A few weeks later the devil came to Ypres. The first sign of his work
was when a mass of French soldiers and colored troops, and English,
Irish, Scottish, and Canadian soldiers came staggering through the
Lille and Menin gates with panic in their look, and some foul spell
upon them. They were gasping for breath, vomiting, falling into
unconsciousness, and, as they lay, their lungs were struggling
desperately against some stifling thing. A whitish cloud crept up to
the gates of Ypres, with a sweet smell of violets, and women and girls
smelled it and then gasped and lurched as they ran and fell. It was
after that when shells came in hurricane flights over Ypres, smashing
the houses and setting them on fire, until they toppled and fell
inside themselves. Hundreds of civilians hid in their cellars, and
many were buried there. Others crawled into a big drain-pipe--there
were wounded women and children among them, and a young French
interpreter, the Baron de Rosen, who tried to help them--and they
stayed there three days and nights, in their vomit and excrement and
blood, until the bombardment ceased.
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