"I mustn't budge!" I kept repeating to
myself, for my own nerves were at the jumping-off point and I thought
the veins in my head would burst if I had to endure those
explosion-roars another minute. Happily they ceased as suddenly as they
began.
There is no kind of suffering endured in the battle front that has such
a horror for the men as the gas; it is that fighting for breath that
takes the life out of a fellow, and, God! how it chokes. Out of that
bunch of 56 gassed men, only six came out whole.
The following week we were ordered to leave the Somme. Although I felt
in the mood for sticking it as long as I had the strength to keep
going, yet I must confess the order filled my soul with a gratitude that
was unspeakable. I had been in the Somme campaign three months, and when
our guns swept into position at Martinsaart, my weight was 171; when I
left, I tipped the scales at 145. The men who had been with the guns
there and who know what it is to work 24 hours in the day for many days
in the week, rarely during the three months experiencing the refreshing
rest of a consecutive two hours' sleep, and working like veritable
demons during every waking moment, either at the guns or cleaning the
ammunition, or carrying the ammunition into place,--they will understand
what it means to lose 25 pounds in weight on the Somme.
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