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.
One of the most interesting things about the development of gas warfare
has been the way in which the gas shell, from being the least important
method of poisoning the air, has become the chief gas weapon in the
German armoury.
The reasons for this extraordinary development, though various, are not
far to seek. They lie chiefly in the fact that unlike the gas cloud we
have not even yet approached the limit of the number or size of the gas
projectiles that can be used. Nor, which is even more important, is
there any limit to the variety of the poisons that can be used in gas
shell.
The fact of the matter is that the gas shell is not really a gas
shell at all. It is nearly always a “liquid” shell and sometimes even
a “solid” shell. The term “gas shell” is used because the liquid or
solid contents are atomised by the explosion of the bursting charge or
are distributed round in the form of such tiny particles or droplets,
as the case may be, that they act almost as a gas. In the latter
case they form what might be described as a mist or smoke, but with
this difference from ordinary smoke--that the gas mist or smoke is
generally, though not always, invisible.
Just imagine what would happen supposing a shell were filled with
water. Burst such a shell with a sufficiently big charge of high
explosive and all the water would be distributed into the air in the
form of such finely divided spray that it would form a mist. This mist
would either vapourise into the atmosphere completely or hang about
like a cloud, according as the air was dry or moist. In any case, if
the burster were big enough no water would be spread on the ground; nor
would any big drops be formed.
This is just what happens with any of the poisonous materials filled
into a shell. Indeed if the burster were big enough and carefully
chosen it would be possible to form a “gas” with treacle. With a
volatile material like gasoline on the other hand all that would be
needed would be a burster just big enough to open the shell.
It can be seen therefore that the choice of materials for gas shell is
practically unlimited and is governed only by their being poisonous
enough and by the ease of production.
Another thing in which the gas shell has the advantage over the
cylinder gas is in getting surprise, which is naturally much easier
to effect with shell. By the way, if the reader wishes to be counted
among those who knows, he will always speak or write the plural of
shell without adding a final “s.” To talk of a number of shells is very
civilian.
As I pointed out before, we were expecting something new to happen in
the gas-shell line during the whole of 1916, and had an idea that the
new arrival would be something of a cyanide nature--possibly prussic
acid itself. When it did come, however, it proved to be a liquid
filling closely related chemically to phosgene and to the K-Stoff,
which I have previously described. These new gas shell were the first
of the present series of German gas shell, which are all distinctly
marked with coloured crosses and named accordingly. These particular
shell were the Green Cross Shell, a green cross being painted on the
base of the cartridge or on the side of the shell or sometimes on both.
They made their appearance on the Somme Front about a fortnight after
the battle had started--that is, about the middle of July, 1916--though
a few of them had been used against the French on the Verdun Front
sometime in June.
It was not long before blind or unexploded shell--“duds,” we call
them--were collected and sent back for examination. This is one of the
disadvantages of using gas shell--your opponent can always keep track
of what you are doing. Sooner or later a fuse will not function or a
bursting charge will not explode and your watchful enemy carefully
collects the shell, and has for examination a considerable amount
of the poison material. I say “carefully collects,” for it is no
child’s play dealing with shell which may go off in your hands on the
slightest provocation. However, it has to be done, and as it is the
gas officer’s pidgin he manfully shoulders his task and the shell and
has it brought in. Very frequently the fuse fails to act because a
powder pellet holding up the striking needle has not burned away; but
I remember one case where the gas officer of one of the armies took
back a big dud gas shell. It meant transporting the weighty souvenir
in a not particularly well sprung car over very bumpy roads, and he
was quite relieved to arrive at his destination--the field laboratory.
Here it was reverently taken to bits by the experts. Imagine the gas
officer’s horror to find he had been bumping along for several hours in
the company of a shell the powder pellet of which had burned away and
whose only safety device was the weakest of weak creep springs on which
the striker rested. A hard knock or a drop of six inches would almost
certainly have exploded it.
The laboratory officers, who are experts at the game, may have to go up
to the Front themselves to solve important duds which are regarded as
dangerous and require expert attention. In one instance the officer
concerned--in civil life a very celebrated professor at one of the
London colleges--went up to the salient and explored about a mile and
a half of trenches and finally located his prey--a fine dud 4.2-inch
howitzer gas shell--out in the open.
Though the place was pretty unhealthy he “climbed the bags” and made a
careful examination of the shell where it lay, finally bringing it back
in with him. I forget whether he drew its sting on the spot, but in any
case it was a pretty good effort, especially for a man no longer in his
first youth.
Chemical analysis of the blind Green Cross Shell showed the contents
to be a colourless liquid known to chemists by the extensive name of
“trichlormethylcholoroformate.” Its effects are just as ferocious
as the name implies, and experience showed it to be very poisonous.
Indeed it is as poisonous as phosgene itself. The Green Cross Shell
gas--“diphosgene,” to give it its short name--has many effects and
symptoms that make it a dangerous weapon. When dilute it has a peculiar
though not particularly nauseating smell, a smell variously described
as “earthy,” “mouldy rhubarb”--whatever that smells like--and damp hay.
Unlike the shell gases we had encountered before, it has very little
effect on the eyes and causes practically no lachrymation. And this
was a trap, because we had been used to lachrymators, so that many men
despite the obvious smell were not particularly quick in protecting
themselves because of the new symptoms.
Of course this applies only to such low concentrations as would take a
long time to gas a man. In the higher concentrations the Green Cross
very quickly asphyxiates--just as phosgene and chlorine do--and there
is no question of whether it is deadly or not. The old Army quip about
there being only two kinds of people in gas warfare, namely “The
Quick and the Dead,” certainly applies if you get a Green Cross Shell
bursting close to you. But even for gas shell bursting some distance
away immediate and complete protection is necessary because of the
delayed or after effects of the gas, which are exactly similar to those
of phosgene. Every care that is taken with regard to men poisoned with
phosgene has to be taken for men poisoned with Green Cross gas.
Those suffering from the effects of the gas are not allowed to exert
themselves at all or to take heavy meals. They are kept under close
observation for at least two days, and are treated, in fact, as
casualties even though they are not apparently ill. Before the need
for this was understood an officer I knew was slightly gassed with
shell gas but thought nothing of it. Later on he felt a bit queer,
and the regimental medical officer advised him to go down to the
dressing station. He walked the length of the communication trench and
then mounted a “push bicycle” for a mile’s ride to the aid post. The
exertion was too much, however, and he reached the aid post only to
fall dead.
The danger of not treating gassed men as casualties and resting them
for a couple of days, after which they would probably be fit for work
again, is shown by a case where forty men were lost to the line for
a considerable time, though fortunately none of them died. These men
were part of a working party engaged in the construction of dugouts.
They were caught in a surprise bombardment, but were apparently not
much affected. After completing their night’s work they marched back
to billets and turned in as usual. The next morning several of them
were so ill--nearly to the point of collapse--and the remainder were so
visibly affected that the medical officer ordered the whole party to be
sent down to the casualty clearing station, where they were evacuated
to the base.
In still another case I remember a sergeant and twenty men of a wiring
party engaged in the consolidation of a recently captured position
were similarly caught by a sudden and intense Green Cross bombardment.
A number of the men were gassed and felt pretty seedy, but continued
their work and then withdrew. The sergeant felt no ill effects until
an hour after turning in, when he woke with a bad cough and internal
pain and died two hours afterward. One private went to bed without
complaining at all and was found dead next morning. Another died soon
after getting up. A third reached headquarters complaining of shell
shock and died three hours later. I mention these cases so that my
reader will realise why such great care is now taken with men who have
been exposed to poison gas, and how by looking after them in this way
it has been possible to reduce the number of delayed cases of death or
serious illness to a minimum.
Talking of delayed effects of gas shell reminds me that at least
two documents were captured during the Somme--one of them I got
myself--which were obviously notes of lectures given to officers at
a German gas school or staff course. In both of these sets of notes
there were references to the Lusitania, showing that the German Higher
Command was trying to explain that dastardly act to its own troops by
making out that the Lusitania was sunk because it was carrying phosgene
shell for the Allies. This lie can easily be nailed to the board, as
not a single drop of phosgene--or any other poison gas or liquid, for
that matter--was shipped from America before this year, 1918. Both
of the paragraphs I refer to contained a double lie, for they each
asserted that the French started the use of gas shell. One of them
ran as follows: “The French first started the use of gas shell--with
great hopes, but with little success! The most striking result was that
experienced by the passengers of the Lusitania, whose rescued mostly
died later.”
But to return to the Green Cross Shell. These were used during the
Somme Battle in enormous numbers, far surpassing anything we had had
before in the extent of the bombardment. There were a great many new
features about these shell quite apart from the altered nature of the
gas. First of all there was the size. Until then we had had gas shell
of only two sizes--150-millimetre howitzer shell and the 105-millimetre
howitzer shell. The former contained from five to eight pints of liquid
according to the construction of the shell, and the latter about three
pints. To these longer shell were now added shell from the ordinary
field gun, or 77-millimetre gun--quite a small affair compared with the
others and containing only two-thirds of a pint of liquid poison. But
then, though so small, it could be fired more rapidly and accurately
and could bring off an initial surprise in a way that the bigger guns
could not do.
Shell of these three sizes were used then on nearly all occasions and
in very large quantities. One thing that made large numbers possible
was the simplicity of the shell compared with the old pattern. There
was no separate lead container and the “gas” was filled straight into
the body of the shell, as the new material was unacted on by iron or
steel. The head of the shell was screwed in and kept in position and
perfectly gas-tight by means of a special cement.
As very little explosive was needed to open them up and spread the
contents round the noise made by the burst of the Green Cross Shell
was little more than a pop--at any rate when compared with the
high-explosive shell or the old tear shell. The result was that at
first men were apt to regard them as duds and to delay the putting on
of respirators until it was too late.
These gas shell are supposed to make a peculiar wobbling noise in the
passage through the air because of the liquid inside them, and in
this way to be recognisable beforehand. Personally I cannot tell any
difference in the noise compared with H. E. or shrapnel of the same
calibre, though I have heard thousands of both kinds; but I dare say
some people can, as the belief is fairly widespread.
Of course Fritz’s liberality with his gas shell caused us a lot of
casualties, but not nearly so many as we might have had if he had known
how to use them. The fact was he had not at that time got hold of the
proper technic--developed later on by the French--of concentrating his
gas shell on special targets. By now, of course, he has; but at that
time he still clung to the idea of being able to poison big areas with
his shell gas by putting down a series of barrages over the country
to be attacked. Either he had not enough shell or he chose his areas
too big, for he did not produce effective concentrations anywhere but
locally. If he had, our losses might have been tremendous. As it was it
became rather a hit-or-miss proposition, and I have seen hundreds and
hundreds of these shell drop into absolutely unpopulated areas of the
devastated Somme battlefield.
In one case a battery of field guns came in for its share of one such
promiscuous bombardment while I was there. The number of shell coming
over was so great that it was like a magnified machine-gun shoot, but
only a very few got on to the battery and the casualties were only
two--both caused by a direct hit on one of the guns by a gas shell.
If the boche had been able to concentrate his shell on and round the
battery instead of giving it just the same amount as the unoccupied
surrounding country the effect might have been very different.
One possible reason for the promiscuous and sometimes very casual
shooting may have been the fact that the boche at that time had
practically no air observation. Our flying fellows had temporarily
chased his planes out of the skies and had shot down all his
observation balloons. This made it impossible for him to pick his
targets, and he either had to bombard the countryside or shoot “by the
map,” neither method being particularly conducive to good results with
gas shell.
On the other hand, one or two places that he knew were pretty certain
to be occupied by our troops were given their full dose. One such
place was Caterpillar Wood--a big narrow spinney running off from the
Fricourt Valley and so named because of its shape and the fact that on
the ordnance maps, on which the woods are colored green, it looks just
like a green caterpillar crawling over to the shelter of Mametz Wood.
This place was continually shelled with large numbers of the Green
Cross Shell, and as it stood in the side of a valley the gas persisted
longer there than elsewhere and built up a tidy concentration which
caused a lot of trouble.
The gunners were among our chief sufferers from these gas shell, as
their guns were so frequently placed in sunken roads and folds in the
ground for protection against explosive shell and aërial observation,
and these were just the kind of places that held the gas longest. In
the open much less damage was done. I remember one night the first-line
transport of a battalion of the Black Watch ran into a patch of country
into which the boche was raining 77-millimetre Green Cross Shell, and
came out with only three casualties, two of which were from a direct
hit on one of the wagons, the driver being killed instantly.
It seems particularly bad luck to be killed by a direct hit from a
gas shell, for the bits of shell that fly about don’t do much damage
in the ordinary way and don’t travel great distances. Indeed it is
remarkable, even in the biggest gas-shell bombardments, how very few
men are hurt by the fragments.
The first week or two after the advent of the Green Cross the toll of
gas-shell casualties was considerable if not alarming, but steps were
immediately taken to get the situation in hand. It is in a case like
this, where a surprise had been brought off, that Discipline, with a
very big “D,” counts for so much. Fortunately the gas discipline of
the British Army was pretty good, and it was not difficult to get new
instructions carried out and orders obeyed. Once they got going their
effect was most apparent and the gas-shell casualties dropped from week
to week until they approached a minimum.
Among the important steps that were taken were a revision of the
methods of spreading the alarm, and the protection and clearing out of
dugouts into which the gas had penetrated.
Mention has already been made of the slight noise caused by the
explosion of the gas shell, and instructions were accordingly issued
that all shell that sounded like duds were to be regarded as gas shell,
and the respirators adjusted accordingly. This got over one of the
elements of surprise.
A great many men, especially those in battery positions, had been
gassed in their dugouts before warning of the gas bombardment had
been spread. Numbers of these men were actually gassed in their sleep
and were awakened too late by the choking fumes themselves. What was
done was to post a gas sentry at every battery in just the same way
that it was done in the trenches. Special local-alarm signals were
arranged so that the sentry could wake every one in the neighbourhood
without having the alarm spread beyond the limit of the gassed area.
These alarms generally took the form of bells or of gongs made from
big shell cases; but later on policemen’s large rattles were found to
be the most effective “weapon” for the purpose, and numbers of these
were distributed up and down the line and in the battery positions. It
was feared at first that the noise of the rattles would be mistaken
for machine-gun fire and no attention be paid to it, but this did not
materialise and the rattles have done good service.
The only thing about them is that they are made of wood--and nicely
pickled, easily burning wood at that. In the trenches kindling chips of
any kind are eagerly sought after to make a miniature fire to warm tea
or cook an egg. When men will go the length of shaving the handles of
their entrenching tools to obtain dry wood it could hardly be expected
that policemen’s rattles would always be respected. I am afraid a
number of them disappeared. With the artillery things are not so bad as
fuel is easier to obtain and the rattles are therefore less liable to
get lost.