Jim Medding’s Blog

In my grandfather’s, Walter L. Medding, memoir of WWI is an engaging vignette which reminds me so much of the stories he would tell during our frequent visits with him during my childhood.

We had a hard boiled motorcycle driver who rejoiced in the name of “Spike” Adams. One day Spike took me, in his rattletrap motorcycle & side car, on a trip to Ft. St. Mange. In climbing the long grade to the ridge at the far end of which the fort was located, the motor labored considerably and the exhaust pipe became red hot. Finally a tire went flat and we had to walk half a mile to the Gas School. Here we begged transportation to finish our trip. A Dodge sedan was placed at our disposal and we were warned to hurry as the school was about to start a demonstration with chlorine gas. By the time we turned on to the main road the gas cloud had been turned loose and, as we had no gas masks, the driver increased his speed to about 15 miles per hour. Half way through the cloud a sentry tried to stop us, but we dodged around him and raced on. The cloud resembled a fog and visibility was very low. Suddenly, right in front of us there appeared a motorcycle. It had been stopped by the sentry and had hardly gotten under way again. It was impossible to stop the car and when we hit the motorcycle our driver temporarily lost control. We swerved to the right, bumped through the ditch at the side of the road and careened through the trees of a small woods. Although we avoided hitting anything as we entered the woods, it took 2 days to get the car out again.

Of course, we piled out of the car and rushed to see how much damaged we had done to the motorcycle driver. We found it was Roy McCutchen, who was badly scratched by gravel but otherwise unhurt, so we all hurried out of the gas cloud in the direction of Ft. St. Menge. Apparently the concentration of chlorine was not very heavy, for none of us suffered the slightest effects.

Hmm, it could only have happened in 1918.