l my father used to grow at the lake, and in the spring of
the year on which he died some of the bulbs planted with his own hands
were in bloom when we made our first trip up there; they had seemed
like a sweet message from the dead.

I went to bed that night very homesick, wishing that the Kaiser was in
Hades and the war was over. For a long time I could not get to sleep
and an agitated rapping on my door made me start up quickly from a
restless slumber. My window was open and the choking fumes of chlorine
poured into the room while Madame rapped away, exclaiming, "Monsieur
the Colonel; the asphyxiating gas has arrived." I slammed the window
to, soaked a muffler in water and wrapped it over my mouth and nose
while robed in a dressing gown, I hastened down stairs. My own gas
mask, carefully placed in a corner, had been moved, and, in the dark,
I could not find it. I gathered the four women into the inner kitchen
and made them breathe through towels wrung out in a solution of
ammonium carbonate, which we were fortunate enough to find, while we
excluded as much gas as possible by wet towels placed over the cracks
in the doors.

It was a most unpleasant experience. As we were nearly seven miles
from the German line, it was quite evident that the gas must have been
discharged in tremendous quantity to have reached us in the strength
it did. I had visions of the Germans discharging gas for hours and
killing everything that breathed for miles back of the lines. It was a
horrible sensation to realize that you had been caught like rats in a
cellar and would slowly die of asphyxiation. The gas crept in through
the doors, and it was quite impossible to breathe except through
towels saturated with the chemical solution. I wondered how the
Germans would feel about it when they came over through a country
devoid of all life and whether they would take the trouble to bury all
the women and children and dead animals.

Breathing was steadily becoming more and more difficult, when
suddenly the door bell rang. One of the girls insisted on going to
answer it, and quickly came back to report that a neighbor had called
to see whether they were all right, and that the gas cloud had passed.
Never did fresh air taste so sweet to me, and I wasted no time in
sending to a hospital for a set of masks so as to be prepared should
another gas cloud arrive.

The streak of gas that crossed our section of the town must have
drifted along some depre