Gas and flame in modern warfare

by Samuel James Manson Auld

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.