* * * * The pleasantly sardonic gunner officer finished
his explanation, handed the microphone back into the van and made a signal with his hand. The 25-pounder just below us fired six rounds. They all hit the board hanging from the gallows and a puff of pink vapour drifted downwind over the limbless yet somehow not wholly incor- poreal scarcecrows. Half a dozen soldiers, in the negligent attire traditionally associated in military as in civilian life with scientific research, scampered downhill and retrieved a selection of the fields- men. All were liberally spattered with a red fluid. "We assume," said the gunner, in the tone of one who knows that he is displaying a slightly excessive chivalry, "that all these men were wearing eye- shields. This is an old type of gas and if they had been able to wash it off their hands and faces, and get their uniform and equipment off in—well, in about a minute, they'd have been none the worse." The Battalion, who had had between them a fairly wide experience of battlefields, pondered briefly the practicability of these measures and were then told about the new gases, which act upon the nerves. (" We captured a lot of the German stocks, but somebody else got the factory.") The new gases sounded most effective. * * * *
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