their impetuosity; they do not know fear; it was impossible to hold
them; they rushed out before their time and some of them suffered from
the fire of our own guns. It was in this fight that our own famous and
gallant regiment, the "Princess Pats," was decimated, sustaining a loss
of over 700 men. This magnificent body of fellows went into the war
1,150 strong and at the last roll call but 22 of the original men
answered. The price paid was too much for what was accomplished.

We were then ordered to billets and stayed there until April 20th, when
we were ordered to Ypres, arriving there April 21. My battery was
stationed at St. Julien, one and a half miles northwest of the city.
Here I was detailed as observer, my duty being to get into the
front-line trench and from the most advantageous nook that I could find,
try to discover whatever I could about the movement of the enemy,
communicate my knowledge to the telephonist who would in turn send it to
headquarters.

Late in the afternoon I reported to the telephonist that a big fire was
in progress somewhere on our left, as an immense smoke cloud was rising
there and coming toward us. As shells had burst his wire, rendering it
useless, he started out to deliver the message by word of mouth, running
on top of the parapet as he started. That was the last I ever saw of
him; he did not come back; Fritz was coming and ahead of him rolled the
sinister-looking cloud on our left. Then happened the strangest thing!
The line trembled from one end to the other, as the Algerian troops
immediately on our left, jumped out of their trenches, falling as they
ran. The whole thing seemed absolutely incomprehensible--until I got a
whiff of the gas. They ran like men possessed, gasping, choking, blinded
and dropping with suffocation. They could hardly be blamed. It was a
new device in warfare and thoroughly illustrative of the Prussian idea