Gassed: Messines Ridge, 7 June 1917

                                                             William Pressey

                                   From 1915 to 1918 the Germans used a succession of poison gases
                                   - chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas - each of which was
                                   promptly duplicated on the Allied side. This incident takes place in
                                    the area where we visit the actual trenches on the trip to Belgium,
 

                                   We had been shooting most of the night and the Germans had been
                                   hitting back with shrapnel, high explosive and gas shells.  With the
                                   terrific noise and blinding flashes of gunfire, if a lull occurred for
                                   only a few minutes and you were leaning against something, you
                                   had just to close your eyes and you were asleep.  Nearing daylight
                                   we wore told to rest.  We dived into the dugout, 1 pulled off my:tunic
                                   and boots and was asleep in no time at all.
                                    1 was awakened by a terrific crash.  'Re roof came down on my
                                   chest and legs and 1 couldn't move anything but my head. 1 thought,

                                   'So this is it, then.' 1 found 1 could hardly breathe.  Then I heard
                                   voices.  Other fellows with gas helmets on, looking very frightening
                                   in the half-light, were lifting timber off me and one was forcing a
                                   gas helmet on me.  Even when you were all right, to wear a 'gas
                                   helmet was uncomfortable, your nose pinched, sucking air through
                                   a canister of chemicals.  As 1 was already choking 1 remember
                                   fighting against having this helmet on. -
                                     -Re next thing I knew was being carried on a stretcher past our
                                   officers and some distance from the guns.  I heard someone ask,
                                   -'Who's that?"Bombardier Pressey, sir."Bloody hell.' 1 was put into
                                   an ambulance and taken to the base, where we were placed on the
                                   stretchers side by side on the floor of a marquee, with allout twelve
                                   inches in between. 1 suppose I resembled a kind of fish with my
                                   mouth open gasping for air.  It 'Seemed as if my lungs were gradually
                                   shutting up and my heart pounded away in my cars like the beat of
                                   a drum.  On looking at the 'chap next to me I felt sick, for green stuff
                                   was oozing from the side of his mouth.
                                     To get air into my lungs was real agony and the less 1 got the less
                                   the pain. 1 dozed off for short periods but seemed to wake in a sort
                                   of'panic.  To case the pain in my chest 1 may'subconsciously have
                                   stopped breathing, until the pounding of my heart woke me up.  I
                                   was always surprised when 1 found myself awake, for 1 felt sure that
                                   1 would die in my sleep.  So little was known about treatment for
                                   various gases, that 1 never had treatment for phosgene, the type 1
                                   was supposed to have had.  And I'm sure that the gas some of the
                                   other poor fellows had swallowed was worse than phosgenc.  Now
                                   and then orderlies would carry out a stretcher.