Altogether he is a very important and busy person, and to those acquainted with his work the following incident will appeal. I happened to overhear part of a conversation between two Cockney Tommies on the road:
“What’s this ’ere divisional gas officer, Bill?”
“Why, he’s the bloke what goes round and blows up these observation balloons.”
The divisional gas officer has a number of specially trained noncommissioned officers to help him, and each company of infantry and battery of artillery has at least one noncommissioned officer. It is the first and most important job of these noncommissioned officers to help the commander in everything pertaining to defence against German gas. He assists at drills and inspections, help in the arrangement and fitting up of alarms, in the taking of wind readings and the protection of the shelters and dugouts. In his charge are placed the gas fans and the sampling apparatus. A good company gas noncommissioned officer is a real joy and can polish up the gas discipline of the company tremendously, as well as take a lot of responsibility off the overworked company commander’s shoulders. A bad noncommissioned gas officer, on the other hand, can be the direct and indirect cause of the loss of many lives when the gas attack does come.
This ended the British experience of German gas-cloud attacks, for though the 35th and 36th Pioneers made three subsequent visits to the Western Front it was each time to gas the French. The last cloud attack of all was made near Nieuport, at that time in the French lines, on April 23, 1917.
Since then the only cloud attacks have been made against the Russians and the Italians.
Probably the chief reason that has caused the boche to hold back with his cloud attacks has been his conclusion that they were unprofitable against well-disciplined, highly trained and thoroughly protected troops. With a limited amount of gas available he naturally chose the method that would give him the best results. For the cloud attack his cheapest target was the Russians, who were incompletely equipped with gas masks of a modern kind and who for a long time were badly disciplined in anti-gas measures. Against such troops the gas cloud is just the thing, and the Germans have estimated that ten to fifteen per cent of all troops exposed to a successful gas cloud would become casualties. This was probably true on the Russian Front, but was certainly not true in the West.
Then the gas cloud has almost reached its apparent limit of development. There is a limit to the number of gases that can be used from cylinders, and there is a limit to the number of cylinders that can be discharged at one time. Besides this the gas cloud is largely dependent on infantry labour for carrying and installation, and it is mighty difficult to bring off a complete surprise owing to the time it takes to prepare an attack.
On top of all this the whole procedure is wrong as regards efficiency, for it puts up the highest concentration of gas where the boche does not want it—just in front of his own trenches instead of in ours.
For all these reasons the boche during the past year has specialised on the development of his gas shells. Of course he may come back with the cloud again, and we do not relax our vigilance or it certainly would reappear. But unless he discovers something new in the cloud line, and if we keep up a high standard of training, he will not do much damage, though for that matter the same thing is true about gas shells and trench mortar bombs.