CHAPTER V
Summer of 1916 the highwater mark of the German gas cloud—Their improved methods—The need of speed and secrecy—Gas as a rat exterminator—Causes of Allied casualties—Germans killed with their own gas—Gas masks for horses and mules—Reduced Allied casualties—Humorous incidents.
Summer of 1916 the highwater mark of the German gas cloud—Their improved methods—The need of speed and secrecy—Gas as a rat exterminator—Causes of Allied casualties—Germans killed with their own gas—Gas masks for horses and mules—Reduced Allied casualties—Humorous incidents.
Summer of 1916 the highwater mark of the German gas cloud—Their improved methods—The need of speed and secrecy—Gas as a rat exterminator—Causes of Allied casualties—Germans killed with their own gas—Gas masks for horses and mules—Reduced Allied casualties—Humorous incidents.
Thegreat time for the German gas troops was undoubtedly 1916, and from April to August of that year they carried out five big cloud gas attacks on the British alone, not counting several on the French Front and a number against the Russians.
During the interval from the December attack of the previous year they had obviously been thinking hard and preparing lots of gas, for the new attacks showed several fresh features both as regards extent and tactics. Along the lines of making the gas more poisonous, using greater quantities and higher concentration and the springing of surprises, everything was done to make the gas cloud an even more deadly affair than it had been in previous shows. Thatour own casualties were much less than before, and that the boche in at least one case had a lot more killed by his own gas than we had, were very satisfactory results of all the labour and research as far as we were concerned.
For the same reason that the December attack had been reduced in duration to half an hour, the new clouds lasted only ten to fifteen minutes; thus once more multiplying the concentration by two or three. On top of this the amount of phosgene was increased up to at least twenty-five per cent and probably to about fifty per cent, so that in this way also the cloud became much more deadly than before. It is interesting to note that pure phosgene cannot be used, otherwise the Germans would undoubtedly have employed it. Straight phosgene does not come out of the cylinders satisfactorily—it must have a big proportion of something like chlorine mixed with it to force it out and get it into the air as quickly as may be.
All of this made the gas cloud a nasty thing to face. As it became progressively more deadly it required less and less to kill. A couple of breaths of the poisoned air becameenough to kill a man; but as our protection was good enough, it meant that the most important thing for the enemy to do was to take us unawares by getting his gas over so quickly or deceiving us in some other way that we should be down and out almost before we knew it. This is where his surprise tactics came in.
These tactics consisted in attempting a great secrecy in the preparations, in the use of smoke clouds to put us off the real track of the gas, and the putting over of a number of different waves of gas at varying intervals. The value of the last two will be more apparent from the accounts of the individual attacks, but the importance of the first-mentioned method must be emphasised a bit.
It must be remembered that the carrying in of the gas cylinders is the work of the infantry and, as we discovered ourselves when we started retaliation, is a very unpopular job owing to the difficulties of the carry. Any carelessness in allowing the cylinders to clank by bumping against each, other or against any other metal objects in the trenches, or metallic sounds made byrather bored pioneers in unscrewing the domes or attacking the pipes, are going to give away the fact to the opposing side that something unusual is going on. And something unusual going on or suspected generally spells g-a-s in the trenches.
In some cases, too, the opposing trenches can be seen from observation posts—O. P.’s or O. Pips, as they are called in British Army parlance—and in such cases if the carrying is started or the installation of the cylinders is continued during the day there is a good chance of the whole show being blown on by some watchful observer with a telescope to his eye a mile or so away. All this the boche realised and made his arrangements accordingly. But in at least one case, in April, in his anxiety to get the cloud over without diminution of strength and so that we should have little time for protecting ourselves and spreading the alarm, he chose as his venue for the attack a big portion of the line where the trenches were very close together—seldom, in fact, more than fifty yards apart. Of course it is just in such circumstances that secrecy of preparation is of the greatest importance—but atthe same time it is of the greatest difficulty to maintain. As a matter of fact the Germans overreached themselves by this choice of position, and little indications spotted by our watchful sentries and patrols made us pretty certain that a gas attack was impending, and our watchfulness and preparedness were correspondingly increased and a constant state of “Gas Alert” kept up.
The first two attacks of the year were made against the 16th—the Irish Division. This was the division in which Willie Redmond was a captain, and it was composed of some of the best fighting material in the world—all Nationalist Irishmen and anxious to get one over at Fritz. Whether the Irishmen were chosen as a target with the foolish idea of “putting the wind up,” or whether it was out of revenge for their appearance in the British ranks after all the labour that had been expended in trying to spread sedition in Ireland, we do not know. Whatever the idea was it terminated in most abject failure, for the Irishmen came through both attacks wonderfully well and absolutely smashed up the German infantry advances which were attemptedafter the passage of the cloud. Both attacks were made on that part of the line near Hulluch running for about two miles south from Cité St. Elie.
The Germans opened the ball by letting our support and reserve lines have a heavy bombardment of tear shells. Almost immediately after, in the dim light of the early dawn, the first gas cloud floated over. It was very thick and had been largely mixed with smoke in the hope of leading our fellows to believe that it was terribly strong. It was not. But the cloud was so dense that even at brigade headquarters, three miles behind the front line, it was impossible to see across the road. There was enough gas in this mixed cloud to make it very dangerous and uncomfortable to unprotected men, but there were very few casualties. The alarm was quickly spread, the men remained cool, and an attempted attack by the enemy infantry to follow up the cloud was smashed up without being able to get closer than our barbed wire.
After this first wave there was a tendency among the men to regard the danger as over and to congratulate themselves on the apparentand obvious boche failure. As they were prepared to go through with anything the boche could put over, there was a natural tendency to underrate the effects of gas, seeing it had caused them no losses. It is undoubtedly true that a number of helmets were discarded entirely—some of the soldiers thought they were useless after being through an attack, and threw them away, depending entirely on their reserve helmets. These they omitted to place in the “Alert” position, pinned up on their chests ready for immediate use. In one or two cases which came to my notice officers and men went off to the latrines or to headquarters without helmets at all. This of course, was not general, but it shows how some of our men fell for the boche ruse, which consisted of putting over a second wave two hours later on exactly the same Front.
The second cloud was a frightfully strong one, composed entirely of gas in the highest possible concentration. It was this wave which caused all our losses on April twenty-seventh, as it took a number of men completely by surprise. But even so, the Irishmen were not a bit dismayed, and when theGermans again attempted to advance—parties of their bombers in some cases appearing immediately behind the gas cloud—they were met by such a stout resistance that those who were not shot down retired in disorder to their own trenches.
The intensity of the second wave can be gathered from the fact that buttons and ammunition were quickly corroded and turned a villainous green colour. In a few cases rifles stuck and Lewis guns jammed, owing to the effects of the gas on the ammunition and the breach mechanism. One good thing about the attack was that most of the rats in the trenches were killed. In some parts of the line the trench rats are an absolute plague. They eat any food or candles left lying about or kept in cardboard boxes. They swarm in the dugouts and appear in all sorts of odd corners. They disturb the little rest one does get; and I have had them run all over me, even over my face, while lying in my dugout. All attempts to clear them out were useless. But what ferrets and terriers and virus could not accomplish the boche gas did. Mister Rat cannot stand up to a strong mixture of chlorine and phosgenewithout a gas mask, and so in this attack, as in others we experienced, he died by hundreds; and nobody mourned him.
Curiously enough two kittens, which inhabited the dugout of the commanding officer of one of the battalions of the Scottish Borderers, who were in reserve, came through alive. The kittens were badly gassed and lay breathing rapidly, suffering from spasms and with profuse salivation. Possibly their fur helped to absorb some of the gas, for five hours later the little victims were almost themselves again, though they continued to cough occasionally and drank water continually. The water they took in preference to milk.
The effects of the poison on the soldiers who were gassed were pretty much the same as has been so frequently described in the press before. In the lighter cases it was mostly severe and painful coughing and bronchitis, with occasional retching and vomiting. The severe cases had the frothing at the mouth, the painful fight for breath and the blue face with staring eyes which are typical of severe gassing with chlorine and phosgene. I was told thatthere were not many delayed cases—that is, men being taken seriously ill hours after the attack, though apparently unscathed before.
The casualties were really remarkably small in the circumstances, and even despite the surprise tactics, were not as numerous as those of the December attack. Apart from the men who were caught without their respirators, most of the casualties were the result of some special circumstances. The helmets themselves when properly inspected and adjusted gave good protection. In connection with the laying aside of the respirators after the first cloud a sergeant told me that when the second wave came over he had seen two soldiers trying to get into the same helmet. The humorous side of this had apparently appealed to him even in the middle of the attack.
Of course with the trenches so close together a lot of men had difficulty in getting protection in time. Parties of men in advanced saps and listening posts had the greatest difficulty, and numbers of these men were killed. One pioneer of a tunnelling company came out of a mine gallery knowingnothing about what had been happening aboveground, and walked straight into the middle of the gas cloud.
A man in one of the companies of the Irish Rifles was wounded in the head by shrapnel through both his steel and gas helmets. In spite of the wound and the hole in his gas helmet he held the latter close round his mouth and nose and was not gassed at all—a clear case of presence of mind saving his life.
One thing which impressed every one with the need for thorough gas training at home, and which should be taken to heart by all men in training at the camps or likely to go there, was the way in which reinforcements and men who had recently joined up suffered. Their casualties were out of all proportion to their numbers and were due entirely to the fact that insufficient attention was given at that time to the gas-defence training of the recruits. Many of them had never put on a helmet before, and none of them had ever smelled gas.
In one particular instance a batch of twenty men had come straight over from England and were in the gas attack the dayafter their arrival in the trenches. The only training they had had was a lecture from their own regimental officers, and consequently they knew little or nothing about the use of their helmets. Every one of these men was gassed. It is true that they had scrambled into their helmets somehow, and none of them died; but the fact remains that absence of training at home cost the fighting line twenty men in one company. In this company they were the only men gassed. Largely as a consequence of this, gas-defence training was taken up very seriously in the early training of recruits, and big gas schools were established at all the camps both in England and at the bases in France, so as to catch the young soldier early.
The boche made another gas attack on the Irish Division on the same Front two days later. Once again he let off two waves—this time with an interval of only a quarter of an hour. But despite his idea of “mixing them up” he could not bring off that particular surprise again.
The second attack was one of the most interesting on record, for it was here, nearHulluch, that the gas blew back on the Germans and killed many more of them than our total gas casualties. The thing happened in this way: The first gas wave was loosed off at three-fiftyA. M., opposite the celebrated Chalk Pit Wood. Fifteen minutes later a heavy cloud was discharged on the Hulluch front. But the wind was too light and variable. The cloud came over our line and then the gentle wind first dropped altogether and then gradually veered round. The gas hung on No Man’s Land and over both sets of trenches for a short time, and then with increasing pace drifted back right over the German position, just where Fritz had been seen massing for an attack on the Hulluch sector. We did not see the confusion which reigned, but almost simultaneously with the arrival of his own gas our barrage came down and the German attack dispersed.
All that day our observers reported the carrying out of German casualties from the trenches on stretchers and a constant stream of ambulances coming up and then returning along the roads to the rear. We surmised that the boche had swallowed some of hisown poison, but it was not until several months later, from some documents captured during the Battle of the Somme, that we were able to appreciate his disaster to the full.
The first of these documents was the diary of a soldier who had been in the neighbouring trenches. It ran: “... We went along the trenches to find the headquarters of the——th.It was awful. Everywhere lay dead bodies or men gasping for breath and dying from the gas. Somebody must be to blame. At first I could not go on. One almost had to step on them to get through. I asked an officer of the——thwhat had happened. They were going to be relieved....”
But the other documents were more explicit, as they happened to be the official report on the matter from the war office in Berlin. It appears that the Germans had eleven hundred deaths from their own gas. A most rigid enquiry was held and it was found that many of the men were not carrying respirators, either in the trenches or in the area immediately behind the line. But this did not explain the extent of the disaster,so eight hundred of the respirators collected from casualties were sent to Berlin for examination and report. Even allowing for those which might have been injured in transit, there were still thirty-three per cent of the masks so defective that their owners were certain to be gassed. To see whether this applied only to the area affected a large number of respirators were collected from up and down the whole Western Front, and it was found that even among those as many as eleven and a half per cent were similarly at fault. It would seem that there had been very poor inspection of the respirators both in manufacture and after issue to the troops. Apart from the joy of seeing the boche hoist with his own petard it was rather a relief to find that the efficient German Army was not so frightfully efficient after all.
This matter of inspection is taken very seriously in the British Army. Besides the rigorous factory inspection all respirators are inspected thoroughly every day even in the trenches, and Tommy is expected to look after his respirator just as he looks after his rifle. As an official statement issued afterthe April attack said: “A defective helmet frequently leads to the death of the wearer. Inspection of respirators must be frequent and thorough.” A sergeant who was notorious for his thorough dealing with recruits got away with it in even better terms when addressing a squad on parade. In thundering tones he said: “If you don’t look for the ’oles in your ’elmet, they’ll soon be looking for a ’ole for you.”
Another thing that resulted from the attacks just described, and from another similar attack shortly afterward in the salient, was the putting on the screw with regard to the carrying of respirators continuously by every one in the trenches. A very good and well-known story on the British Army in this connection is that of a brigadier general who was proceeding to the line for his daily inspection when he discovered that he was minus a gas bag. He stopped the first orderly he saw, borrowed the man’s helmet and serenely went his way with a clear conscience. Arrived in the trenches, one of the first sights that met his horrified gaze was a soldier without a gas mask. In virtuous tones he demanded the reason for its absence,and then, waving aside the halting explanation, went on loudly to assert his belief that the soldier would not know how to use a respirator even if he had one.
“Here,” he said, “take mine and show me whether you can put it on in quick time.”
The awe-stricken Tommy slung the satchel over his shoulder, and on the word “Gas!” from the general thrust his hand into the haversack and pulled out—a very dirty pair of army socks.
The fourth German attack of 1916 was made on June seventeenth in Flanders, near Messines; in fact, just north of the Wulverghem-Messines road. Like those of April, it was intensely strong, very short, and sent over in successive waves at intervals of about twenty minutes. There were really no fresh features about the show, but the cloud seems to have been even stronger than before. I had no personal experience of this attack, but the cloud must have been very strong, for it killed animals at “Plugstreet”—the only name we used in the British Army for Ploegsteert—three and half miles away, and was quite distinctly perceptible even at Béthune. At the “Piggeries”—theremains of a model farm in rear of Plugstreet Wood belonging to a notable French sportsman, a place well-known to so many British soldiers—a calf was found dead, after the passage of the cloud, with the body very much blown out. Dead rats lay in close proximity.
Even farther back than this animals were seriously affected. The army mules in the line of the gas were seized with fits of coughing and kicked violently, making them even more difficult to handle than usual. It is probably not realised that horse masks are now issued on a scale sufficient to provide protection for all horses and mules, such as those of the first-line transport and the artillery, which have to approach anywhere near the lines. The present form of these respirators is that of a big bag soaked in chemicals which fits over the animal’s nostrils, leaving its mouth free so that the use of the bit is not interfered with. When not in use the horse respirator folds up very nicely and neatly into a canvas case which can be carried on the breastband of the harness or any place from which it can be quickly adjusted. Some of the animals taketo these masks—“Horspirators,” some wag called them—quite quickly, but others are strenuous objectors; some of those hardened sinners, the mules, transforming themselves into masses of teeth and hoofs whenever an attempt is made to fix on the gas bags.
In one case where a horse and a mule in the same supply column were fitted with their masks at the same time the difference was most marked. The horse was dressed up without much trouble, though he did not like it. He whinnied and sneezed, breathed hard and perspired and looked rather pitiable, but stuck it out. The mule, on the other hand, had to be roped to get the mask on at all. Then he danced about, heels in the air and head down, and tried to rub off the objectionable appendage against the rope, and then against a tree. This did not effect its removal, and for a minute the cunning animal stood still with his ears cocked at different angles. Then suddenly he put his head to the ground and before anything could be done to prevent it put his foot on the respirator, pulled his head up smartly and left the respirator under his hoof.
These masks have proved of the greatestvalue and have saved any number of horses’ lives. The cavalry are not provided with them, as it is not anticipated that they will be near enough to be affected by gas-cloud attacks, and when the cavalry are mounted and in action it is unlikely that they will meet even poison-gas shells in large numbers. Added to this is the fact that a horse can stand more gas than a man without being distressed.
The casualties in the June attack were lower than in any one previously. Indeed, it was a satisfactory feature of the whole gas business that despite the increasing deadliness of the German clouds the losses they caused became less and less. Of course the proportion of severe cases in those gassed became greater, for with such strong clouds it had become a case of hit or miss. Either a man was protected completely or he was caught out badly; and this spoke well for the protection supplied, for otherwise there would have been a much bigger proportion of light cases.
Of the minor effects of these boche gas clouds, that on vegetation is the most marked and gives a good idea of the strengthof the gas. For miles in the track of the cloud all green stuff is burned up or wilted. Grass is turned yellow, the leaves of trees go brown and fall off, and the garden crops are entirely destroyed. I have seen root crops in the fields and garden crops of onions, beans and lettuce quite destroyed. But curiously enough, farther back, in places where this still happens to the garden crops, the cereals and the hedges seem to escape serious injury.
Of course over a wide area all metal work is thickly tarnished, and this might be a danger in the case of telephone instruments and other delicate appliances, except that the exposed parts are always kept slightly oiled and then cleaned thoroughly after the attack. The same thing is done with rifles and machine guns and their ammunition, and with the clinometres, fuses and breech mechanism of guns and trench mortars. Since this war started very little difficulty has occurred through corrosion, but the chief thing is to clean off the grease and reoil all metal parts exposed to the gas immediately after the attack is finished, otherwise the greasy surface seems to hold thegas or the acid it engenders, and allows it to eat in at its leisure.
During the attacks of 1916 the alarm arrangements worked very well, and the Strombos Horns in particular justified their use. Even above the noise of machine-gun fire and the bursting of shells their shrill, unmistakable note could be heard for long distances, giving warning to all troops on the flanks and in the rear. There were very few instances where they were not let off in time and the sentries posted over them apparently knew their jobs better, for instance, than one man who was questioned on the subject. This particular sentry was asked by a noncommissioned officer going the rounds in the trenches what he would do in the event of a gas attack being made. “Oh,” replied the bright boy, “that’s easy. If any gas comes over it blows the horn and I call the platoon sergeant and tell him about it.”
A much more conscientious sentry over a Strombos Horn had been told to be particularly on the lookout for a gas attack, as one was expected at any time. The officer on duty, going round about midnight, heard asuspiciously regular sound coming from one of the fire bays, and thinking that one of the sentries was indulging in a stolen forty winks he cautiously rounded the traverse. Here he found the sentry lying on the top of the parapet staring into the darkness and going sniff, sniff, sniff with his nose.
Being asked more forcibly than politely what was the matter with him the man replied: “I’m sniffing for gas.”
Sniff, sniff, sniff.
“Can you smell any?”
“No, sir; but I want to smell it if it does come, as I’m a gas sentry and the leftenant told me always to keep smelling for gas.”
Sniff, sniff, sniff.
The job of seeing that the air cylinders of the Strombos Horns are kept at their full pressure is intrusted to the divisional gas noncommissioned officers, who go round periodically with pressure gauges and test them out. If they fall below a certain pressure they are replaced at once by fresh ones from the divisional store. Some Australians going up the line one night were carrying a number of such cylinders for replacement, when one of them got turnedon accidentally and they didn’t seem able to stop it.
A passing officer hearing the hissing noise called out: “What have you got there?”
“Air bottles,” was the answer.
“What for?” persisted the officer.
A pause, and then out of the darkness: “Oh, hell! To put the wind up the boche, of course.”
This story will probably be appreciated more by Britishers than Americans, though I think the latter in many cases already know the significance of the expressions “getting the wind up” and “putting the wind up.” They refer of course to what official reports or newspaper men would style as “reduction of morale.”