GAS AND FLAME
MAJOR S. J. M. AULD, M.C.
[Illustration: Lieut. W. G. Thayer, of the Gas Defense Division, U. S.
Army, is the artist of the drawing here reproduced which was designed
for the purpose of bringing home the necessity of care in all that
pertains to the use and manufacture of the gas mask.
In order to impress upon the soldier in training the need of care and
speed in adjusting the mask in case of gas attack, the poster was
printed with this wording:
KEEP YOUR HEAD; HOLD YOUR BREATH,--
BE QUICK!!
AND THIS WON’T HAPPEN TO YOU
That the workers engaged in the manufacture of gas masks might realize
the importance of care and flawlessness in their work, the same poster
was placed in the factories with a legend reading:
THE FINAL INSPECTOR]
GAS AND FLAME
IN MODERN WARFARE
BY
MAJOR S. J. M. AULD, M.C.
ROYAL BERKSHIRE REGIMENT
_Member of the British Military Mission
to the United States_
FRONTISPIECE BY
W. G. THAYER
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
_Copyright, 1918,
By George H. Doran Company_
_Copyright, 1918,
By The Curtis Publishing Company_
_Copyright, 1918,
By Doubleday, Page & Company_
_Printed in the United States of America_
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Need for the education of vast numbers of men in various branches
of Gas Service and those in camps on the position of Gas Warfare at
the front, has made imperative the publication of this book, as has
also the need of educating the public, owing to the many misleading
newspaper reports, sometimes merely misinformative, sometimes
distinctly mischievous, appearing from time to time.
Major Auld, chemist and teacher before the war, and as he modestly
styled it, “amateur soldier,” volunteered for service at the front as a
“Territorial,” at the very outset of the conflict.
Some months after the first gas attack, he was taken into the Gas
Service, owing to his training and ability as a chemist, and later
became Chief Gas Officer to Sir Julian Byng’s Army. He was awarded
the Military Cross after the Battle of the Somme, and was wounded in
an expedition into No Man’s Land to observe the effect of a British
Gas attack. He has therefore been in touch with gas warfare from the
beginning and knows all phases.
As the natural consequence of all this, the Government of the United
States welcomed him as the representative of Great Britain in its
counsel to America on all aspects of gas warfare. In this official
capacity the Major has been engaged here assisting in organization and
development of training, research and production aspects of Gas, and
lecturing at camps, the War College, and West Point.
The American Gas Service has, for all these reasons, deemed the
publication of Major Auld’s experiences very desirable.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
The first rumours of German gas attacks--Sceptically
received--First attack in 1915--Canadian
pluck under gas--Nernst and Haber the
inventors of German gas--The difficulties of
getting practicable gases--The technic of gas
attacks--A German prisoner’s account 9
CHAPTER II
The first respirators--First-aid devices--The
smoke helmet--Anti-gas sprayers--Their use
and delicacy--The English chemists set to
work--The task of training the whole army 26
CHAPTER III
Popular terror of gas--Necessity for drilling and
early personal experience--Sure defence from
gas possible--The first gas alarms--The prussic
acid scare a myth--The phosgene scare a
reality--The helmet made to combat it--Necessity
for renovating the helmet 42
CHAPTER IV
The attack of Dec. 1915--The Allies’ good training
tells--The casualties analysed--The new
element of surprise--Evidences of the use of
phosgene--The incident of the bulb--Improved
alarms--The Strombos sirens--Accidents
to the horns--The Tear Gas Shell--Its
chemical analysis--Combated by anti-gas
goggles--Tommies scoff at Tear Gas--The
Germans make it formidable 62
CHAPTER V
Summer of 1916 the highwater mark of the German
gas cloud--Their improved methods--The
need of speed and secrecy--Gas as a rat
exterminator--Causes of Allied casualties--Germans
killed with their own gas--Gas
masks for horses and mules--Reduced Allied
casualties--Humorous incidents 88
CHAPTER VI
The last German gas cloud sent over August 1916--Its
intensity--“Delayed” cases of phosgene
gassing--Cigarettes as a test of gassing--Dangers
of carelessness--The sprayer abandoned
for Mrs. Ayrton’s fan--Responsibilities
of the divisional gas office--Russian gas victims--The
day of the gas cloud over 112
CHAPTER VII
The rising importance of the gas shell--The
variety of gases practicable with the shell--The
deadly Green Cross Shell--Risks of
transporting “duds” for chemical analysis--Reduced
Allied casualties--German blunders
in shelling tactics--Importance of universal
discipline 127
CHAPTER VIII
The gas-proof dugout--First-aid methods of
alarm--Von Buelow improves German gas
tactics--Popular errors about gas--Effectiveness
of new British respirators--Vomiting gas--Germans
speed up their manufacture--Gas
as a neutraliser of artillery fire--As a neutraliser
of work behind the trenches--Raw recruits
ashamed to wear the mask--Casualties
resulting 145
CHAPTER IX
Mustard or Yellow Cross gas--Not deadly but a
dangerous pest--Its troublesome persistence--Cleaning
it out by fires--Sneezing of Blue
Cross gas--Another pest--Its violent effect--The
limit of gas shell effectiveness--The need
for constant vigilance and disciplinary training 169
CHAPTER X
Liquid fire--First used by Germans in July 1915--A
great surprise and success--German hopes
from it--Construction of a flame projector--Flammenwerfer
companies--Their perilous
duties and incidents of desertion from them--Improved
types of projectors--Co-operation
of machine-gun fire--Failure of liquid fire--Its
short duration and short range--Ease of
escape from it 185
GAS AND FLAME
GAS AND FLAME
CHAPTER I
The first rumours of German gas attacks--Sceptically received--First
attack in 1915--Canadian pluck under gas--Nernst and Haber the
inventors of German gas--The difficulties of getting practicable
gases--The technic of gas attacks--A German prisoner’s account.
In the early part of April, 1915, we were in the trenches opposite
Messines. We enjoyed the usual morning and evening “hate”; we sniped
and were sniped at; we patrolled and wired and attempted to drain
away the superfluous water, and there was much mud and humour and
expectancy. It is true there were no Mills grenades or Stokes mortars
or tin hats, but trench warfare was not so very different then from
what it is now--with one great exception: There was no gas. And
there were consequently no respirators to carry day and night. It is
almost impossible now to remember the time when one did not carry a
respirator in the trenches. Somehow it makes you feel quite naked to
think of it--and yet there we were, imagining we knew what war really
was like!
The newspapers we got at that time were generally a good many days old,
and censored at that, and our chief source of news about the war in
other people’s parts of the line was a summary of so-called information
issued from headquarters, which percolated down to the battalion and,
like every other summary before and since, went by the name of “Comic
Cuts.”
Somewhere about the middle of the month we heard that in somebody
else’s summary had appeared a paragraph to the effect that a deserter
from the German lines up in the salient had told a cock-and-bull story
of how they intended to poison us all with a cloud of gas, and that
tanks full of the poison gas were already installed in their trenches.
Of course nobody believed him. The statement was “passed for
information for what it is worth.” And as nobody ever believed anything
that appeared in Comic Cuts in any case, we were not disposed to get
the wind up about it. And then, about a week later, on April 22, 1915,
was launched the first gas attack; and another constant horror was
added to an already somewhat unpleasant war. Details about the attack
are still somewhat meagre, for the simple reason that the men who could
have told much about it never came back.
The place chosen for the first gas attack was in the northeast part of
the Ypres salient at that part of the line where the French and British
lines met, running down from where the trenches left the canal near
Boesinghe. On the French right was the ---- Regiment of Turcos, and on
the British left were the Canadians.
Try to imagine the feelings and the condition of the coloured troops
as they saw the vast cloud of greenish-yellow gas spring out of the
ground and slowly move down wind toward them, the vapour clinging to
the earth, seeking out every hole and hollow and filling the trenches
and shell holes as it came. First wonder, then fear; then, as the first
fringes of the cloud enveloped them and left them choking and agonised
in the fight for breath--panic. Those who could move broke and ran,
trying, generally in vain, to outstrip the cloud which followed
inexorably after them.
The majority of those in the front line were killed--some, let us
hope, immediately, but most of them slowly and horribly. It is not my
intention to try to play upon feelings, but those of us who have seen
men badly gassed can only think with horror of a battlefield covered
with such cases, over which the Germans subsequently advanced.
The Canadians on the British left fared both better and worse than the
French coloured troops. Only their left appears to have been in the
main path of the poison cloud, but there is little doubt that in the
thickest part those who did not escape either to a flank or to the rear
were killed on the field. Thousands of those in the support trenches
and reserve lines and in billets behind the line were suffocated--many
to die later in the field ambulances and casualty clearing stations.
Of those on the fringe of the cloud many saved themselves by burying
their faces in the earth. Others wrapped mufflers round their mouths
and noses or stuffed handkerchiefs into their mouths. Many of these
men were saved by their presence of mind, for though gassed at the time
they recovered later, after treatment in the hospitals.
It is on record that the Canadians, with handkerchiefs or mufflers tied
over their mouths, continued to engage the Germans and that a number
of them actually charged back through the gas cloud in an endeavour to
reach the enemy. What became of them is not known.
In this way a big gap was made in the Allied lines, through which the
Germans advanced. But the Canadians quickly formed a flank on the left
and stoutly engaged the enemy, with such success that they first slowed
up and then brought to a halt the advance of the Germans. It was this
prompt action and gallant resistance that probably saved the day.
Whether the German high command had underestimated the probable effect
of the gas and had arranged for only a limited objective past which
the local commanders did not take the initiative to go, or whether
the latter were unaware of the real weakness of the Canadian line is
unknown. The fact remains that they did not press their advantage to
the full. They had taken the Allied front line on a wide front, killed
or captured thousands of men and taken sixty guns, and seemed to have
a clear way through to Calais; but they were stopped by the pluck of a
handful of Canadians. Reinforcements of men and guns were rushed up,
and the immediate danger was over.
It is a matter for surmise how long the Germans had been planning and
preparing their use of gas. The idea may have been a pre-war one, but
it is difficult to believe that a project deliberately planned for
years would not have been developed so as to make it a sure winner--for
it could easily have been that. If, for example, they had made the
attack over a wider front with such strong gas clouds as are now used
nothing could possibly have stood against them. Every living thing to a
depth of fifteen miles or more could have been killed.
On the other hand it is impossible to imagine the use of poison gas as
having been decided on without better preparation having been made to
meet retaliation, unless it was assumed either that the use of the gas
would be decisive or that at any rate the war would be finished before
the Allies could hit back with the same weapon.
In any case the preparation must have been going on for months. All
the production of material, organisation of personnel and so on takes
a long time. This we realised ourselves later, for though the decision
to retaliate with gas was made in May it was September before an attack
could possibly be made. If we assume that a like interval of four
months elapsed for the perfecting of the German arrangements it means
that the decision to use gas was made about Christmas, 1914.
The onus of urging the Kaiser’s advisers to adopt the use of poisonous
gases had been laid at the door of Professor Nernst, professor of
chemistry at the University of Berlin. Professor Nernst is a noted
chemist, and even before the war was a notorious Pan-German and
Anglophobe--one of the “professors” who carried too much weight in
Germany and whose arrogance and shortsightedness helped to lure
her to her downfall. Some time after the use of gas was started
Professor Nernst was made a count by the Kaiser for his “notable
services”--meaning presumably the use of gas in warfare.
The actual carrying out of the gas operations was intrusted to another
professor of chemistry, this being one Haber, of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Physical Chemical Institute at Berlin. In 1914, long before the war
started, Professor Haber and his assistants are known to have been
working secretly with some intensely poisonous arsenic gases and
liquids, and one of the assistants was killed and another is reported
to have had his arm blown off during the researches.
Haber’s particular job was to make all the scientific arrangements
in the field; to decide on the gases to be used, and the quantity
to employ; to study the wind directions and decide exactly when to
make the attack. In the weeks preceding the twenty-second of April,
Haber was continually at the Front receiving reports from the wind
observation stations and in close touch with the men in charge of the
cylinders in the trenches. On several occasions during this time the
attack was fixed for a certain hour, but was postponed by Haber, owing
to the wind’s being unsuitable.
The actual arrangements that had to be made were much more complex
than the carrying out of the attack itself. First of all, decision had
to be come to as to the gas to be used in the fiendish attempt. Such
a gas had of course to be highly poisonous. Then it must be cheaply
and easily made in large quantities; it had to be compressible, so
that it could be transported easily; it must be heavier than air, so
that it should keep close to the ground when first liberated; and for
preference it should not be unstable--that is, decompose easily and
enter into nonpoisonous combinations with materials, other than man,
that it should come across in its passage through the air.
Any chemist to whom such a problem is put will inform you there are
very few gases that fill the bill. The German choice rested on that
gas well-known to students of chemistry--chlorine. Chlorine in large
quantities was available from the alkali works in Germany, and it
meets all the other requirements except that of not easily combining
with other things. This deficiency was fortunate, for it meant that
protective chemicals were easy to find when it became necessary to
provide respirators to the Allied troops.
Then there was the question of transport and emission. The gas was
eventually put up in steel cylinders, about thirty inches long and
eight inches across and stout enough to stand a pressure of about ten
atmospheres, the gas being stored in them compressed to a liquid. On
opening such a cylinder the liquid boils and gives off the gas again,
but this would not do for field work, because of the intense cold which
is produced by the sudden expansion. This would freeze up the pipes and
slow down the discharge to such an extent that the gas attack would be
too weak.
To get over this difficulty the Germans fitted their cylinders with
internal siphon tubes so that actually liquid chlorine was forced into
the air, where it evaporated without affecting the gas remaining in the
cylinder. By this means the whole of the gas in the cylinder, amounting
to forty-five pounds, is emptied into the atmosphere in less than three
minutes. The sudden expansion of the chlorine in the air also makes
both it and the surrounding air cold and helps to keep the cloud close
to the ground.
The actual handing of the gas attacks was allotted to two regiments of
pioneers--the 35th and 36th Pioneer Regiments, which were specially
organised for this purpose. These regiments have the ordinary
organisation of two battalions per regiment, with three companies and a
park or transport company per battalion. The rank and file are ordinary
pioneers, but the officers are specially picked and include chemists,
mechanical experts, meteorologists, and other men with special
scientific qualifications.
The choice of country in which to make a gas attack was a serious
matter to the enemy. The gas of course will go with the wind, but it
depends largely on what the country is like where the wind will go. The
Germans themselves say they prefer a flat country without any marked
under features and sloping gently toward our lines, just as they had at
Ypres. Indeed, they went the length of saying that a gas attack could
not be carried out in hilly or very broken country; and they suffered
in consequence later on, through being taken unawares by the French in
just such country in the Vosges when retaliation was commenced. But
taking it altogether the Germans were wise in their choice of position.
Another thing that had to be considered was the outline of their own
trench system, so that they would not let off the gas in such parts
of the line that it would float back and gas their own troops in the
neighbouring trenches. To do this they invented a “factor of safety,”
which represented an angle between the direction of the wind and the
line of the trenches. No attack was to be made if the wind direction
came within forty degrees of any trench within gassing distance. This
worked very well.
Another consideration was the strength of the wind. The wind must not
be too strong when the gusts disperse the gas cloud, or it will weaken
it so that it loses a lot of its effect and will be blown over the
enemy too quickly; nor must it be so weak that it will take a long time
to reach the opposing trenches.
Another great danger in winds of too low velocity is that these are
just the winds which change their direction most frequently, and
anything under two miles per hour is just as likely to blow the
gas back to the place from which it came. It was disregarding this
principle on one occasion later on that caused the Germans numerous
casualties from one of their own gas clouds. In general, however, it
may be laid down that the most favourable winds are those between four
and twelve miles an hour, so that with a wind of eight miles an hour
the cloud would move just twice as quickly as a man walking rapidly,
and would take only twelve and a half seconds to cross No Man’s Land in
places where the trenches are fifty yards apart.
Let me try to give an account of the procedure of carrying out gas
attacks as it was told me by a German prisoner taken not so very long
ago. He said:
“I am not one of the gas pioneers, but being an engineer by trade and
having been in the trenches for many weeks with the 35th Regiment
of Pioneers I have got to know their methods fairly well. Indeed I
assisted on one occasion in carrying cylinders into the trenches for
an attack against the British. Gas is not popular with us; we have had
too many mishaps, and the cylinders are a nuisance to carry into the
trenches. They weigh ninety pounds and they are always carried in by
the infantry. A gas regiment does not do that for itself. It is a long
carry and it is really more than a one-man load. At the most two men
are allotted to carry in each cylinder, whatever the distance.
“Several thousand of these cylinders must be taken into the trenches,
and then we have the job of putting them in position. Deep holes are
dug just underneath the parapet of the trench, and into these holes
are placed the separate cylinders with the tops flush with the ground.
As each cylinder is placed into position the hole is covered with a
board, on top of which is placed a thing we call a ‘_Salzdecke_,’ which
is really a kind of quilt stuffed with peat moss and soaked in potash
solution so as to absorb any of the gases that may leak out.
“On top of the _Salzdecke_ are built up three layers of sandbags, so
that there is not much danger of the cylinders’ being hit by shell
fragments. This also serves to hide the cylinders in case a raid is
made, and the sandbags form an excellent firing step. In fact, you
would never guess that the gas was ready in position to make an
attack. All of this takes a long time to do, and then we have to wait
for a wind that is favourable.
“It may be weeks before the right time comes, but all the time the
pioneer officers and _Unteroffiziere_ make observations of the wind and
report back to somebody at headquarters. On the night fixed for the
attack all the infantry are warned beforehand. If the wind continues
favourable the sandbags are taken off, the domes removed from the
cylinders, and to each cylinder is attached a lead pipe which is bent
over the top of the parapet into No Man’s Land, with the end slightly
bent up, so that if any liquid comes out it is not wasted in the ground
but evaporates in the air. The end of the lead pipe is weighted with a
sandbag, so that it will not kick when the gas is turned on and blow
the gas back into our own trenches, as happened in one or two of the
earlier attacks. It is this kind of thing that makes gas unpopular in
the German Army.
“Eventually the time really does arrive for the attack, and the
pioneers stand by the cylinders, of which twenty form a battery; and
to each battery there are two pioneers and one noncommissioned officer
waiting to unscrew the taps. A signal is given by means of a rocket.
All the infantry have been eagerly waiting for this signal, which means
that they have five minutes to clear out of the front-line trenches
before the gas is turned on; and I can tell you they do not waste any
time. Everybody makes a rush to the support trench and leaves the front
line entirely to the pioneers.
“We all keep our masks ready to put on at a moment’s notice, because
in the earlier attack the wind on two occasions blew the gas back
again into our own trenches and killed a lot of the infantry who were
unprepared for its return. According to the length of time the attack
is to last the cylinders are turned on, from one up to five at a time,
in each battery.
“As soon as the taps are turned on the pioneers make for cover, but
they have a good many losses from bursting cylinders, from leaks, and
from the shrapnel and high-explosive shells which invariably greet the
start of an attack. The promptness with which this happened at the time
I was in the line made us believe that your people had known all about
our gas preparations for some time. The infantry are all very glad to
be away from the front-line trench when the cloud is sent over.”
This method has been practically unaltered throughout the time the
Germans have made gas attacks. In the first attack they probably had
one gas cylinder on every yard of front on which gas was installed, but
the number was increased in subsequent attacks.