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.
The great time for the German gas troops was undoubtedly 1916, and
from April to August of that year they carried out five big cloud gas
attacks on the British alone, not counting several on the French Front
and a number against the Russians.
During the interval from the December attack of the previous year
they had obviously been thinking hard and preparing lots of gas, for
the new attacks showed several fresh features both as regards extent
and tactics. Along the lines of making the gas more poisonous, using
greater quantities and higher concentration and the springing of
surprises, everything was done to make the gas cloud an even more
deadly affair than it had been in previous shows. That our own
casualties were much less than before, and that the boche in at least
one case had a lot more killed by his own gas than we had, were very
satisfactory results of all the labour and research as far as we were
concerned.
For the same reason that the December attack had been reduced in
duration to half an hour, the new clouds lasted only ten to fifteen
minutes; thus once more multiplying the concentration by two or three.
On top of this the amount of phosgene was increased up to at least
twenty-five per cent and probably to about fifty per cent, so that in
this way also the cloud became much more deadly than before. It is
interesting to note that pure phosgene cannot be used, otherwise the
Germans would undoubtedly have employed it. Straight phosgene does not
come out of the cylinders satisfactorily--it must have a big proportion
of something like chlorine mixed with it to force it out and get it
into the air as quickly as may be.
All of this made the gas cloud a nasty thing to face. As it became
progressively more deadly it required less and less to kill. A couple
of breaths of the poisoned air became enough to kill a man; but as
our protection was good enough, it meant that the most important thing
for the enemy to do was to take us unawares by getting his gas over so
quickly or deceiving us in some other way that we should be down and
out almost before we knew it. This is where his surprise tactics came
in.
These tactics consisted in attempting a great secrecy in the
preparations, in the use of smoke clouds to put us off the real track
of the gas, and the putting over of a number of different waves of gas
at varying intervals. The value of the last two will be more apparent
from the accounts of the individual attacks, but the importance of the
first-mentioned method must be emphasised a bit.
It must be remembered that the carrying in of the gas cylinders is the
work of the infantry and, as we discovered ourselves when we started
retaliation, is a very unpopular job owing to the difficulties of the
carry. Any carelessness in allowing the cylinders to clank by bumping
against each, other or against any other metal objects in the trenches,
or metallic sounds made by rather bored pioneers in unscrewing the
domes or attacking the pipes, are going to give away the fact to the
opposing side that something unusual is going on. And something unusual
going on or suspected generally spells g-a-s in the trenches.
In some cases, too, the opposing trenches can be seen from observation
posts--O. P.’s or O. Pips, as they are called in British Army
parlance--and in such cases if the carrying is started or the
installation of the cylinders is continued during the day there is a
good chance of the whole show being blown on by some watchful observer
with a telescope to his eye a mile or so away. All this the boche
realised and made his arrangements accordingly. But in at least one
case, in April, in his anxiety to get the cloud over without diminution
of strength and so that we should have little time for protecting
ourselves and spreading the alarm, he chose as his venue for the
attack a big portion of the line where the trenches were very close
together--seldom, in fact, more than fifty yards apart. Of course
it is just in such circumstances that secrecy of preparation is of
the greatest importance--but at the same time it is of the greatest
difficulty to maintain. As a matter of fact the Germans overreached
themselves by this choice of position, and little indications spotted
by our watchful sentries and patrols made us pretty certain that a
gas attack was impending, and our watchfulness and preparedness were
correspondingly increased and a constant state of “Gas Alert” kept up.
The first two attacks of the year were made against the 16th--the
Irish Division. This was the division in which Willie Redmond was a
captain, and it was composed of some of the best fighting material in
the world--all Nationalist Irishmen and anxious to get one over at
Fritz. Whether the Irishmen were chosen as a target with the foolish
idea of “putting the wind up,” or whether it was out of revenge for
their appearance in the British ranks after all the labour that had
been expended in trying to spread sedition in Ireland, we do not know.
Whatever the idea was it terminated in most abject failure, for the
Irishmen came through both attacks wonderfully well and absolutely
smashed up the German infantry advances which were attempted after the
passage of the cloud. Both attacks were made on that part of the line
near Hulluch running for about two miles south from Cité St. Elie.
The Germans opened the ball by letting our support and reserve lines
have a heavy bombardment of tear shells. Almost immediately after, in
the dim light of the early dawn, the first gas cloud floated over. It
was very thick and had been largely mixed with smoke in the hope of
leading our fellows to believe that it was terribly strong. It was not.
But the cloud was so dense that even at brigade headquarters, three
miles behind the front line, it was impossible to see across the road.
There was enough gas in this mixed cloud to make it very dangerous and
uncomfortable to unprotected men, but there were very few casualties.
The alarm was quickly spread, the men remained cool, and an attempted
attack by the enemy infantry to follow up the cloud was smashed up
without being able to get closer than our barbed wire.
After this first wave there was a tendency among the men to regard
the danger as over and to congratulate themselves on the apparent
and obvious boche failure. As they were prepared to go through with
anything the boche could put over, there was a natural tendency to
underrate the effects of gas, seeing it had caused them no losses.
It is undoubtedly true that a number of helmets were discarded
entirely--some of the soldiers thought they were useless after being
through an attack, and threw them away, depending entirely on their
reserve helmets. These they omitted to place in the “Alert” position,
pinned up on their chests ready for immediate use. In one or two cases
which came to my notice officers and men went off to the latrines or to
headquarters without helmets at all. This of course, was not general,
but it shows how some of our men fell for the boche ruse, which
consisted of putting over a second wave two hours later on exactly the
same Front.
The second cloud was a frightfully strong one, composed entirely of
gas in the highest possible concentration. It was this wave which
caused all our losses on April twenty-seventh, as it took a number of
men completely by surprise. But even so, the Irishmen were not a bit
dismayed, and when the Germans again attempted to advance--parties
of their bombers in some cases appearing immediately behind the gas
cloud--they were met by such a stout resistance that those who were not
shot down retired in disorder to their own trenches.
The intensity of the second wave can be gathered from the fact that
buttons and ammunition were quickly corroded and turned a villainous
green colour. In a few cases rifles stuck and Lewis guns jammed, owing
to the effects of the gas on the ammunition and the breach mechanism.
One good thing about the attack was that most of the rats in the
trenches were killed. In some parts of the line the trench rats are an
absolute plague. They eat any food or candles left lying about or kept
in cardboard boxes. They swarm in the dugouts and appear in all sorts
of odd corners. They disturb the little rest one does get; and I have
had them run all over me, even over my face, while lying in my dugout.
All attempts to clear them out were useless. But what ferrets and
terriers and virus could not accomplish the boche gas did. Mister Rat
cannot stand up to a strong mixture of chlorine and phosgene without a
gas mask, and so in this attack, as in others we experienced, he died
by hundreds; and nobody mourned him.
Curiously enough two kittens, which inhabited the dugout of the
commanding officer of one of the battalions of the Scottish Borderers,
who were in reserve, came through alive. The kittens were badly
gassed and lay breathing rapidly, suffering from spasms and with
profuse salivation. Possibly their fur helped to absorb some of the
gas, for five hours later the little victims were almost themselves
again, though they continued to cough occasionally and drank water
continually. The water they took in preference to milk.
The effects of the poison on the soldiers who were gassed were pretty
much the same as has been so frequently described in the press before.
In the lighter cases it was mostly severe and painful coughing and
bronchitis, with occasional retching and vomiting. The severe cases
had the frothing at the mouth, the painful fight for breath and the
blue face with staring eyes which are typical of severe gassing with
chlorine and phosgene. I was told that there were not many delayed
cases--that is, men being taken seriously ill hours after the attack,
though apparently unscathed before.
The casualties were really remarkably small in the circumstances, and
even despite the surprise tactics, were not as numerous as those of
the December attack. Apart from the men who were caught without their
respirators, most of the casualties were the result of some special
circumstances. The helmets themselves when properly inspected and
adjusted gave good protection. In connection with the laying aside of
the respirators after the first cloud a sergeant told me that when the
second wave came over he had seen two soldiers trying to get into the
same helmet. The humorous side of this had apparently appealed to him
even in the middle of the attack.
Of course with the trenches so close together a lot of men had
difficulty in getting protection in time. Parties of men in advanced
saps and listening posts had the greatest difficulty, and numbers
of these men were killed. One pioneer of a tunnelling company came
out of a mine gallery knowing nothing about what had been happening
aboveground, and walked straight into the middle of the gas cloud.
A man in one of the companies of the Irish Rifles was wounded in the
head by shrapnel through both his steel and gas helmets. In spite of
the wound and the hole in his gas helmet he held the latter close round
his mouth and nose and was not gassed at all--a clear case of presence
of mind saving his life.
One thing which impressed every one with the need for thorough gas
training at home, and which should be taken to heart by all men in
training at the camps or likely to go there, was the way in which
reinforcements and men who had recently joined up suffered. Their
casualties were out of all proportion to their numbers and were due
entirely to the fact that insufficient attention was given at that time
to the gas-defence training of the recruits. Many of them had never put
on a helmet before, and none of them had ever smelled gas.
In one particular instance a batch of twenty men had come straight over
from England and were in the gas attack the day after their arrival in
the trenches. The only training they had had was a lecture from their
own regimental officers, and consequently they knew little or nothing
about the use of their helmets. Every one of these men was gassed. It
is true that they had scrambled into their helmets somehow, and none
of them died; but the fact remains that absence of training at home
cost the fighting line twenty men in one company. In this company they
were the only men gassed. Largely as a consequence of this, gas-defence
training was taken up very seriously in the early training of recruits,
and big gas schools were established at all the camps both in England
and at the bases in France, so as to catch the young soldier early.
The boche made another gas attack on the Irish Division on the same
Front two days later. Once again he let off two waves--this time with
an interval of only a quarter of an hour. But despite his idea of
“mixing them up” he could not bring off that particular surprise again.
The second attack was one of the most interesting on record, for it
was here, near Hulluch, that the gas blew back on the Germans and
killed many more of them than our total gas casualties. The thing
happened in this way: The first gas wave was loosed off at three-fifty
A. M., opposite the celebrated Chalk Pit Wood. Fifteen minutes later a
heavy cloud was discharged on the Hulluch front. But the wind was too
light and variable. The cloud came over our line and then the gentle
wind first dropped altogether and then gradually veered round. The
gas hung on No Man’s Land and over both sets of trenches for a short
time, and then with increasing pace drifted back right over the German
position, just where Fritz had been seen massing for an attack on the
Hulluch sector. We did not see the confusion which reigned, but almost
simultaneously with the arrival of his own gas our barrage came down
and the German attack dispersed.
All that day our observers reported the carrying out of German
casualties from the trenches on stretchers and a constant stream of
ambulances coming up and then returning along the roads to the rear. We
surmised that the boche had swallowed some of his own poison, but it
was not until several months later, from some documents captured during
the Battle of the Somme, that we were able to appreciate his disaster
to the full.
The first of these documents was the diary of a soldier who had been in
the neighbouring trenches. It ran: “... We went along the trenches to
find the headquarters of the ----th. It was awful. Everywhere lay dead
bodies or men gasping for breath and dying from the gas. Somebody must
be to blame. At first I could not go on. One almost had to step on them
to get through. I asked an officer of the ----th what had happened.
They were going to be relieved....”
But the other documents were more explicit, as they happened to be the
official report on the matter from the war office in Berlin. It appears
that the Germans had eleven hundred deaths from their own gas. A most
rigid enquiry was held and it was found that many of the men were not
carrying respirators, either in the trenches or in the area immediately
behind the line. But this did not explain the extent of the disaster,
so eight hundred of the respirators collected from casualties were sent
to Berlin for examination and report. Even allowing for those which
might have been injured in transit, there were still thirty-three per
cent of the masks so defective that their owners were certain to be
gassed. To see whether this applied only to the area affected a large
number of respirators were collected from up and down the whole Western
Front, and it was found that even among those as many as eleven and a
half per cent were similarly at fault. It would seem that there had
been very poor inspection of the respirators both in manufacture and
after issue to the troops. Apart from the joy of seeing the boche hoist
with his own petard it was rather a relief to find that the efficient
German Army was not so frightfully efficient after all.
This matter of inspection is taken very seriously in the British Army.
Besides the rigorous factory inspection all respirators are inspected
thoroughly every day even in the trenches, and Tommy is expected to
look after his respirator just as he looks after his rifle. As an
official statement issued after the April attack said: “A defective
helmet frequently leads to the death of the wearer. Inspection of
respirators must be frequent and thorough.” A sergeant who was
notorious for his thorough dealing with recruits got away with it in
even better terms when addressing a squad on parade. In thundering
tones he said: “If you don’t look for the ’oles in your ’elmet, they’ll
soon be looking for a ’ole for you.”
Another thing that resulted from the attacks just described, and
from another similar attack shortly afterward in the salient, was
the putting on the screw with regard to the carrying of respirators
continuously by every one in the trenches. A very good and well-known
story on the British Army in this connection is that of a brigadier
general who was proceeding to the line for his daily inspection when he
discovered that he was minus a gas bag. He stopped the first orderly
he saw, borrowed the man’s helmet and serenely went his way with a
clear conscience. Arrived in the trenches, one of the first sights that
met his horrified gaze was a soldier without a gas mask. In virtuous
tones he demanded the reason for its absence, and then, waving aside
the halting explanation, went on loudly to assert his belief that the
soldier would not know how to use a respirator even if he had one.
“Here,” he said, “take mine and show me whether you can put it on in
quick time.”
The awe-stricken Tommy slung the satchel over his shoulder, and on the
word “Gas!” from the general thrust his hand into the haversack and
pulled out--a very dirty pair of army socks.
The fourth German attack of 1916 was made on June seventeenth in
Flanders, near Messines; in fact, just north of the Wulverghem-Messines
road. Like those of April, it was intensely strong, very short, and
sent over in successive waves at intervals of about twenty minutes.
There were really no fresh features about the show, but the cloud seems
to have been even stronger than before. I had no personal experience of
this attack, but the cloud must have been very strong, for it killed
animals at “Plugstreet”--the only name we used in the British Army
for Ploegsteert--three and half miles away, and was quite distinctly
perceptible even at Béthune. At the “Piggeries”--the remains of a
model farm in rear of Plugstreet Wood belonging to a notable French
sportsman, a place well-known to so many British soldiers--a calf was
found dead, after the passage of the cloud, with the body very much
blown out. Dead rats lay in close proximity.
Even farther back than this animals were seriously affected. The
army mules in the line of the gas were seized with fits of coughing
and kicked violently, making them even more difficult to handle than
usual. It is probably not realised that horse masks are now issued on
a scale sufficient to provide protection for all horses and mules,
such as those of the first-line transport and the artillery, which
have to approach anywhere near the lines. The present form of these
respirators is that of a big bag soaked in chemicals which fits over
the animal’s nostrils, leaving its mouth free so that the use of the
bit is not interfered with. When not in use the horse respirator folds
up very nicely and neatly into a canvas case which can be carried on
the breastband of the harness or any place from which it can be quickly
adjusted. Some of the animals take to these masks--“Horspirators,”
some wag called them--quite quickly, but others are strenuous
objectors; some of those hardened sinners, the mules, transforming
themselves into masses of teeth and hoofs whenever an attempt is made
to fix on the gas bags.
In one case where a horse and a mule in the same supply column were
fitted with their masks at the same time the difference was most
marked. The horse was dressed up without much trouble, though he did
not like it. He whinnied and sneezed, breathed hard and perspired
and looked rather pitiable, but stuck it out. The mule, on the other
hand, had to be roped to get the mask on at all. Then he danced about,
heels in the air and head down, and tried to rub off the objectionable
appendage against the rope, and then against a tree. This did not
effect its removal, and for a minute the cunning animal stood still
with his ears cocked at different angles. Then suddenly he put his
head to the ground and before anything could be done to prevent it put
his foot on the respirator, pulled his head up smartly and left the
respirator under his hoof.
These masks have proved of the greatest value and have saved any
number of horses’ lives. The cavalry are not provided with them, as
it is not anticipated that they will be near enough to be affected by
gas-cloud attacks, and when the cavalry are mounted and in action it is
unlikely that they will meet even poison-gas shells in large numbers.
Added to this is the fact that a horse can stand more gas than a man
without being distressed.
The casualties in the June attack were lower than in any one
previously. Indeed, it was a satisfactory feature of the whole gas
business that despite the increasing deadliness of the German clouds
the losses they caused became less and less. Of course the proportion
of severe cases in those gassed became greater, for with such strong
clouds it had become a case of hit or miss. Either a man was protected
completely or he was caught out badly; and this spoke well for the
protection supplied, for otherwise there would have been a much bigger
proportion of light cases.
Of the minor effects of these boche gas clouds, that on vegetation is
the most marked and gives a good idea of the strength of the gas. For
miles in the track of the cloud all green stuff is burned up or wilted.
Grass is turned yellow, the leaves of trees go brown and fall off, and
the garden crops are entirely destroyed. I have seen root crops in the
fields and garden crops of onions, beans and lettuce quite destroyed.
But curiously enough, farther back, in places where this still happens
to the garden crops, the cereals and the hedges seem to escape serious
injury.
Of course over a wide area all metal work is thickly tarnished, and
this might be a danger in the case of telephone instruments and other
delicate appliances, except that the exposed parts are always kept
slightly oiled and then cleaned thoroughly after the attack. The same
thing is done with rifles and machine guns and their ammunition, and
with the clinometres, fuses and breech mechanism of guns and trench
mortars. Since this war started very little difficulty has occurred
through corrosion, but the chief thing is to clean off the grease and
reoil all metal parts exposed to the gas immediately after the attack
is finished, otherwise the greasy surface seems to hold the gas or the
acid it engenders, and allows it to eat in at its leisure.
During the attacks of 1916 the alarm arrangements worked very well,
and the Strombos Horns in particular justified their use. Even above
the noise of machine-gun fire and the bursting of shells their shrill,
unmistakable note could be heard for long distances, giving warning to
all troops on the flanks and in the rear. There were very few instances
where they were not let off in time and the sentries posted over them
apparently knew their jobs better, for instance, than one man who
was questioned on the subject. This particular sentry was asked by a
noncommissioned officer going the rounds in the trenches what he would
do in the event of a gas attack being made. “Oh,” replied the bright
boy, “that’s easy. If any gas comes over it blows the horn and I call
the platoon sergeant and tell him about it.”
A much more conscientious sentry over a Strombos Horn had been told to
be particularly on the lookout for a gas attack, as one was expected
at any time. The officer on duty, going round about midnight, heard
a suspiciously regular sound coming from one of the fire bays, and
thinking that one of the sentries was indulging in a stolen forty winks
he cautiously rounded the traverse. Here he found the sentry lying
on the top of the parapet staring into the darkness and going sniff,
sniff, sniff with his nose.
Being asked more forcibly than politely what was the matter with him
the man replied: “I’m sniffing for gas.”
Sniff, sniff, sniff.
“Can you smell any?”
“No, sir; but I want to smell it if it does come, as I’m a gas sentry
and the leftenant told me always to keep smelling for gas.”
Sniff, sniff, sniff.
The job of seeing that the air cylinders of the Strombos Horns are
kept at their full pressure is intrusted to the divisional gas
noncommissioned officers, who go round periodically with pressure
gauges and test them out. If they fall below a certain pressure they
are replaced at once by fresh ones from the divisional store. Some
Australians going up the line one night were carrying a number of such
cylinders for replacement, when one of them got turned on accidentally
and they didn’t seem able to stop it.
A passing officer hearing the hissing noise called out: “What have you
got there?”
“Air bottles,” was the answer.
“What for?” persisted the officer.
A pause, and then out of the darkness: “Oh, hell! To put the wind up
the boche, of course.”
This story will probably be appreciated more by Britishers than
Americans, though I think the latter in many cases already know the
significance of the expressions “getting the wind up” and “putting the
wind up.” They refer of course to what official reports or newspaper
men would style as “reduction of morale.”