Modern weapons, such as bombs and poison gas, made fighting in World War I very deadly. William Yorke Stevenson was an American volunteer who served as an ambulance driver on the front lines. The following excerpts from his diary describe some of the destruction he witnessed.
11 July 1916, Dugny
4 A.M. I am writing here at the Etain-Moulinville cross-road beside a dead and [smelly] horse. Watching the dawn break and listening to the whining of the shells from both sides passing overhead, and now and then one breaking entirely too near for comfort is, believe me, no place for a nervous child! I'm simply writing this to keep my mind off [things].…
The big bombardment was followed by a gas attack. . . We began to get calls around 5 A.M. and, thereafter, ran all day under heavy fire… Nearly all the men we carried were "gassed." They kept coming in all day from the trenches… We alone carried some twelve hundred of them, and believe me, it was some strain.…
Even at 10 A.M. there was still enough gas to make our eyes smart. The Germans tried a new dodge,—a sort of "tir de barrage" of "77" shells. They do not make much noise, just about as much as a yacht cannon, but the gas spreads fast. It was about forty feet high and extended for about two hundred meters along the Etain road. The men who were caught by it all admitted they had taken off their masks for one reason or another. Some get sick at their stomachs and that forces them to take off their masks. It is not amusing to talk to men who don't know they're as good as dead!…
As the hospitals are overflowing, we have had to take in a lot of the gassed men with us in our [camp]. It is pathetic to hear them try to get their breath as if they were drowning; also it's not conducive to sleep. I carried the Commandant who was in the attack. He had a piece of shell in his stomach, but he was a brave beggar. Never said a word, and thanked me when I apologized for the jolting he got.…
29 July 1916, Triaucourt
The cobbler's daughter in this village is quite pretty and intelligent. She showed us the hole in her arm where a German high explosive hit her. It killed her grandmother beside her.… She says that the Germans took care of her, however, and acted decently enough, except that they set fire to a group of stores in the town when they left. The woods hereabouts are dotted thick with graves, German and French; hundreds of them. They are about a year old.…
Tuesday, 30 August 1916, Billemont
…I had fun with the Protestant "Aumonier" of the new Divison, who had never been under fire before. I carried him from the hospital at Landrecourt to this new "poste" at the Caserne Marceau, below Souville. As we neared Verdun he was much more interested in the view… but as we passed through the ruined city and began to get close to the guns, he got more and more nervous, especially as he couldn't differentiate between the outgoing and incoming shells. Finally he asked where the "poste" was and, as luck would have it, a big shell burst right over it, up the hill, and I pointed it out to him. The new "100" marine guns were barking like mad, nearly jumping him out of his seat; and the finishing touch occurred just as we arrived at the "poste," when a "105" shrapnel burst above us. He was almost incoherent. But when he saw some of the old Division still there, for a moment he had a ray of hope that he had got to the wrong place. This was quickly dispelled, however, and when I left to go down again, the old Catholic priest was kindly explaining to him that he would take him to his dug-out a hundred yards up the road, just as soon as the Boches stopped shelling it for a moment. Poor fellow, I felt sorry for him.…
Friday, 1 September 1916, Billemont
…Wallace coming to relieve us for lunch had an awfully tight squeeze making the hill while we watched him. The road there takes a big "S" turn, and the Boches were dropping "130s" all along the lower half, trying to get the marine "100s" batteries. One dropped right ahead of Wallace, and a second ten feet behind him. I don't know whether he or we were scared the worst… Nobody cared to ease down to lunch, although we'd previously all agreed that we were ravenously hungry around eleven o'clock. Those appetites faded away somehow. Believe me, nobody cared for that little lofty spot, although they tell me "it's quite safe, because they're not shooting at it, but at a battery." Of course, I know that; we all do. But the same thrill gets one's spine when that nasty "ziss-bang" comes by, whether they're shooting at one or not, especially when the difference can't be more than a millimeter on the sight and is only a couple of meters at our end, seeing that we are on the edge of the ravine and our batteries are below us. If they hit us, they miss the batteries; and if they hit the batteries, they miss us. I'm (personally) quite unpatriotic when they're firing!