Gas and flame in modern warfare

by Samuel James Manson Auld

Shell of these three sizes were used then on nearly all occasions and in very large quantities. One thing that made large numbers possible was the simplicity of the shell compared with the old pattern. There was no separate lead container and the “gas” was filled straight into the body of the shell, as the new material was unacted on by iron or steel. The head of the shell was screwed in and kept in position and perfectly gas-tight by means of a special cement.

As very little explosive was needed to open them up and spread the contents round the noise made by the burst of the Green Cross Shell was little more than a pop—at any rate when compared with the high-explosive shell or the old tear shell. The result was that at first men were apt to regard them as duds and to delay the putting on of respirators until it was too late.

These gas shell are supposed to make a peculiar wobbling noise in the passage through the air because of the liquid inside them, and in this way to be recognisable beforehand. Personally I cannot tell any difference in the noise compared with H. E. or shrapnel of the same calibre, though I have heard thousands of both kinds; but I dare say some people can, as the belief is fairly widespread.

Of course Fritz’s liberality with his gas shell caused us a lot of casualties, but not nearly so many as we might have had if he had known how to use them. The fact was he had not at that time got hold of the proper technic—developed later on by the French—of concentrating his gas shell on special targets. By now, of course, he has; but at that time he still clung to the idea of being able to poison big areas with his shell gas by putting down a series of barrages over the country to be attacked. Either he had not enough shell or he chose his areas too big, for he did not produce effective concentrations anywhere but locally. If he had, our losses might have been tremendous. As it was it became rather a hit-or-miss proposition, and I have seen hundreds and hundreds of these shell drop into absolutely unpopulated areas of the devastated Somme battlefield.

In one case a battery of field guns came in for its share of one such promiscuous bombardment while I was there. The number of shell coming over was so great that it was like a magnified machine-gun shoot, but only a very few got on to the battery and the casualties were only two—both caused by a direct hit on one of the guns by a gas shell. If the boche had been able to concentrate his shell on and round the battery instead of giving it just the same amount as the unoccupied surrounding country the effect might have been very different.

One possible reason for the promiscuous and sometimes very casual shooting may have been the fact that the boche at that time had practically no air observation. Our flying fellows had temporarily chased his planes out of the skies and had shot down all his observation balloons. This made it impossible for him to pick his targets, and he either had to bombard the countryside or shoot “by the map,” neither method being particularly conducive to good results with gas shell.

On the other hand, one or two places that he knew were pretty certain to be occupied by our troops were given their full dose. One such place was Caterpillar Wood—a big narrow spinney running off from the Fricourt Valley and so named because of its shape and the fact that on the ordnance maps, on which the woods are colored green, it looks just like a green caterpillar crawling over to the shelter of Mametz Wood. This place was continually shelled with large numbers of the Green Cross Shell, and as it stood in the side of a valley the gas persisted longer there than elsewhere and built up a tidy concentration which caused a lot of trouble.

The gunners were among our chief sufferers from these gas shell, as their guns were so frequently placed in sunken roads and folds in the ground for protection against explosive shell and aërial observation, and these were just the kind of places that held the gas longest. In the open much less damage was done. I remember one night the first-line transport of a battalion of the Black Watch ran into a patch of country into which the boche was raining 77-millimetre Green Cross Shell, and came out with only three casualties, two of which were from a direct hit on one of the wagons, the driver being killed instantly.

It seems particularly bad luck to be killed by a direct hit from a gas shell, for the bits of shell that fly about don’t do much damage in the ordinary way and don’t travel great distances. Indeed it is remarkable, even in the biggest gas-shell bombardments, how very few men are hurt by the fragments.

The first week or two after the advent of the Green Cross the toll of gas-shell casualties was considerable if not alarming, but steps were immediately taken to get the situation in hand. It is in a case like this, where a surprise had been brought off, that Discipline, with a very big “D,” counts for so much. Fortunately the gas discipline of the British Army was pretty good, and it was not difficult to get new instructions carried out and orders obeyed. Once they got going their effect was most apparent and the gas-shell casualties dropped from week to week until they approached a minimum.