A Surgeon in Arms

by R. J. Manion

All these things combined to make it the most miserable, soul-torturing night we had ever experienced. And, to add to it all, our artillery was in a hollow nearby where the gas was so thick that it prevented our gunners from retaliating, making it all take, and no give. We all learned that night what it felt like to long to desert. We learned that there are times when a man who is brave enough to be a coward deserves sympathy. But, thank God! there are few such men in our armies. The brave man and the coward, both, at times, experience the same sensation of fear, the coward allowing the emotion to conquer him, while the brave man grits his teeth and carries on.

For nearly five hours we endured this misery, wondering when we would have inhaled enough of the poison to put our names among the casualties. One of the strange things that struck me during that long night was that I heard no word of censure or condemnation of the Germans who were the cause of our suffering. We cursed war in general; we cursed Vimy and all that pertained to it; we cursed the inactivity of our artillery; and we cursed the gases; but the misery was taken as one of the fortunes of war, and no one wasted his breath in vain attempts to beat the Germans with his mouth—as Lord Roberts expressed it at the beginning of the conflict. Often when I am five thousand miles away from the firing line, sitting, perhaps, in a smoking-car, and listening to the abuse of our enemy, I think of this circumstance.

After nearly three hours of the wretched gassing, I had been lying for some little time in the upper of two bunks, wearing my mask, feeling very much smothered, and wondering if it were pleasanter to die quickly from the gas or slowly from the mask. For the masks give a most uncomfortable feeling of impending suffocation. Finally, I decided that I preferred the gas to the mask. I pulled it off, swore softly to myself, and muttered that I chose a quick death in preference to a slow one.

"Same here, doc," said a jolly voice from below me. "I took off my bally mask some time ago, and have been lying here wondering how long you were going to endure it."

Looking down I saw the smiling face of Captain S——, a chaplain, who had been there the previous day, burying some of our brave boys who had paid the greatest price that man can pay. He was a most courageous chap, always good-humored under any circumstances, and the gas had not lessened his courage. We joked for a few moments, then we tried, without success, to argue courage into a little cockney for whom this was a cruel initiation into the firing line, and whose "wind was up," as the boys express it when a man's nerve is about all gone. I don't know what happened to the little cockney in the end, but my last memory of him was that he was still arguing that this was no place for a white man, with which sentiment we all agreed. Shortly we were glad to reapply our masks, as the air became almost thick enough to cut with a knife, and that vise on our chests kept tightening.

Though the night seemed a thousand years long, it finally came to an end just as our nerves were at breaking point. The gas masks had been on our faces for the better part of five hours. What sighs of relief we gave as those abominable shells ceased to come over, and in their place we heard the crump of high explosive shells! Dame Nature completed the blessing by pouring down a drizzling rain which dissolved the gases and cleared the air, the rain then lying in opalescent pools in the shell-holes.

How glorious God's fresh air seemed to us after that atrocious experience! With what pleasure we laid aside our masks, though they had without doubt saved our lives! How exquisite to feel that the grains of sand between our eyelids and eyeballs seemed to be absorbing! And what a satisfaction to know that, despite the agony of it all, we had done our bit like men; for the greatest gifts that God can give are those necessary for the playing of a man's part!

Day was breaking when two runners came from the officer commanding B Company, to tell me that he wanted me to come over to the railway embankment, where his dugout was, to see a number of his men who were suffering severely from the gas. To come for me these boys had to cross a field for three hundred yards where the enemy were dropping Jack Johnsons—immense high explosive shells. The boys had nearly been caught by one of them, and they thought it unwise to recross the ground just then, as the shells were still falling. I leaned against the ruins of this old stone building, and watched the shells exploding for some minutes.

Gas attacks have a most depressing and demoralizing effect on everyone. I have never made a trip with as little pleasure as that I felt at the thought of this one before me. A medical officer can, but very rarely does, refuse to go to cases. He may insist on having them brought to him, as there is only one medical officer to a battalion, and his death may make it awkward for his unit till he is replaced by another surgeon from the nearest field ambulance.

However, though there was no let-up to the shelling, there was no alternative but to go. So I called the runners and my corporal and we started over. Whether it was due to the depressing effects of the gassing that we had gone through I know not, but at any rate this was the only occasion during my service at the front on which I had a real presentiment that death was going to meet me. Distinctly do I remember expressing to myself the following inelegant sentence: