The following description of the effect is told by a responsible British officer who visited some Canadians who were disabled by gas:
“The whole of England and the civilized world ought to have the truth fully brought before them in vivid detail, and not wrapped up as at present. When we got to the hospital we had no difficulty in finding out in which ward the men were, as the noise of the poor devils trying to get breath was sufficient to direct us.
CANADIAN VICTIMS
“There were about twenty of the worst cases in the ward, on mattresses, all more or less in a sitting position, strapped up against the walls. Their faces, arms, and hands were of a shiny, gray-black color. With their mouths open and leaden-glazed eyes, all were swaying slightly backward and forward trying to get breath. It was a most appalling sight. All these poor black faces struggling for life, the groaning and the noise of the efforts for breath was awful.
“There was practically nothing to be done for them except to give them salt and water and try to make them sick. The effect the gas has is to fill the lungs with a watery frothy matter, which gradually increases and rises until it fills up the whole lungs and comes to the mouth—then they die. It is suffocation, slow drowning, taking in most cases one or two days. Eight died last night out of twenty I saw, and the most of the others I saw will die, while those who get over the gas invariably develop acute pneumonia.
“It is without doubt the most awful form of scientific torture. Not one of the men I saw in the hospital had a scratch or wound. The Germans have given out that it is a rapid, painless death—the liars. No torture could be worse than to give them a dose of their own gas.”
“TRENCH GAS” AT YPRES
Asphyxiating gases seem to have been first used by the Germans in the fighting around Ypres in April, 1915. The strong northeast wind, which was blowing from the German lines across the French trenches, became charged with a sickening, suffocating odor which was recognized as proceeding from some form of poisonous gas. The smoke moved like a vivid green wall some four feet in height for several hundred yards, extending to within two hundred yards of the extreme left of the Allies’ lines. Gradually it rose higher and obscured the view from the level.
Soon strange cries were heard, and through the green mist, now growing thinner and patchy, there came a mass of dazed, reeling men who fell as they passed through the ranks. The greater number were unwounded, but they bore upon their faces the marks of agony.