GAS PLANT HEROES.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14839, 17 February 1919, Page 9

GAS PLANT HEROES.

BALTIMORE'S CRYPTS OF DEATH During' his recent American visit O. R. S. Black, of Palmerston, Heard much of the new- gas America had made, so potent in its effect that the experts avowed that if used in. the maximum quantity prepayable it would! have blotted the German nation off the map; so dangerous to handle and make, and so faitally diffusive that it accounted for more lives in the making than were lost in any regiment at the front. "It was at Baltimore," says Cr. Black, "that this gas-making plant was erected — the largest in the world. The gas was manufactured by soldiers who, every hour they were engaged', risked the most awful of deaths. The special hospitals attached to the plant were filled with cases too terrible to describe. An instance or two of the exterminating quality of the gas were related to me. An officer coming from the factory to his office, with his rubber goloshe's on-, caught a chair by the back and pulled it out to sit down! at his table. The telephone rang, and while he attended to the call another officer sat do^n in the chair and wrote a letter. Evidently a spot of the gas had been deposited on the chair back, for a few days later the officer who had written the letter complained of a burn in the Track. His clothes dropped to pieces, and in three weeks his was a charred' corpse. Another man, passing a down-pipe at the factory, happened to kick it so that a drop fell on his boot. Knowing the danger he at once wiped the boot clean. Nevertheless in three weeks the foot was a cinder. Yet men stuck to their job with this grim treacherous "servant," reaping none of the honors bestowed upon their more fortunate fellows in the field. — Manawatu Times.