Second Battle of Ypres

by Frederic Coleman

At earliest light on Whit Monday, the 24th of May, the Hun gas came.

Before three o'clock in the morning, the yellow-green haze was drifting slowly on the light breezes that heralded the coming of the dawn.

Over the eastern front of the Salient the smoke-cloud came from near Wieltje to the Zonnebeke road, and on to the south over the Menin Road.

The 28th Division troops, from the Ypres-Roulers railway to the Bellewaarde Lake, were in the thick of it, and were driven back en masse.

The trenches of the 18th Hussars and 9th Lancers were also in the path of the noxious fumes; but the 1st Cavalry Brigade troops further south escaped them.

For an hour the gas rolled westward, accompanied by a cyclone of shell-fire, and followed by a determined infantry attack.

No part of the cavalry line felt the gas more than the left of the 18th Hussars, which was held by a squadron under command of Captain MacLachlan, who arrived at Vlamertinghe from England at seven o'clock the night before. MacLachlan, with some of the half dozen other officers and 130 men sent out to replace the casualties suffered by the 18th Hussars on May 13th, was tramping through Ypres within half an hour after he joined the regiment. New to Flanders and the Ypres Salient, his experience of a gas attack before he had been in the firing line twelve hours was a trying one.

MacLachlan was impressed by the warning to be on the watch for gas, and was in his forward trenches, awake and alert. His respirator was ready, and he repeatedly told his troopers to see that theirs were ready also.

The gas was actually upon the men before they could distinguish the poison-clouds from the early morning haze that frequently hung over the lake.

The first thick mantle of gas scattered the 18th Hussars somewhat, but enough of them remained in the trenches to hold on until a German machine-gun opened on them from their left rear. Seizing the advantage offered by the retirement of the 28th Division troops, the Huns came on as swiftly as the dispersing gas would allow, and soon were well behind the 18th line.