_168th Infantry, Company “B”_
Near Badonville, on March 5, 1918, a small group of combatants had
survived a bombardment on their front line. They were wounded and
entirely surrounded. Sergeant Dawson was the Corporal of the group,
and when the Germans attempted to mop them up, he bravely resisted
them and succeeded in repelling their attempts to raid the position
until assistance came to them.]
“THE LIMITS OF HUMAN ENDURANCE”
“This was in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and by that time
the unhappy men imprisoned within the submarine were approaching the
limits of human endurance. Though no chlorine gas actually had been
given off by the electric batteries, the air in the control room was so
foul as to be almost unbreathable. Fresh air from the bottles, without
means to expel the poisonous atmosphere of the ship, would only have
increased a density which was already unbearable. Many in drugged sleep
forgot their troubles, and even those few upon whose alertness hung
the lives of all, had become drowsy and sluggish. Vitality was ebbing;
the love of life, and with it the expectation of rescue, had passed
from all. The company of _K-13_ may be divided during this period of
imprisonment into sleepers and somnambulists, and it was only because
trained minds retained some small part of their habitual control over
exhausted bodies that the somnambulists were able to understand and
to coöperate sufficiently with the salvors to bring this story to its
happy conclusion.
“The long flexible tube, seven inches in diameter, which was to open up
a clear passage between _K-13_ and the upper air, arrived at 4. a.m. on
Wednesday morning, but it was not until four hours later that it was in
place and in effective operation. To the eager salvers the delays were
exasperating; there were many more delays, even more exasperating, to
be suffered, before their job was finished. They had to explain to the
enfeebled folk within precisely where the tube was to be fixed up and
how they were themselves to complete the open passage. The tube was
designed to screw, by means of an adaptor, into an ammunition hoist,
and, when this was done, it needed but the removal of the retaining
plate inside to put the device to immediate use.