Loos, September, 1915, to Ypres, July, 1917.
The Need of Retaliation.—The conclusive sign of the Allied reaction to the German poison gas attack appeared at the battle of Loos. "Owing to the repeated use by the enemy of asphyxiating gas in their attacks on our positions," says Field-Marshal French in his despatch of October 15, 1915, "I have been compelled to resort to similar methods, and a detachment was organised for this purpose, which took part in the operations commencing on the 25th September for the first time." Five months thus elapsed before retaliation. From a military point of view their can be no doubt as to the wisdom, in fact the absolute necessity, of using gas in order to reply to the many German attacks of this nature. The question of morale was bound up in this retaliation. Had the Germans continued their chemical attacks in variety and extent as they did, and had it been realised that for some reason or other we were not able to retaliate in kind, none but the gravest consequences could have resulted with regard to morale. It must be remembered that the earlier use of cloud and shell gas by the Germans was of local incidence, when compared with its tremendous use along the whole of the front in the later stages of the war.
First Signs.—Our preparatory period was one of feverish, if somewhat unco-ordinated, activity. The production of a protective appliance, the gas mask, was vital. This development will be considered later. Allied chemical warfare organisations arose, to become an important factor in the later stages of the war. The history of Allied gas organisation is one of the gradual recognition that chemical warfare represented a new weapon with new possibilities, new specific uses, and new requirements from the rear. Its beginnings are seen in the English and French Scientific Advisory Committees appointed to examine the new German method. One could always trace an element of reluctance, however, in Allied development, signs that each move was forced upon us by some new German surprise. We find the other extreme, the logical outcome of war experience, in the completely independent Chemical Warfare Service now actually adopted in the United States of America. This is dealt with in a separate chapter.
The decision to retaliate once made, our difficulties commenced. We required gas, weapons, and methods for its use, trained personnel, and the association of certain scientific with military standards without losing the field efficiency of the latter. The German staff found this in their co-operation with eminent scientists, notably Professor Haber. Without drawing invidious distinctions between pre-war military and public appreciation of chemical science in England and Germany, it would be merely untrue to state that the Germans were not in a position of advantage in this respect. However, chemical mobilisation and co-operation proceeded sufficiently rapidly to provide us with personnel and material for the Loos attack.
The assembly and organisation of personnel occurred in three directions. In the first place the Royal Society had already begun to mobilise prominent scientists for other war purposes. In the second place, different formations in the field, realising the need for specialist treatment of the gas question, after the first German attack, created staff appointments for certain chemists chosen from infantry regiments and other formations on the front. Thirdly, men were collected at a depot in France to form the nucleus of the offensive gas troops. For this purpose chemists were specially enrolled and chosen men from infantry and other front line units were added. Early gas attacks and gas organisation did not appear to justify the immobilisation of so much chemical talent in the offensive gas troops, when chemists were needed all over England for munition production so vital to war. But later events justified the mobilisation and military training of these specialists. The expansion of the advisory and offensive organisations at the front necessitated a large number of officers, whose chemical training was of great value. It is difficult to see where they would have been found had they not been mobilised with the Special Companies. Moreover, their offensive and battle experience gained with the latter was of great value. Six or seven weeks' training witnessed the conversion of a few hundred men of the above type into one or two so called Special Companies. The spirit and work of these men in the Loos attack cannot be spoken of too highly.
The Loos Attack, September, 1915.—The Field-Marshal bears testimony to its success as follows: "Although the enemy was known to have been prepared for such reprisals, our gas attack met with marked success, and produced a demoralising effect in some of the opposing units, of which ample evidence was forthcoming in the captured trenches. The men who undertook this work carried out their unfamiliar duties during a heavy bombardment with conspicuous gallantry and coolness; and I feel confident in their ability to more than hold their own should the enemy again resort to this method of warfare."
There is evidence, however, that this early attack, inefficient as it appeared to be to participants, met with considerable success. Schwarte's book tells us: "The English succeeded in releasing gas clouds on a large scale. Their success on this occasion was due to the fact that they took us by surprise. Our troops refused to believe in the danger and were not sufficiently adept in the use of defensive measures as prescribed by G.H.Q."
On the occasion of a cloud attack a few weeks later, at the storming of the Hohenzollern redoubt, Sergeant-Major Dawson, in charge of a sector of gas emplacements in the front line trench, won the Victoria Cross. The German reply to our bombardment was very severe and under stress of it a battery of our cylinders, either through a direct hit or faulty connections, began to pour gas into our own trenches. In order to prevent panic and casualties among our own troops at this critical time, a few minutes before zero, the moment of assault, Sergeant-Major Dawson climbed on to the parapet under a hail of shell, rifle, and machine-gun fire, and, hauling up the cylinders in question, carried them to a safe distance into the poisoned atmosphere of No Man's Land and ensured their complete discharge by boring them with a rifle bullet. In addition to the Hohenzollern attack cloud gas was used in December, 1915, in the region of Givenchy.
The Somme Battle, 1916.—My impression as an eyewitness and participator, however, was that the real British gas offensive began after, and as a result of, the Loos experience. Material, organisation, and numbers of personnel, both at the front and at home, co-operation with staffs and tactical conceptions all improved vastly in time to contribute largely to the efficiency of preparations for the Somme offensive in July, 1916. During the early months of 1916, a Special Brigade was created by expanding the four Special Companies, and the 4-inch Stokes mortar was adopted, training being vigorously pursued. As many as 110 cloud gas discharges, mainly of a phosgene mixture, occurred during the Somme battle, and evidence of their success is seen in German reports. These successes were due not only to the magnitude of our operations, but to the carefully developed cloud attack tactics which aimed at obtaining maximum results from the gas employed. The factor of surprise governed all other considerations. Attacks occurred at night and depended for success upon the concentration of the maximum amount of gas in the given sector for a short, sharp discharge under the best wind conditions. There is abundant evidence of our success in these attacks. Probably the most marked feature of the captured documents or of prisoners' statements during the later stages of the Somme battle was the continual reference to the deadly effect of British cloud gas. The captured letter of a German soldier writing home stated: "Since the beginning of July an unparalleled slaughter has been going on. Not a day passes but the English let off their gas waves at one place or another. I will give you only one instance of this gas; men 7 and 8 kilometres behind the front line became unconscious from the tail of the gas cloud, and its effects are felt 12 kilometres behind the front. It is deadly stuff."
The accuracy of this reference to the long range effect of our gas clouds is borne out in a number of other statements. For example, we learnt from a prisoner examined by the French: "The men were thrown into disorder and raised their masks because they were suffocated. Many fell in running to the rear; a number did not become ill until the next day. Vegetation was burnt up to a depth of 8 kilometres." Again, prisoners taken at Maurepas stated that one of the English gas attacks was effective 10 kilometres back.