GAS AND FLAME
GAS AND FLAME
GAS AND FLAMECHAPTER I
GAS AND FLAME
The first rumours of German gas attacks—Sceptically received—First attack in 1915—Canadian pluck under gas—Nernst and Haber the inventors of German gas—The difficulties of getting practicable gases—The technic of gas attacks—A German prisoner’s account.
The first rumours of German gas attacks—Sceptically received—First attack in 1915—Canadian pluck under gas—Nernst and Haber the inventors of German gas—The difficulties of getting practicable gases—The technic of gas attacks—A German prisoner’s account.
The first rumours of German gas attacks—Sceptically received—First attack in 1915—Canadian pluck under gas—Nernst and Haber the inventors of German gas—The difficulties of getting practicable gases—The technic of gas attacks—A German prisoner’s account.
Inthe early part of April, 1915, we were in the trenches opposite Messines. We enjoyed the usual morning and evening “hate”; we sniped and were sniped at; we patrolled and wired and attempted to drain away the superfluous water, and there was much mud and humour and expectancy. It is true there were no Mills grenades or Stokes mortars or tin hats, but trench warfare was not so very different then from what it is now—with one great exception: There was no gas. And there were consequently no respirators to carry day and night. It is almost impossible now to rememberthe time when one did not carry a respirator in the trenches. Somehow it makes you feel quite naked to think of it—and yet there we were, imagining we knew what war really was like!
The newspapers we got at that time were generally a good many days old, and censored at that, and our chief source of news about the war in other people’s parts of the line was a summary of so-called information issued from headquarters, which percolated down to the battalion and, like every other summary before and since, went by the name of “Comic Cuts.”
Somewhere about the middle of the month we heard that in somebody else’s summary had appeared a paragraph to the effect that a deserter from the German lines up in the salient had told a cock-and-bull story of how they intended to poison us all with a cloud of gas, and that tanks full of the poison gas were already installed in their trenches.
Of course nobody believed him. The statement was “passed for information for what it is worth.” And as nobody ever believed anything that appeared in Comic Cuts in any case, we were not disposed to get thewind up about it. And then, about a week later, on April 22, 1915, was launched the first gas attack; and another constant horror was added to an already somewhat unpleasant war. Details about the attack are still somewhat meagre, for the simple reason that the men who could have told much about it never came back.
The place chosen for the first gas attack was in the northeast part of the Ypres salient at that part of the line where the French and British lines met, running down from where the trenches left the canal near Boesinghe. On the French right was the —— Regiment of Turcos, and on the British left were the Canadians.
Try to imagine the feelings and the condition of the coloured troops as they saw the vast cloud of greenish-yellow gas spring out of the ground and slowly move down wind toward them, the vapour clinging to the earth, seeking out every hole and hollow and filling the trenches and shell holes as it came. First wonder, then fear; then, as the first fringes of the cloud enveloped them and left them choking and agonised in the fight for breath—panic. Those who could move broke andran, trying, generally in vain, to outstrip the cloud which followed inexorably after them.
The majority of those in the front line were killed—some, let us hope, immediately, but most of them slowly and horribly. It is not my intention to try to play upon feelings, but those of us who have seen men badly gassed can only think with horror of a battlefield covered with such cases, over which the Germans subsequently advanced.
The Canadians on the British left fared both better and worse than the French coloured troops. Only their left appears to have been in the main path of the poison cloud, but there is little doubt that in the thickest part those who did not escape either to a flank or to the rear were killed on the field. Thousands of those in the support trenches and reserve lines and in billets behind the line were suffocated—many to die later in the field ambulances and casualty clearing stations.
Of those on the fringe of the cloud many saved themselves by burying their faces in the earth. Others wrapped mufflers round their mouths and noses or stuffed handkerchiefs into their mouths. Many of thesemen were saved by their presence of mind, for though gassed at the time they recovered later, after treatment in the hospitals.
It is on record that the Canadians, with handkerchiefs or mufflers tied over their mouths, continued to engage the Germans and that a number of them actually charged back through the gas cloud in an endeavour to reach the enemy. What became of them is not known.
In this way a big gap was made in the Allied lines, through which the Germans advanced. But the Canadians quickly formed a flank on the left and stoutly engaged the enemy, with such success that they first slowed up and then brought to a halt the advance of the Germans. It was this prompt action and gallant resistance that probably saved the day.
Whether the German high command had underestimated the probable effect of the gas and had arranged for only a limited objective past which the local commanders did not take the initiative to go, or whether the latter were unaware of the real weakness of the Canadian line is unknown. The fact remains that they did not press their advantageto the full. They had taken the Allied front line on a wide front, killed or captured thousands of men and taken sixty guns, and seemed to have a clear way through to Calais; but they were stopped by the pluck of a handful of Canadians. Reinforcements of men and guns were rushed up, and the immediate danger was over.
It is a matter for surmise how long the Germans had been planning and preparing their use of gas. The idea may have been a pre-war one, but it is difficult to believe that a project deliberately planned for years would not have been developed so as to make it a sure winner—for it could easily have been that. If, for example, they had made the attack over a wider front with such strong gas clouds as are now used nothing could possibly have stood against them. Every living thing to a depth of fifteen miles or more could have been killed.
On the other hand it is impossible to imagine the use of poison gas as having been decided on without better preparation having been made to meet retaliation, unless it was assumed either that the use of the gas would be decisive or that at any rate the warwould be finished before the Allies could hit back with the same weapon.
In any case the preparation must have been going on for months. All the production of material, organisation of personnel and so on takes a long time. This we realised ourselves later, for though the decision to retaliate with gas was made in May it was September before an attack could possibly be made. If we assume that a like interval of four months elapsed for the perfecting of the German arrangements it means that the decision to use gas was made about Christmas, 1914.
The onus of urging the Kaiser’s advisers to adopt the use of poisonous gases had been laid at the door of Professor Nernst, professor of chemistry at the University of Berlin. Professor Nernst is a noted chemist, and even before the war was a notorious Pan-German and Anglophobe—one of the “professors” who carried too much weight in Germany and whose arrogance and shortsightedness helped to lure her to her downfall. Some time after the use of gas was started Professor Nernst was made a count by the Kaiser for his “notable services”—meaningpresumably the use of gas in warfare.
The actual carrying out of the gas operations was intrusted to another professor of chemistry, this being one Haber, of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Chemical Institute at Berlin. In 1914, long before the war started, Professor Haber and his assistants are known to have been working secretly with some intensely poisonous arsenic gases and liquids, and one of the assistants was killed and another is reported to have had his arm blown off during the researches.
Haber’s particular job was to make all the scientific arrangements in the field; to decide on the gases to be used, and the quantity to employ; to study the wind directions and decide exactly when to make the attack. In the weeks preceding the twenty-second of April, Haber was continually at the Front receiving reports from the wind observation stations and in close touch with the men in charge of the cylinders in the trenches. On several occasions during this time the attack was fixed for a certain hour, but was postponed by Haber, owing to the wind’s being unsuitable.
The actual arrangements that had to be made were much more complex than the carrying out of the attack itself. First of all, decision had to be come to as to the gas to be used in the fiendish attempt. Such a gas had of course to be highly poisonous. Then it must be cheaply and easily made in large quantities; it had to be compressible, so that it could be transported easily; it must be heavier than air, so that it should keep close to the ground when first liberated; and for preference it should not be unstable—that is, decompose easily and enter into nonpoisonous combinations with materials, other than man, that it should come across in its passage through the air.
Any chemist to whom such a problem is put will inform you there are very few gases that fill the bill. The German choice rested on that gas well-known to students of chemistry—chlorine. Chlorine in large quantities was available from the alkali works in Germany, and it meets all the other requirements except that of not easily combining with other things. This deficiency was fortunate, for it meant that protective chemicals were easy to find when it became necessaryto provide respirators to the Allied troops.
Then there was the question of transport and emission. The gas was eventually put up in steel cylinders, about thirty inches long and eight inches across and stout enough to stand a pressure of about ten atmospheres, the gas being stored in them compressed to a liquid. On opening such a cylinder the liquid boils and gives off the gas again, but this would not do for field work, because of the intense cold which is produced by the sudden expansion. This would freeze up the pipes and slow down the discharge to such an extent that the gas attack would be too weak.
To get over this difficulty the Germans fitted their cylinders with internal siphon tubes so that actually liquid chlorine was forced into the air, where it evaporated without affecting the gas remaining in the cylinder. By this means the whole of the gas in the cylinder, amounting to forty-five pounds, is emptied into the atmosphere in less than three minutes. The sudden expansion of the chlorine in the air also makes both it and the surrounding air cold andhelps to keep the cloud close to the ground.
The actual handing of the gas attacks was allotted to two regiments of pioneers—the 35th and 36th Pioneer Regiments, which were specially organised for this purpose. These regiments have the ordinary organisation of two battalions per regiment, with three companies and a park or transport company per battalion. The rank and file are ordinary pioneers, but the officers are specially picked and include chemists, mechanical experts, meteorologists, and other men with special scientific qualifications.
The choice of country in which to make a gas attack was a serious matter to the enemy. The gas of course will go with the wind, but it depends largely on what the country is like where the wind will go. The Germans themselves say they prefer a flat country without any marked under features and sloping gently toward our lines, just as they had at Ypres. Indeed, they went the length of saying that a gas attack could not be carried out in hilly or very broken country; and they suffered in consequence later on, through being taken unawares by the French in just such country in the Vosgeswhen retaliation was commenced. But taking it altogether the Germans were wise in their choice of position.
Another thing that had to be considered was the outline of their own trench system, so that they would not let off the gas in such parts of the line that it would float back and gas their own troops in the neighbouring trenches. To do this they invented a “factor of safety,” which represented an angle between the direction of the wind and the line of the trenches. No attack was to be made if the wind direction came within forty degrees of any trench within gassing distance. This worked very well.
Another consideration was the strength of the wind. The wind must not be too strong when the gusts disperse the gas cloud, or it will weaken it so that it loses a lot of its effect and will be blown over the enemy too quickly; nor must it be so weak that it will take a long time to reach the opposing trenches.
Another great danger in winds of too low velocity is that these are just the winds which change their direction most frequently, and anything under two miles perhour is just as likely to blow the gas back to the place from which it came. It was disregarding this principle on one occasion later on that caused the Germans numerous casualties from one of their own gas clouds. In general, however, it may be laid down that the most favourable winds are those between four and twelve miles an hour, so that with a wind of eight miles an hour the cloud would move just twice as quickly as a man walking rapidly, and would take only twelve and a half seconds to cross No Man’s Land in places where the trenches are fifty yards apart.
Let me try to give an account of the procedure of carrying out gas attacks as it was told me by a German prisoner taken not so very long ago. He said:
“I am not one of the gas pioneers, but being an engineer by trade and having been in the trenches for many weeks with the 35th Regiment of Pioneers I have got to know their methods fairly well. Indeed I assisted on one occasion in carrying cylinders into the trenches for an attack against the British. Gas is not popular with us; we have had too many mishaps, and the cylinders area nuisance to carry into the trenches. They weigh ninety pounds and they are always carried in by the infantry. A gas regiment does not do that for itself. It is a long carry and it is really more than a one-man load. At the most two men are allotted to carry in each cylinder, whatever the distance.
“Several thousand of these cylinders must be taken into the trenches, and then we have the job of putting them in position. Deep holes are dug just underneath the parapet of the trench, and into these holes are placed the separate cylinders with the tops flush with the ground. As each cylinder is placed into position the hole is covered with a board, on top of which is placed a thing we call a ‘Salzdecke,’ which is really a kind of quilt stuffed with peat moss and soaked in potash solution so as to absorb any of the gases that may leak out.
“On top of theSalzdeckeare built up three layers of sandbags, so that there is not much danger of the cylinders’ being hit by shell fragments. This also serves to hide the cylinders in case a raid is made, and the sandbags form an excellent firing step. In fact, you would never guess that the gaswas ready in position to make an attack. All of this takes a long time to do, and then we have to wait for a wind that is favourable.
“It may be weeks before the right time comes, but all the time the pioneer officers andUnteroffizieremake observations of the wind and report back to somebody at headquarters. On the night fixed for the attack all the infantry are warned beforehand. If the wind continues favourable the sandbags are taken off, the domes removed from the cylinders, and to each cylinder is attached a lead pipe which is bent over the top of the parapet into No Man’s Land, with the end slightly bent up, so that if any liquid comes out it is not wasted in the ground but evaporates in the air. The end of the lead pipe is weighted with a sandbag, so that it will not kick when the gas is turned on and blow the gas back into our own trenches, as happened in one or two of the earlier attacks. It is this kind of thing that makes gas unpopular in the German Army.
“Eventually the time really does arrive for the attack, and the pioneers stand by the cylinders, of which twenty form a battery;and to each battery there are two pioneers and one noncommissioned officer waiting to unscrew the taps. A signal is given by means of a rocket. All the infantry have been eagerly waiting for this signal, which means that they have five minutes to clear out of the front-line trenches before the gas is turned on; and I can tell you they do not waste any time. Everybody makes a rush to the support trench and leaves the front line entirely to the pioneers.
“We all keep our masks ready to put on at a moment’s notice, because in the earlier attack the wind on two occasions blew the gas back again into our own trenches and killed a lot of the infantry who were unprepared for its return. According to the length of time the attack is to last the cylinders are turned on, from one up to five at a time, in each battery.
“As soon as the taps are turned on the pioneers make for cover, but they have a good many losses from bursting cylinders, from leaks, and from the shrapnel and high-explosive shells which invariably greet the start of an attack. The promptness with which this happened at the time I was in theline made us believe that your people had known all about our gas preparations for some time. The infantry are all very glad to be away from the front-line trench when the cloud is sent over.”
This method has been practically unaltered throughout the time the Germans have made gas attacks. In the first attack they probably had one gas cylinder on every yard of front on which gas was installed, but the number was increased in subsequent attacks.