More than a hundred Y. M. C. A. men gassed and wounded to date, and
more than six killed. One friend of mine stepped down into his cellar
one morning, got a full breath of gas, and was dead in two minutes.
There had been a gas-raid the day before, and the gas had remained in
the cellar. Another I know stayed in his hut and served his men even
though six shell fragments came through the hut while he was doing it.
Another I know lived in a dugout for three months, under shell fire
every day. One day a shell took off the end of the old chateau in
which he was serving the men. His dugout was in the cellar. But he
did not leave. Another day another shell took off the other end of the
chateau, but he did not leave. He had no other place to go, and the
boys couldn't leave, so why should he go just because he could leave if
he wished? That was the way he looked at it. One man whom I
interviewed in Paris, a Baptist clergyman, crawled four hundred yards
at the Chateau-Thierry battle with a young lieutenant, dragging a
litter with them across a stubble wheat-field under a rain of
machine-gun bullets and shells, in plain view of the Germans, and
rescued a wounded colonel. When they brought him back they had to
crawl the four hundred yards again, pushing the litter before them inch
by inch.
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