Holding the Breath
The first regulations and those in general use up to near the close of hostilities, prescribed that the soldier should hold his breath and adjust his mask. It seemed impossible to overcome the natural inference that “holding the breath” meant first the drawing of a full breath. This was obviously highly dangerous if gas were actually present before the alarm was heard, as was often the case with projector and artillery gas shell attacks. The change was then made to the phrase “Stop Breathing and Stay Stopped until the Mask is Carefully and Accurately Adjusted.”
Psychology in Training
While the importance of impressing upon the soldier the danger of gas was early appreciated it was deemed necessary not to make him unduly afraid of the gas. However, as gas defense training in our Army got a big start over gas offense training, this became a matter of very great importance. In fact, due to a variety of causes, training in the offensive use of gas was not available for any troops until after their arrival in France. This resulted in officers and men looking upon the gas game, so far as they were individually concerned, as one of defense only. Accordingly after their arrival in France it became very difficult not only to get some of our officers to take up the offensive use of gas but even to get them to permit its use along the front they commanded.
Notwithstanding all the care taken in training Americans in gas defense there arose an undue fear of the gas that had to be overcome in order to get our troops to attack close enough to their own gas to make it effective. This applied to the use of gas by artillery as well as to its use by gas troops. However, it should be said that in every instance where gas was once used on an American front all officers in the Division, or other unit, affected by it were always thereafter strongly in favor of it.
German Problems in Gas Training
The Germans also had serious troubles of their own over the psychology of gas training. As stated elsewhere they were using mustard gas nearly eleven months before the Allies began using it. During that time, for purposes of morale, if not sheer boastfulness, the Germans told their men that mustard gas could not be made by the Allies; that it was by far the worst thing the war had produced—and in that statement they were correct—and that they would win the war with it—in which statement they were far from correct. When the Allies began sending it back to them they had to reverse their teachings and tell their men that mustard gas was no worse than anything else, that they need not be afraid of it and that their masks and other protective appliances gave full protection against it. They thus had a problem in psychology which they never succeeded in fully solving. Indeed there is no question but that the growing fear of gas in the minds of the German is one of the reasons that prompted him to his early capitulation.
Gas at Night
In the early days it was very difficult to get officers to realize the absolute necessity of night drill in the adjustment of the mask. For various reasons, including surprise, gas attacks were probably eighty to ninety per cent of the time carried out at night. Under such conditions confusion in the adjustment of the mask is inevitable without a great deal of practice before hand, especially for duty in trenches with narrow spaces and sharp projecting corners. There are numerous instances of men waking up and getting excited, who not only gassed themselves, but in their mad efforts to find their masks, or to escape from the gas, knocked others down, disarranging their masks and causing the gassing of from one to three or four additional men. The confusion inherent in any gas attack was heightened in the latter stages of the war by heavy shrapnel and high explosive bombardments that accompanied nearly all projector and cloud gas attacks for that very purpose. The bombardment was continued for three or four hours to cause exhaustion and removal of the mask and to prevent the removal of the gassed patients from the gassed area.