L-Cpl B. J. Douglas, 2nd Battalion Essex Regt, is in Shrewsbury military hospital suffering from the effects of poison gas. The Lutonian, who lived in Back Street, had had nine months experience at the front.
In a letter to The Luton News, he wrote that suffering from gas poisoning was like living in hell, and, frankly, he would sooner die than have to face it again. He had been been in the region of Ypres and Hill 60.
"I first of all saw a yellow-green smoke. It's very colour was sickening. The poison gas came sweeping towards us, a mysterious and unnatural enemy, quite close to the ground, never rising to 8 or 9 feet above the surface.
"We got the gas at rather short range between the Huns' trenches and our own, and the Germans themselves were not more than 400 or 500 yards away. You could not stop its progress. It required very little wind to propel it, and it was impossible to fight against it.
"Shells and shrapnel did not worry me, the overpowering yellow smoke gripped one by the throat. It seemed as if two sharp knives had fixed in one's chest, and were slowly trying to meet. I blindly staggered away, unable to shake it off.
"I nearly went mad for days; didn't know who I was, or what I was doing, nothing but fighting or gasping for breath. All the time when I attempted to to take breath the two knives were piercing my chest from each side and meeting in the centre. It required a great effort even to whisper at first
"Several of my comrades were wounded in the trench, waiting to be taken to hospital in the evening. They were tortured to death as they laid there, and some of them died in the motor ambulance going to hospital.
"Night and day the doctors at the base hospital were pumping something into us with special apparatus. I was removed to five different hospitals in France before I was invalided home to Holly House Hospital, Shrewsbury, where the doctors, sisters and nurses are doing their utmost to pull us through."
L-Cpl Douglas (pictured) said that, although still very bad, he was making good progress towards recovery.
[Luton News, May 20th, 1915]