“A queer kind o’ stink!” said one of them, sniffing.

Some of the men began coughing. Others were rubbing their eyes, as though they smarted.

The poison-gas⁠ ⁠… The wind had carried it halfway across No Man’s Land, then a swirl changed its course, and flicked it down a gully, and swept it right round to the Black Watch in the narrow trenches. Some German shellfire was coming, too. In one small bunch eight men fell in a mush of blood and raw flesh. But the gas was worse. There was a movement in the trenches, the huddling together of frightened men who had been very brave. They were coughing, spitting, gasping. Some of them fell limp against their fellows, with pallid cheeks which blackened. Others tied handkerchiefs about their mouths and noses, but choked inside those bandages, and dropped to earth with a clatter of shovels. Officers and men were cursing and groaning. An hour later, when the whistles blew, there were gaps in the line of the 1st Division which went over the top. In the trenches lay gassed men. In No Man’s Land others fell, swept by machine-gun bullets, shrapnel, and high explosives. The 1st Division was “checked.”⁠ ⁠…