The car was a pool of blood.

In what is one of his most harrowing diary entries, Grant Willard describes his first exposure to chemical warfare and losing one of his charges.

Sunday, August 19, 1917:

Beautiful morning. No calls came in during the night. Johnnie and I went on duty about noon. We made one trip to La Source, 2 to Sainte-Fine and got no more calls until 2 A.M. Monday when we went to Berjes on a call for 5 bad couchés. It was a terrible trip. The road was jammed and it was close to 4 A.M. before we were able to get a passage. The location of Berjes is such that it is frequently heavy with German gas. Tonight they were sending gas shell after shell into the valley. The air was very still and heavy so that the gas did not rise as high as the [poste de secours]. We felt the effect of the gas on our eyes, nose and throat and watched the Frenchmen closely to know when to put our masks on. We didn’t need them all night though what little we got made us sleepy and tired. We waited at the poste about half an hour during which time we must have heard 100 gas shells explode in the valley below not more than 100 yards away.

We finally got our load of 5 couchés (very bad cases) and started on our return journey. By 5 o’clock we had reached the Citerne and by 6 o’clock Bévaux. The worst case had died on our hands. It was a depressing feeling to think that a man had suffered and bled to death in your car. He had one leg shot entirely away, the other leg badly crushed up to the knee and a bullet wound through the head. During the ride he had threshed around in semi-consciousness until he had broken the bandages on his left crushed leg and had bled to death. The car was a pool of blood. I am glad he didn’t live, however, because he was suffering terribly and would probably have had both legs removed at the thigh had he lived.