Julien while the
streets were filled with this deadly gas. Some of our orderlies could
hardly escape and several of the headquarters staff had to be sent to
the hospital. I had taken on a pretty stiff cargo of it myself. When
it is first breathed it is not unpleasant, smelling not unlike
chloroform, but very soon it stings the mucous membrane of the mouth,
the eyes, and the nose. The lungs feel as if they were filled with
rheumatism. The tissues of the lungs are scalded and broken down, and
it takes a man a long time to recover, if he ever does fully recover
after having some of the "upholstering" of his lungs destroyed. We did
not then quite realize the horror of this new form of cowardly and
inhuman warfare, but we should have known that the Germans consider
war a game without an umpire or a referee.

[Illustration: SNIPING THROUGH A PORT HOLE]

Messages came promptly from General Turner, V.C., of the Third Brigade
to hang on, that the Canadians were going to try and hold the Germans
back until help came. We all knew we could depend on General Turner,
V.C., and his Brigade-Major, Lt.-Colonel Garnet Hughes. We knew that
we were fighting a rear guard action and that this was no time to
think of running away. We hardly realized, however, that the Battle of
St. Julien which had just commenced was to be one of the greatest
battles in the history of the world, that the Canadian casualties were
to be as great as the casualties of the British at Waterloo, that the
total casualties of the combatants before the fight was ended were to
number close to seventy thousand men, and that the Canadians, by brave
fighting and losing sixty per cent. of their men for three days, were
to hold in check five German army corps, or a total of close to a
quarter of a million men.

The brunt of the fighting fell to the lot of the Third Canadian
(Highland Brigade). Through their lines ran the frightened and
disorganized Turcos, groaning and shrieking in agony and fright. The
French artillery men, finding their lines broken and confronted with
the deadly wall of chlorine gas which rolled slowly over the ground
turning the budding leaves of the trees, the spring flowers and the
grass a sickly white, destroying every living creature in its path,
blasting and shrivelling everything over which it swept, cut their
horses loose and fled, in many cases two of them clinging to one
horse. Ten batteries, it is said, were lost in this way, a gap of