To Earl Kitchener, Secretary of State for War.
My Lord: I have the honor to report that, as requested by you yesterday morning, I proceeded to France to investigate the nature and effects of the asphyxiating gas employed in the recent fighting by the German troops. After reporting myself at General Headquarters I proceeded to Bailleul with Sir Wilmot Herringham, Consulting Physician to the British Force, and examined with him several men from Canadian battalions who were at the No. 2 Casualty Clearing Station suffering from the effects of the gas.
These men were lying struggling for breath and blue in the face. On examining the blood with the spectroscope and by other means, I ascertained that the blueness was not due to the presence of any abnormal pigment. There was nothing to account for the blueness (cyanosis) and struggle for air but the one fact that they were suffering from acute bronchitis, such as is caused by inhalation of an irritant gas. Their statements were that when in the trenches they had been overwhelmed by an irritant gas produced in front of the German trenches and carried toward them by a gentle breeze.
One of them died shortly after our arrival. A post-mortem examination was conducted in our presence by Lieutenant McNee, a pathologist by profession, of Glasgow University. The examination showed that death was due to acute bronchitis and its secondary effects. There was no doubt that the bronchitis and accompanying slow asphyxiation were due to the irritant gas.
Lieutenant McNee had also examined yesterday the body of a Canadian Sergeant who had died in the clearing station from the effects of the gas. In this case, also, very acute bronchitis and oedema of the lungs caused death by asphyxiation.
A deposition by Captain Bertram, Eighth Canadian Battalion, was carefully taken down by Lieutenant McNee. Captain Bertram was then in the clearing station, suffering from the effects of the gas and from a wound. From a support trench, about 600 yards from the German lines, he had observed the gas. He saw, first of all, a white smoke arising from the German trenches to a height of about three feet. Then in front of the white smoke appeared a greenish cloud, which drifted along the ground to our trenches, not rising more than about seven feet from the ground when it reached our first trenches. Men in these trenches were obliged to leave, and a number of them were killed by the effects of the gas. We made a counter-attack about fifteen minutes after the gas came over, and saw twenty-four men lying dead from the effects of the gas on a small stretch of road leading from the advanced trenches to the supports. He was himself much affected by the gas still present, and felt as if he could not breathe.
The symptoms and the other facts so far ascertained point to the use by the German troops of chlorine or bromine for purposes of asphyxiation.
There are also facts pointing to the use in German shells of other irritant substances, though in some cases at least these agents are not of the same brutally barbarous character as the gas used in the attack on the Canadians. The effects are not those of any of the ordinary products of combustion of explosives. On this point the symptoms described left not the slightest doubt in my mind.
Professor H.B. Baker, F.R.S., who accompanied me, is making further inquiries from the chemical side.
I am, my Lord, your obedient servant,