The Boches had crept over and thrown gas bombs among us. Some of the men were too far gone to get out of it. Others had managed to get away. A few had gas masks, and one of these put his arms under my shoulders and dragged me with him to the rear. We all should have had our masks, and nowadays a soldier found without his is severely punished. I had mine then, but it was under my blanket and I couldn't get to it quickly enough.
They stuffed something under my nose, and it hurt almost as much as the gas, but it brought me to, and I was put in an ambulance. The body of it was filled with wounded men, so I sat with my legs dangling over the tailboard, propped up against a leather strap. The poor fellows inside groaned and grunted with every bump of the crazy vehicle. The road was pitted from shell-fire, and I had to hang on for dear life to keep from being thrown off.
Presently the Boches began shelling the road. They were not purposely after the ambulances. They were just shelling that road. If ambulances were there they were likely to get hit.
I heard one coming. I knew she was headed toward us, but there was no place to duck to. Right behind us the road seemed suddenly to bow up like a steel band when the ends are sprung suddenly together. Then it settled back. I was so stunned by the shock of the explosion that I hardly felt anything else, but as the ambulance careened onward I began to feel a pain in my thigh. I put down my hand, and when I looked at it it was red. I had been hit.
A man lying on his back in the ambulance, with his feet beside me, had lost more than half of one of them as a result of the same explosion. There wasn't time to do anything for either of us. The driver went ahead like mad and got us to a dressing station, where dozens of men were waiting for treatment.
Some of them were serious. The surgeon looked at me and said, "You're easy. Can't waste much time on you. Lie on that table."
I lay down on my stomach and he probed for a second, then gave a yank. I thought he had pulled my leg out by the roots, but he thrust a pair of pincers in front of my eyes and said, "There it is. Want it?" and he dropped a bit of shell into my hand. I still have it.
Then a big ambulance, with seven other men in it, took me to Compiègne, where I lay in the dining saloon of a château for a few hours and then was sent to Paris.
The wound healed quickly and I was sent back to the trenches, but the gas had left my lungs bad, and I couldn't stand the cold and wet. It wasn't long before they invalided me out.
But I'm all right now, and I'm going back if they'll let me.