Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-05-17
GREEN CLOUDS OF FRIGHTFULNESS
FUME OUT FROM GRISLY GAS BOMBS
Death From Asphyxiation
Most Dreadful, Veteran of
Ypres Battle Says
"Maleficent Science" of the
Germans Scored by Sur
geon Major
By ELLEN ADAIR
Written Specially for Evening Ledger

LONDON, April 2s-I have lust been
conversing with my cheerful friend, the sur
geon major. whose wounds are not sufii-
cienty better yet to enable him to return
to the front. He was talking reminiscently
of the second battle Of Ypres. But when
he spoke of asphyxiating gas, the cheeriness
left his face, and a. big frown came instead.
ITS frightful," he said 'it's beyond all
description. I've seen horrors out in Cen
trail Africa, and wandered among cannibals
whose doings are not always recordable-
but for sheer awfuness commend me to
asphyxiating gas every time! The very
memory of those gassed Canadians sickens
me. They fell by the hundred, paralyzed
and suffocating, shriekng and choking, with
bursting eyes and blue, swollen faces. AL
though myself was about thousand yards
distant from the fumes. I grew sick and
giddy and incapacitated. How terrible,
then, for those who were right in the thick
Of 1t
A HORRIBLE DEATH.
"In hospitals I've seen hardened nurses
faint at the sight of these cases. I've seen
strong men break down in an agony of
tears as they've watched beside the bed of
some poor chap they cared for, who was
dying slowly of the fumes. Nero himself
couldn't have invented anything more ex-
cruciating than the pain of 1t"
y The surgeon majors kindly face was red
with Indignation. And my thoughts wan
dered back to a scene | had witnessed not
SO very long ago, when / went to visit AN
old friend of mine who had been "gassed":
how badly did not at first know. He was
very brave, poor boy, as he sat there,
propped bolt upright in bed his face a
queer gray color Then suddenly the palor
changed to darker tint, and he began to
sway, to scream, to gurgle, the white froth
pouring from his lungs. hope that shall
never be called upon to witness such agony
again.
Yes" continued the surgeon major, i've
attended /, scores of these cases. but God
help me. I'D sooner be shot than witness
their sufferings. There they sit, muscles
stif as iron. mouths agape and eyes glaz-
ing, faces and arms a bluish-black and
shrieking to be allowed to die
1t certainly was a long time before re-
prisals were taken UP by the Allies.
"Maehcent science is loathsome to U.S."
said Professor Appel, president of the
French Institute. I'VE wished neither to
burn, suffocate poison our foes. But
now we shall reply with an eye for an eye
and a tooth for tooth. What else can
we do?" .
The British sappers used gas of British
make at the Battle of Loos, but of very
humane type, which merely puts the au-
versary out of commission for the time be-
ing, causes a little pain and leaves but few
after effects. Unlike the awful chlorine
Canadians at Ypres. this gas produces no
"dry-land drowning"
SECOND YPRES FRAY.
1 have met and talked with many men
who were all through the SECOND battle of
Ypres, and the one thing that stands clear
in their memory Is the slow approach or the
green clouds of "frightfulness." It was in
the dusk of an April evening that the seven
foot banks of vapor rolled over from the
German trenches towards the Allies, kill
ing and crushing and laying waste every
thing with their poisonous fumes.
That asphyxiating gas Is highly danger
GUS even to the gassers themselves was
proved at Sokal, when the reservoirs were
bombed by German airmen
thus dealing destruction throughout their
own lines A terrible scene took place. A
Russian officer writes: THE cries of the
enemy were fearful to hear. Nightmare fig
ures in their gas masks tore along the
gurgling. gesticulating, tearing like
maniacs at the gear they wore. One could
not but pity them, although 1t was their
own weapon that had turned against them"
GRISLY TERRoRs
Its hard to make people understand
the grisliness of this war;" continued the
surgeon major "if some of the people here
at home could only have seen our operating
theatre out in Flanders--a ditch in the
rain The patients. poor souls, lay
on the soaking grass, waiting their turn
of the knife, and many of them were how
erng on the very edge of that shadowy
from which there is no return. |
had to perform 80 operations in one day, all