Tides of Honour

Second Battle of Ypres

The 2nd Battle of Ypres (April 22 - May 15, 1915). Danny finds himself cornered by the Germans' insidious chlorine gas attack and facing a very strange solution.

Interesting fact: During the Battle of Ypres, John MacRae spent twenty minutes jotting down the world's most famous war poem: "In Flanders Fields".

   

In April 1915, Danny's troop arrived in Ypres, France, joining the French and British where they held back the German line. If it hadn't been wartime, the night could have felt almost celebratory. German fireworks lit up the dark so the sky sparkled orange and red, raining fire. Flares burned through clouds of smoke and the pop pop pop of machine gun bullets whizzed over Danny’s head like horribly amplified popcorn. He had learned the different sounds shells made, the noisemakers and the screechers, learning which gave him advance notice, and which didn’t. The screechers were the ones to watch for. Those shells carried shrapnel, bits of metal that cut through anything and anyone. Men, horses, mules – anything in range was sliced apart like meat. The weapons roared over the desolate field for which the soldiers gave their lives, they ripped past the gangly bits of barbed wire, they vibrated the earth until the clay walls of the trenches threatened to buckle. Sometimes they hit close enough that mud and rocks buried everything in the trenches, including the men.

The following morning, though, everything was eerily quiet. The change was so unexpected it felt wrong. Even the grey, clouded shade of the day seemed wrong. Stifling, though it was cold. Danny and the others scaled the trench walls and peeked over the edge, curious, but they could see no action across the way.

“Hey! Would you look at that.” Danny heard from somewhere in the trench.

“What?” another asked. “I see nothing.”

“The air. Look at the fog along the ground. Ain't never seen the air go that colour before.”

As Danny watched, a low, thick cloud, the colour of yellowy-green mucous, began to slide toward them from somewhere on the German side. Muttering started up among the men, a nervous shift tightening the strain in the trench as they tried to figure out the possible threat.

“Smoke screen,” Mick murmured, checking his Ross. “Fritz'll be comin' up behind that smoke, he will. Get ready, lads.”

It sure was thick, Danny thought. Mick could be right. The whole German army could be hiding behind it and no one would have any idea. Brilliant. On the other hand, that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Meant the Germans couldn't see them, either.

“Gas!” someone yelled, and a muted clinking of metal broke the quiet as men began to strap on masks.

“Can you smell that? What is that smell? I recognize that,” said a man nearby.

Danny sniffed. Vanilla? No. Something fruity, but not apples. Pineapple? He sniffed again. Yeah. His mother loved pineapples. His father tried to get one for her every year around Christmas time. Pineapple and ... and ... Pepper?

“Goddamn,” whispered a voice on Danny's other side.

Danny peered down at him, raising his eyebrows in question. They called the little man The Professor because everyone said he was some kind of genius scientist. He looked it, too: round spectacles that tended to slide down the thin bridge of his nose, a slender frame supporting a badly-fitting uniform. Danny had never figured out why such a scholarly fellow would sign up for the front line, but he had.

The Professor was looking at the cloud of smoke with an expression of complete astonishment.  “Well, I'll be goddamned,” the little man said slowly. “I know what that smell is.”