Gas and flame in modern warfare

by Samuel James Manson Auld

Besides these questions of instruction and drilling a lot of other arrangements had to be made, so that warning of German gas attacks should be spread in the quickest possible time. Arrangements were made to install alarms of various kinds in the trenches. Of course no reliance could be placed on any method of communication which involved the use of the lungs. A man cannot blow a bugle or a whistle while he has a helmet on, and if he waited to give a signal by such a method before protecting himself he would be almost certain to be gassed. What was done was to place bells and gongs made from shell cases up and down the trenches.

At first these were rather futile things, the bells generally being much too small—some of them merely cow bells. The shell cases were a bit better and are still used for local alarms; but the arrangements for giving warning were not really very good at that time. The best devices were a number of motor horns, which were obtained locally, but the supply was insufficient and there was no general issue. Later on the alarm arrangements were tremendously improved. In some cases signal lights were used, but so many different kinds of rockets were already employed for signalling to the rear that there was great difficulty in finding a light sufficiently distinctive. There was also the danger that it could be quickly copied by the boche, who would thus amuse himself by giving us all kinds of shocks from false alarms.

Quite as important as the provision of signals was the making of observations to see when the wind was in a dangerous quarter. This was done partly at the meteorological stations at headquarters and partly on the front line itself. The latter was regarded at the time as the most important, and orders were given that each unit in the front line should rig up some kind of wind vane and learn to ascertain the strength of the wind, so that they should be immediately prepared for an attack whenever the wind was in a dangerous quarter.

Wind vanes in the trenches were of the simplest types and a great deal of ingenuity was displayed in fitting up weathercocks that would be capable of turning in really low wind—say, one with a speed of only two miles an hour. The bearings for the central rod were the greatest difficulty, but it was found that by boring out a rifle bullet a sharp pointed stick or a thick piece of wire could be got to revolve in the hollow bullet quite easily, what remained of the lead core acting as a kind of lubrication.

The greatest nuisance of these wind vanes at first was that they were made so generally obtrusive that they could be seen from the enemy’s lines, and they nearly always drew fire from snipers, and sometimes actually from the artillery. Presumably the enemy thought that where the wind vanes were installed company headquarters were probably situated. The position of the wind vanes consequently had to be chosen so that the direction and speed of the wind would be measured several feet above the ground without the apparatus being too obvious. One of the simplest types of vane adopted, and one which could hardly be seen from any distance, was a bit of a stick to the end of which was tied ten to twelve inches of thin thread with a tiny bit of cotton wool at the end. When the wind is blowing the direction taken by the thread shows the line of the wind fairly exactly, and the behaviour of the cotton wool in rising and falling indicates the strength of the wind. The latter, however, was supposed to be measured by reference to Beaufort’s scale, which depends on the movement in wind of natural objects. Beaufort’s scale, which was devised long ago by an English admiral of that name, is as follows:

Smoke moves straight up, speed of wind is nil; smoke slants, speed is two miles an hour; the wind is felt on the face, speed is five miles; paper, etc., move about, speed is ten miles; bushes are seen to sway, speed is fifteen miles; tree tops sway and wavelets are formed on water, speed is twenty miles; tree tops sway and whistle, speed is thirty miles.

All of these arrangements for training and equipment of the troops were hurried on as quickly as possible, but at the same time sight was not lost of the probability of the German’s using gases different from the chlorine which had originally formed their stand-by. It was felt that a good all-round protection should be capable of keeping out not only chlorine and similar gases but also others which were quite likely to come into use.

During the whole of this time we were getting a lot of information from the intelligence branch as to materials which the Germans were making for use against us in their next gas attacks. Some of this information was really farcical, but on the other hand some of it was very good and helped to confirm the conclusions to which our own scientists were coming as to the likelihood or unlikelihood of particular gases. In the former category may be classed one story which came to us containing a very circumstantial description of some experiments which were stated to have been carried out in Berlin. These trials were stated to have been made in what we considered a very proper place, namely, Hagenbeck’s menagerie, where, in the presence of a large number of military representatives, a new gas was tried out.

A noncommissioned officer appeared with a tank of the gas on his back, the spraying nozzle coming out under his arm. A camel and an elephant were brought out. The noncommissioned officer advanced toward them, and at twenty paces’ distance he pressed down the lever on the tank and out came some small black bubbles of gas, which floated down the wind toward the faded animals. The bubbles burst, giving off a yellow vapour, and the minute this vapour came in contact with the camel and the elephant the beasts dropped down dead!

This sounded very terrible, but even in the conditions we were at the time it was not taken too seriously, and of course nothing of this kind has ever made its appearance.