I saw
hundreds of these cases in the 3rd Canadian casualty clearing station
on the coast, and there were thousands all along our front. At Oast
Dunkerque, near Nieuport, I had a whiff of it, and was conscious of a
burning sensation about the lips and eyelids, and for a week afterward
vomited at times, and was scared by queer flutterings of the heart
which at night seemed to have but a feeble beat. It was enough to "put
the wind up." Our men dreaded the new danger, so mysterious, so
stealthy in its approach. It was one of the new plagues of war.
V
The battle of Flanders began round Ypres on July 31st, with a greater
intensity of artillery on our side than had ever been seen before in
this war in spite of the Somme and Messines, when on big days of
battle two thousand guns opened fire on a single corps front. The
enemy was strong also in artillery arranged in great groups, often
shifting to enfilade our lines of attack. The natural strength of his
position along the ridges, which were like a great bony hand
outstretched through Flanders, with streams or "beeks," as they are
called, flowing in the valleys which ran between the fingers of that
clawlike range, were strengthened by chains of little concrete forts
or "pill-boxes," as our soldiers called them, so arranged that they
could defend one another by enfilade machine-gun fire.
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