# War's Dark Frame/Gas School and the Artillery

CHAPTER XV
GAS SCHOOL AND THE ARTILLERY
WE went then to be taught how that other enemy, vermin, is defeated, and we all, I think, congratulated ourselves that the rest of the day wasn't likely to hold any serious threat. We were properly paid out for that momentary confidence. We were shown quite clearly how little in the war zone you can look forward from minute to minute.
We drove to an old factory building, now busy manufacturing cleanliness and health. It was crowded with Tommies in from the trenches for their periodic ablution. Community bathing is, and ought to be, a noisy, cheerful affair. These men were oddly silent against the roar of the guns which had re-commenced at the close of the luncheon hour. They climbed an outside staircase, removed their clothing, and threw it to the ground. Underclothes and uniforms were picked up and placed in a disinfecting vat, from which they were passed for scrubbing to an army of French and Belgian women—many of them refugees—on the lower floor. Under the cir​ cumstances this proximity of men and women should have stimulated a laughing volubility, but the stillness down here was violated only by the swishing of cloth against boards and a perpetual drip of water like the ticking of innumerable clocks. In a corner sat a circle of women who inspected and repaired the clothing passed to them from the steam drying room. They were like a group of religeuses to whom the chatter of the world is a thing forgotten.
Upstairs the men splashed in tubs which they filled according to their fancy from alternate vats of hot and cold water. About this cleansing of bare flesh within sound of the cannon there was something providently funereal. It was as if each silent man understood that his self-preparation might be for a shroud.
From a recreation hut near by burst forth the measures of a lively phonograph record, but no feet twitched in rhythm, no voices caught up the words. As we walked on, the lilting phrases made a brave fight against the pervading solemnity until they were smothered beneath the explosions from beyond the village.
A staff officer joined us—a fellow who ought to have been rowing or playing cricket at Oxford. He had the enthusiasm of extreme youth for a scheme he had carried out to entertain the soldiers. ​ He took us into a wooden shed, furnished with rows of benches, telling us of the trip to Paris he had made to purchase a cinema outfit.
"Every night they come here in hordes," he cried. "The men pay a penny, and the officers a franc. You know, if the war lasts long enough I wouldn't be surprised if we got back the price of the affair."
His enthusiasm made him close the doors and run a reel through the machine. It chanced to be a review of this division by the Queen before its departure for the front. The long rows swung by, and the officers commenced to recognise faces and to talk There were some we remembered—the general's for instance.
"There goes poor So and So. The Huns did him in with a trench mortar a month ago."
“Hello! There's Jerry—home, minus a leg."
Or, "The men like this thing because they see old friends, that they won't see any other way now, walking along with them."
It was an abominably depressing performance. Something about the mechanism stuttered. The light flashed out. The screen was dark. Our active showman was full of apologies as he ran stumbling about the stage.
A Shattered Farm Behind the Firing Line
here," a major said. "How about it, Williams? Where are all the official photographers?"
"I saw Billy Jones the other day at the base. Next time I run into him I'll put him on to you fellows."
“Thanks awfully, but they say Billy's a reckless one. Maybe he won't last."
"You fellows deserve pictures. Never mind. That's enough of this ghastly film. We're off to see what Smith's at."
And Smith, found in an old stable crowded with steel cylinders like oxygen tanks, proved to be another boy of college age and appearance. The buttons of his uniform were black, and his fingers were stained.
“It's the gas," he said.
Through the open doorway we saw a sergeant drilling a squad in a field.
“Those chaps are at gas school," he said.
"Care to see my curriculum?"
One cause of the remarkable efficiency at the British front was constantly impressed upon us. When the men weren't fighting they were at school. Gas school! We wondered exactly what that could be. So we strolled into the field and stretched ourselves in the pleasant grass like a party lounging on the outskirts of a ball game.
A line of soldiers, with full equipment, faced ​ us. For a time the sergeant hurried them through conventional evolutions. Then a new manual, born of this war, followed. The sergeant snarled out the commands as if he hated them, as if the words had to overcome a revolt in his throat.
Put on!—gas—masks!”
The men sprang into clumsy attitudes. They rested their rifles in the crooks of their left arms. They tore open the bags at their right hips. They snatched off their caps and drew the masks over their heads, buttoning the ends into their collars. With a straggling haste they took up their rifles and returned to attention.
One's first impulse was to laugh. The brown faces were featureless save for round, staring goggles. They retained no individuality, no human semblance. These hideous figures might have been visitors from a far planet, or monstrosities escaped from this earth, too violently disturbed. As they walked through squad formations the voices of the file leaders were choked and tongue-tied.
“Halt! Take off—masks!”
The last word had the quality of a shriek, angry and threatening. You glanced at your own mask, responding to the sullen temper with which it had always filled you.
“They're quick," the instructor boasted. ​ Some of the men need scarcely half a minute. It's wise to be quick at that game. Want to see the gas house?"
He led us to a small unpainted shack in the centre of the field. The joints of its doors per- mitted it to be hermetically sealed. A single cylinder stood in the corner.
“What the deuce is this for?”
The youthful instructor, who ought to have been at a different sort of class himself, smiled.
"It's a splendid institution. I put every man through this at least once. Go in with him, shut the door, and turn on the gas. He knows he's getting it thicker than he ever could in the trenches. When he comes out he's got confidence in his mask. He doesn't go around mooning and scared to death about the next gas attack. It teaches him to know the difference, too, be- tween gas and phosphorous bombs and smoke pots.
We confessed our own need of preparation.
“This new gas," he said, "is terribly hard to see. If it shows at all it is like a slight mist. It's the other way around with phosphorus and smoke pots. Sergeant, bring up some of those bombs."
Again we settled ourselves in the attitudes of spectators at a game. The sergeant came up with a basket, filled with fat candles and tins of ​ the size and appearance of tomato cans. The officer picked up one, touched his cigarette to a fuse in the end, and tossed it on the grass a few yards away.
"Don't move," he grinned, seeing our startled expressions. "Only cnough explosive to set it off well."
The tin puffed like a faulty firecracker and out of it sprang an unbelievable volume of pure white smoke which formed perfect and beautiful curling patterns as it blotted out the lower end of the field. The sergeant threw one or two more and placed candles near by from which vast clouds of smoke, sooty or orange coloured, hissed wickedly. A thick, velvety curtain banded with yellows and whites and blacks was drawn across the field. In its fringes the form of the sergeant was lost now and again.
"The merry villagers," Williams said," will picture the Huns at their doors."
We heard one or two shouts, indeed, and, as we walked through the drift of smoke, we saw French children squatted on the fence, pointing and laughing and admiring.
"French children aren't easily alarmed," the instructor grinned. "I'll wager they can tell you the calibre of each one of those guns you hear firing over there. They know just what I've been ​up to. It's as good for them as stealing a peep at a cricket match."
I had held my breath, walking through the vapour. I asked if the fumes weren't dangerous.
He shook his head.
They sometimes use a smoke curtain to veil a gas attack, and at home I daresay cinema devotees fancy this stuff is gas. It is useful to veil any kind of an attack. Whenever it appears over the trenches it keeps the other fellow guessing."
We shook his stained hand and returned to the cars to keep our rendezvous with the general.
The general's limousine was waiting in front of his headquarters. He came out and climbed in. The cars wound out of the village. With a sense of shock we recognised that road. The shattered beacon of the church tower was straight ahead. We hadn't realised it would be necessary in order to visit the batteries to return to the brigade headquarters village. And there was a change. Instead of the one we had seen that morning, two observation balloons of the enemy were suspended in the sky like monstrous planets visible by day. The drivers responded as if to a signal. The cars jumped ahead along the naked road. The lull of a moment was lost in a sudden rush of sound. Perhaps we had been seen from the balloons and a range signalled. Above the ​ roaring of guns we heard shells shriek. Overhead puffs of smoke were born. The roar be. came continuous. Other puffs appeared.
"Look at that!" the driver of the car cried.
The other cars were far ahead. We sprang after them. The wind shrilled past. We tore from the black curtain that had followed a heavy explosion. Jetty sheets waved close at hand. There was nothing to do except to get every ounce of speed out of the cars. There was no point in leaning forward. The cars were like great beetles, scurrying from a foot that tried to crush them.
In a moment we were skidding to the right among the trees of the brigade village. As we reduced speed I saw a number of French civilians run from an estaminet towards the boundaries of the trees. They stood there, gaping at the rolling black smoke.
“Why aren't they hunting a cellar?” I asked.
The driver snickered.
"Those old Frenchmen! You see they live here. The village isn't bombarded much. Some of those shells came pretty close. They don't want a cellar. They want to see why the Huns are strafing so near their front doors. And say, they don't want to miss anything anyway. But they'll be mad to have their appetiser disturbed." ​ One felt rather sorry for the Germans, because all along they've thought they could scare the French. That's one of their excuses for being horrible.
The incident was a prophylactic for our own apprehension. We were grateful enough to drive up whole to a battery commander's headquarters on the edge of the village. The general stood in the middle of the road, surrounded by anxious officers. Williams drew me aside. He laughed nervously.
"The general," he said, "has been asking if you fellows know you've been under heavy shellfire. A piece of one of those high explosive shells, he said —"
"I think I know it," I responded meekly. But that was past. The immediate future was the vital concern.
A ruddy faced colonel walked from the house, as thoroughly disapproving at the sight of the general as the staff men were. He opened with that question which had become altogether too familiar to-day.
"What are the Huns strafing over there?"
The general no more than any one else could answer.
​ “At any rate," the general proposed, "these fellows have been strafed so hard to-day I want you to take them out to a battery and give them the pleasure of seeing some strafing back."
"Run your cars down the road and back of that shed," the colonel suggested.
"I'll have to be getting home," the general said.
The discontent of the staff officers increased, probably at the thought of his returning on that road, but the general smiled, saying good-bye easily. We saw him go with a real regret. We listened anxiously for a fresh burst of firing from that direction until we knew he had had time to reach his headquarters.
The colonel got his walking stick and led us around the house.
“You don't mind crossing a field?"
Publicly our route was a matter of indifference, but I think we had all had enough of fields. In the open country the twin balloons were like the eyes of an angry god. Certainly it was all of the mile the colonel had mentioned to a farm which showed amazingly few scars. Within a stone's throw of it the battery nestled in a scanty grove of trees—a row of log and sand bag redoubts which to us appeared to offer no real protection from scouts in aeroplanes. But every battery I saw, every huge gun brought up for a bombard​ ment, seemed dangerously unreserved. Actually a few twigs, scattered bits of green, make an impenetrable veil against the prying airmen. We opened a wooden door and descended into one of the redoubts. Half a dozen men, scrupulously clean, unlike the trench Tommies, sprang to attention in a circle about the breech of a howitzer. The gun was as clean as its grooms—wickedly beautiful and capable. The colonel muttered orders to a sergeant who nodded to the artillerymen. One lifted a projectile from a compartment in the wall. Others inserted the charge behind it, and a corporal closed the breech. The sergeant entered a cubicle at one side where a desk squatted beneath a telephone instrument. He bent over a piece of paper pinned to the wall, and from it rattled off a series of numbers like a football signal.
In response the neat men elevated the gun's great nose with an impudent ease.
The sergeant glanced up.
All ready? Lower your screen."
A soldier released a cord. From before the mouth of the gun a shrubbery screen fell away with a slight rustling.
The colonel glanced at us.
“Maybe you'd better put your fingers in your ears.
I noticed that every one in the small chamber ​ had his mouth open as if gaping at an unforeseen phenomenon. The sergeant's voice for the first time lost its monotony. It made its jump.
"Fire!
The sleek barrel sprang outward, then staggered back upon itself as the cylinders took up the recoil. The men's mouths snapped shut as they flung back the breech and prepared the gun for another charge. Ears still sang.
The air in the redoubt seemed thin and of an odd odour scarcely like burnt powder The voice of the foreign office man was no longer vibrant.
"Where did that one go?"
The colonel smiled.
"The range was for a headquarters, so it's safe to say we stirred up a colonel at least."
Maybe spoiled his tea," the foreign office man said.
"Do the Huns take tea?"
© Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
A Few Twigs, Scattered Bits of Green, make an Impenetrable Veil against the Prying Airmen
offered to this army. The sense of a personal grievance is a powerful backer for patriotism in keeping men at war—that, and the impossibility, as in this case, of seeing the result of your shilling a day labour. I wondered what these neat, gentlemanly figures would do, what they would say, if they could witness the death and the maiming and the tears sent forth from their clean and remote hands. Close-in fighting, it was clear, had nothing in common with artillery work. A temporary insanity of self-protection and retaliation lets a man look on what he has done without nausea and stark horror. In the faces of many soldiers you see an eventual understanding, an effort to stifle recollection.