"Then, rising from somewhere near by, comes the gas, yellow or green. Then comes a sudden stinging in your nose. Your eyes water and run. You breathe fire. You suffocate. You burn alive. There are razors and needles in your throat. It is as if you drank boiling hot tea. Your lungs flame. You want to scratch and tear your body. You become half blind, half wild. Your head aches beyond description, you vomit, you drop exhausted, you die quickly.
Men were dying from the gas, their eyes popping, their faces green, and crying: "Water! Water! I'm choking! Air! Air! Air!" It is a frightful thing to hear your friends crying like that. I saw one die right before my eyes, rolling upon the ground as if mad, tearing at his chest. His fingers were crooked after his death, his body full of blue spots and his mouth white. Another poor wretch fell two or three feet from me, dying from the gas. He was sucking water from a dirty handkerchief.
Every other man seemed to fall. As I fought, I marveled that I was spared. And again came to me the belief that my life was charmed; that the bullet had not been melted, the shrapnel not been loaded, the gas not mixed which would cause my death.
An ecstatic confidence buoyed me up. I was brave, because I was so sure of life, while all my comrades seemed groveling in death." - Pvt. Roméo Houle, 4th Co., 14th Battalion, 65th Reg., 3rd inf. Brigade, 1st Canadian Division, Ypres, Belgium 1915 #ww1 #gasattack #reality #war #stayzero