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Image provided by: New York State Military History Museum
12 GAS ATTACK INTO THE Private W alter A . Davenport Tells How the Student Officers Were Gassed. W e quit our several jobs, 'w e n t down to the arm o ry and enlisted. The Colonel spoke the word and we were off down Main street w ith the band out front. The women folks wept. The m ayor called us heroes. The clergym an prayed for us publicly and the population, generally, got together and show ered us w ith ten thousand things th a t added to our naturally curtailed creature comforts. And, to be brief about it, a fairly good tim e was had by all if the home new spaper was to be taken seriously. The enthusiastic reporters said th a t we m arched off to the training camps like vet erans—grim, stern, self-reliant, determ ined. The best can be said about th a t is to re peat th a t the reporter was enthusiastic. I am one of the m inority th a t loves reporters. Six Months Elapse. W e ’ll assum e th a t six m o nths have passed ■—six m o n ths of training for w a r as w a r is today. George Waffus, one of us who par ticipated in th a t lionized departure for the training camp, gets a furlough. George goes home. A fter m o ther, father, Sister Sue and B rother Bill and everybody else has had a chance to weep on George’s greatly enlarged chest and w ring his Bessem er-processed hands-—hands th a t once were inclined to pulpiness—th e r e ’s tim e to sit down, look George over and do a bit of thinking. A Digression on the Insignificance of Man. One of the real calam ities of the w a r is th a t every m an and woman—soldier and civilian—in these beloved U n ited States, did not hear L ieutenant Colonel Applin, Four teenth H u ssars, B ritish Army, in Converse College Auditorium , two w eeks ago. I had a whole bonnet full of ideas for Gas Attack stories before I heard Colonel Applin speak. They w ere perfectly sound ideas, I m ight add. They m u st have been sound because they had lived through m any million words and passed through the typew riters of sev eral hundred aspiring w riters and they are ju s t as good today as they were when dis covered. H ave you never experienced, to its u tter most, the realization of ju s t how damned un im p o rtant you, as an individual, are? Did you ever stop to think th a t w h a t you thought m ade not the slightest difference in the world to anybody? It is not my job, however, to enter upon the som ewhat difficult task of putting the L ieutenant Colonel’s speech across in this magazine. Sufficient to say th a t he said it all and added to it. Returning to Private Waffus. But we’ll return to Private W affus. Phys ically, Waffus is three or four tim es the man he was when he was wept away th a t senti- VALLEY OFBREATH m ental afternoon six m o n ths previous. You com m ent upon th a t by telling him how fine he is looking. But has it occurred to you w h at Private W affus, as he stands before you, represents; just w h a t work it has entailed to m ake him even half good enough to put up the quality of scrapping th a t the all-too-efficient Hun compels? The contents of this magazine are cen sored. If the following gets past the blue pencil at Division H e a d q u a rters, you may take it as my necessarily lim ited effort to convey to you just w h a t Major General O’- Ryan is doing through L ieutenant Colonel Taylor to m ake us W affuses in the Officers Training School fit to fight and im p a rt our knowledge to others. On Being G-assed. W e have been gassed. W e have hurled bombs th a t flew back at us so rapidly th a t we received the im p ression th a t we had throw n them backw ard. W e have vibrated at the safe end of C h auchat autom a tic rifles. W e have speared Dummy Huns on a bayonet run th a t would discourage the Ringling B rothers. You’ve heard about gas, of course—lachry m a tory gas and gas th a t suffocates and cor rodes you and ruins you generally. Terrible, isn’t it? We, too, had heard all about it. W e had received, lectures from B ritish sol diers who knew whereof they spoke—sol diers who had been gassed and had come over here to tell us about it. We w ere taken over to the beautiful hillock w h e reon the sealed gas cham b e rs squat. T h e re we w ere drilled in putting on and taking off the m asks. Incidentally you folks have no idea w h a t the word discom fort m eans until you try on a gas m a sk or respirator. Did you ever try swallowing a hot w a ter bottle? Did you ever clip a clothes pin over your nose and then try earnestly to thrust your head into a rubber boot? Sometime cover your favorite pillow w ith a slip made of Tanglefoot fly-paper and try a nap th e r e on. W e got quite used to the bally thing after a few days. We no longed strangled. We were less m essy after w e aring it for a half hour or so and believe me one can be messy w ith one’s nostrils clamped together and a two-inch hose betw een one’s teeth. W e becam e so proficient that we could flip the m asks on in six seconds. And then they decided to gas us. Into the Valley of Breath. In platoons we were ushered into the lachrym ator. Captain Stephen Delanoy re ceived us. W e were informed that the gas w ithin those herm e tically sealed walls was not as strong as th a t which we would en counter in the front line trenches. Captain Delanoy talked about tear gas for several m inutes and then announced th a t we should take off our masks. He pointed to the door and told us th a t as soon as we could stand the sting no longer we might feel quite free to leave. We took off our m a s k s ! You’ve heard of speed, of course. You’ve likely read about Joe Loomis running the hundred yards, and Dario R e sta driving his m o tor car 115 miles an hour and Georges Guynemer battleplaning through the air at the rate of 130 miles an hour and all th a t sort of speed. They used to cite lightening as the standard to which speed m ight best be compared. They speak about the light of the sun traveling through space at a rather lively gait. W rong, my friends, all wrong. E x it— Hurriedly. W e took off our m a s k s ! T h a t which followed would have made Loomis, R esta, Guynemer, lightening and the jolly old sun tear their hair in pure chagrin. N o thing like it has been seen since soldiers began w earing hats. Before we took off those m asks I was flanked by Students B u rrell and M enden hall. Both men are crack sprinters and jum p ers. They can do the hundred in twelve seconds in khaki and brogans, and B u rrell can jum p tw e n ty feet w ithout tak ing his hands out of his pockets. W ith all due modesty, I claim th a t I em erged from that door at a speed som e thing more startling than fifty miles per hour, but M endenhall and B u rrell did it nothing at all flat. And they could have done better had not several students clung to their blouse tails. As I said, nothing quite like th a t speed has been seen since soldiers carried arm s. It made one think of the possibilities. W h en we answ e r first call at reveille w ith some thing approxim ating th a t speed w e’ll he w alking up and down Europe looking for someone strong enough to m ake us use both arm s in a fight. W h en we stopped running we were led and shoved to the brow of the hill w h e re we could weep in chorus. W e wept like boarding school girls at com m encem ent time. And then the chlorine tank. We entered the cham b e r of asphixiation a bit more seriously. One inhalation would not kill us, but that inhalation would ruin the toughest lungs am o n g st us. No m an could have lived in the cham b e r more than two and a half m inutes w ithout his m ask. W e were warned to wrap all jew e lry in handkerchiefs and bury the roll in our clothing. The Real Thing. The gas was turned on. Outside the sun was shining, w ith all the radiance of a Sicilian morning. From the wonderful hill on which the gas cham b e rs rest we could see the Blue Ridge M ountains tw e n ty miles away and all the gorgeous valley betw een. In a great circle we saw the miles of lovely (Continued on page 29).
