Thiacourt Under Shell-Fire.
Through the winding tunnel of foliage "Jip" was keenly alert. He seemed, with his good horse sense, to feel that he was carrying a very well-meaning but inexperienced Chaplain, more interested perhaps in things botanical and floral than military. When I, for example, showed inclination to dismount and inspect a beautiful saddle lying by the roadside, it was evidently a German officer's, "Jip," with ears back, snorted and galloped furiously past. A veteran sergeant afterwards quietly remarked:
"'Jip' likely saved you that time, Chaplain, from a 'planted' bomb, for which that saddle was the bait."
Evening found us at the near approaches of Saint Marie farm. As the area from this point forward was drenched with gas, and therefore no place for "Jip," who stubbornly refused to wear his mask, I decided to leave him and continue forward on foot. Making my way to a dugout, then Company Headquarters of the gallant 19th Machine Gunners, I happened upon a young gunner named Costigan.
"Will you look after 'Jip' for me, Buddie?"
"I will be glad to, Father," he replied. "Your sister used to be my teacher in the Ogden school, Chicago!"
How small the world was! To find that Bois-le-Pretre was just around the corner from Chestnut and North State Street!
Grim and terrible, however, was the work just ahead. Entering that forest was like going into some vast fatal Iroquois Theatre saturated with death-dealing gas. It was even then being swept by a tornado of screaming, bursting shells, scattering far and wide fumes of mustard and chlorine, a single inhalation of which meant unspeakable agony and death. But our brave boys were there with souls to be prepared, and poor mangled bodies were there, reverently to be buried!
It was supreme test for the gas mask! That frail piece of rubber alone stood between us and death. The slightest rent or leakage would be fatal, as injury to the suit of the deep sea diver. These masks had been issued in sizes 3, 4 and 5. Some fitted better than others; others bound painfully about the temples. We had been trained to adjust them quickly from "alert" to the face in seven seconds, and woe to him who breathed before the clasp was on his nose, the tube in his mouth, or the chin piece properly in place. Under ordinary conditions, they were supposed to filter the poisonous air for thirty-six hours. It was extraordinary conditions, however, rising either from faulty adjustment, rubber strain, or mechanical injury that usually proved their undoing.