giment in most other European
capitals.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE FIFTEENTH OF JUNE, 1918

I happened to be the officer on duty in the Battery Command Post on the
night of June 14th-15th. There had been a thick fog for several days and
not much firing. No one expected anything unusual. The Battery was much
below strength owing to the ravages of what the doctors in the mountains
called "mountain fever" and the doctors on the plain called influenza.
We had, if I remember rightly, about forty men in Hospital owing to this
cause alone. I myself had a touch of it, but, thinking I could probably
count on a quiet night, I refused the offer of a brother officer to take
my place, coldly calculating that a few nights later, when it would be
my turn to take his duty, I might have more to do. But my hopes of much
sleep were soon dispersed.

Orders came in from Brigade for an elaborate counter-battery shoot with
gas shell, in two parts, one between 11 p.m. and midnight, the other
between 2 and 3 a.m. We had never fired gas shell from six-inch
howitzers before, though we had been warned that we should soon be
required to do so. We had no gas shell in the Battery, but we were
informed by Brigade that a sufficient quantity would arrive by the time
the shoot was to begin. In fact, however, the first consignment of gas
shell was not delivered in time to enable us to take part in the first
part of the bombardment, and I was told not to fire high explosive
instead, as that would tend to disperse the gas which other Batteries
would be simultaneously firing on the same targets. The method adopted
on this and later occasions, when gas was used, was that a number of our
own Batteries should concentrate for, say, five minutes at the fastest
rate of fire possible on a particular enemy Battery, then all switch
together to another enemy Battery, and so on, all coming back together
on to the first enemy Battery after an interval sufficient to lull the
human elements forming part of the target into a delusive sense of
security and a return to slumber without their masks, or, alternatively,
to make them wear their masks continously for prolonged hours of
expectation, thus subjecting them to much discomfort, depriving them of
sleep, lowering their morale, and making them likelier victims for fresh
forms of devilment in the morning. War is a filthy thing, and must be
stamped out ruthlessly. The facts of gas will have helped to drive this
simple conv