CHAPTER X
Liquid Fire—First used by Germans in July, 1915—A great surprise and success—German hopes from it—Construction of a flame projector—Flammenwerfer companies—Their perilous duties and incidents of desertion from them—Improved types of projectors—Co-operation of machine-gun fire—Failure of liquid fire—Its short duration and short range—Ease of escape from it.
Liquid Fire—First used by Germans in July, 1915—A great surprise and success—German hopes from it—Construction of a flame projector—Flammenwerfer companies—Their perilous duties and incidents of desertion from them—Improved types of projectors—Co-operation of machine-gun fire—Failure of liquid fire—Its short duration and short range—Ease of escape from it.
Liquid Fire—First used by Germans in July, 1915—A great surprise and success—German hopes from it—Construction of a flame projector—Flammenwerfer companies—Their perilous duties and incidents of desertion from them—Improved types of projectors—Co-operation of machine-gun fire—Failure of liquid fire—Its short duration and short range—Ease of escape from it.
Whenthe German Army entered on its policy of frightfulness there was none of its new and unprincipled methods which had more immediate and striking success than the use of liquid fire. And there is now none of all its methods of frightfulness which has fallen more into disrepute, and which has had less success when once the first surprise was over.
A great deal of attention has been drawn in the newspapers to the use of liquid fire, but the average man, even in the fighting forces, knows very little about the German methods and the appliances for its use. Yet Germany still has special troops trained inthe use of liquid fire, and seeks continually to alter and develop the fire weapons and their tactical employment in order to take advantage of the undoubtedly terrible appearance and destructive power of the high temperature flames which can be emitted. This article is intended to show the stage to which the development has attained and the reasons for the relatively innocuous character of what is probably the most terror-inspiring method of modern warfare.
Throughout 1915 England was pouring new divisions of its National army into France. As with all new troops the procedure adopted at the time was to bring these divisions by easy stages to within a short distance of the front line, and then send them in by companies for a four day “instructional tour” in the trenches to pick up all the wrinkles and habits from the seasoned troops holding the line. After the whole formation had been put through it in this way the division would be allotted a definite part of the line, taking it over possibly from the troops with whom it had been in for instruction and allowing the latter to get out for a much needed rest, or to get“fattened up” for some impending or progressing show elsewhere.
One such new division, absolutely fresh from England and with no war experience whatever, was the target selected by the boche for his new deviltry. The portion of line allotted to this division was on the outermost part of the Ypres salient and included the ruins of the little village of Hooge right at the point of the salient. This position had always been a hot corner—“unhealthy” in the British army parlance—and had changed hands several times. The trenches there were poor as it was almost impossible to get effective work done on them owing to their exposed position. Indeed there were many parts of the line where no movement was possible by day and the men on the posts had to lie “doggo” until night. The two lines were very close together—in many places less than twenty yards—and it was quite possible to hurl hand grenades from one set of trenches to the other. It was on this position of the line, over a front held by two battalions, that the attack was made.
After a bombardment of several days, a mine was exploded under the front line andthen immediately afterward, at 3:20A. M.on the morning of the 29th of July and without the slightest warning, the front line troops were enveloped in flames. Where the flames came from could not be seen. All that the men knew was that they seemed surrounded by fierce curling flames which were accompanied by a loud roaring noise and dense clouds of black smoke. Here and there a big blob of burning oil would fall into a trench or a saphead. Shouts and yells rent the air as individual men, rising up in the trenches or attempting to move in the open, felt the force of the flames. The only way to safety appeared to be to the rear. This direction the men that were left took. For a short space the flames pursued them, and the local retirement became a local rout. Then the flames stopped and machine guns began to take toll of the fugitives. Only one man from the front trenches is known to have returned. German infantry following up, poured into the breach in the line, widened it, took our positions as far back as Sanctuary Wood, and then consolidated.
Ten days afterward we counter attacked and won back the whole of the line concernedbut at very considerable cost. Incidentally, we captured two of the German flame projectors, one of them complete, and they proved to be of the greatest possible use to us subsequently for educating the army in the new warfare, and for inspection by our own experts with a view to their duplication for retaliation.
Any one attempting to blame the troops attacked for their retirement can hardly appreciate the circumstances, and, I am convinced, over-estimates his own capacity for resistance. This attack was an utter surprise—the kind of warfare was unknown and unheard of. Imagine being faced by a spread of flame exactly similar to that used for the oil burners under the biggest boilers, but with a jet nearly sixty feet in length and capable of being sprayed round as one might spray water with a fire hose. Personally, I am pretty sure, had I been there, that I should have hopped it if I had not been fried by the heat or frozen with terror. Later, when we knew the limitations of these things it was different, though even then it is a pretty good test of a man’s nerve.
The flame projectors taken by the 14th Division in the counter attack were simple but very interesting in construction. The main part was a cylindrical vessel of steel about two feet in height and fifteen inches in diameter provided with straps so that it could be carried on a man’s back. At one side about two-thirds of the way up was a filling hole for oil, closed by a screw cap. Near the top was a pressure gauge attachment and toward the base was a lock closed by a lever handle and to which could be attached a long length of flexible hose ending in a peculiar shaped nozzle.
On examination it was found that the body of the projector was divided internally into two compartments which could be connected by opening another tap. The upper compartment was the compressor and the lower the oil reservoir. The compressor chamber was filled to a pressure of twenty-three atmospheres with deoxygenated air or nitrogen. Air itself cannot be used because of its oxygen content forming an explosive mixture with the vapours from the oil, and any heating on compression, or back-flash from the flame or fuse, might make thingsvery unpleasant for the operator. The nitrogen required for the flame projectors is carried into the field in large cylinders about 4 feet 6 inches in length and 6 inches in diameter. Several of these cylinders have been captured from the enemy since. These cylinders are actually taken into the trenches and the flame projectors charged from them there.
The combustible liquid used in the flame throwers has varied in source and composition from time to time, but it invariably has one characteristic which appears to be essential for good results—it must have light or easily volatile and heavy and less volatile fractions mixed in carefully graded proportions. The heavy oil has sometimes been a petroleum product and sometimes a tarry residual oil from the distillation of wood. The light portion, which insures the jet’s keeping alight was originally a light gasolene, but at one period, whether from shortage of petrol or not I do not know, the place of the latter in the mixture was taken by ordinary commercial ether.
The lighting device, fixed at the end of the flexible hose, is the most ingenious partof the whole contrivance and is so made that the oil ignites spontaneously the minute the jet is turned on, and is kept alight by a fiercely burning mixture which lasts throughout the discharge.
The nozzle is about 9 inches long and detachable so that replacement is easy. It clips into the end of the tube and is held in position by an annular ring. When the oil with its twenty-three atmospheres pressure behind it is rushed out of the jet, it forces up the plunger of a friction lighter and ignites a core of a fierce burning fuse mixture which fills the whole of the space between the central tube and an outer casing. The latter consists of a thick wick soaked in paraffin wax and fitting loosely into a thin brass case.
When the nozzle is in position all that is necessary is to turn on the tap, and the stream of flame issues from the tube and can be directed at will.
The official name for this instrument we discovered was the “Flammenwerfer” (flame thrower) and it is now never known in the British army by anything else than its German name. Indeed this is one of thevery few German words we have adopted as an outcome of the war, the only others I can remember being “strafe” and “Kamerad.”
Flammenwerfer attacks are made by the 3rd and 4th Guard Pioneer Battalions and by the Guard Reserve Pioneer Regiment—all of which troops are specially trained in flame tactics. Each battalion is composed of six companies and each company is equipped with 18 small or portable projectors similar to that described above, and with 20-22 large projectors of greater range. The latter larger flammenwerfer are built on the same principle as the former, but are too heavy to be used as mobile weapons. They are consequently built in to the trenches at about 27 yards from the opposing lines, and, if the trenches are not close enough together for the purpose, special saps are pushed out and the flammenwerfer installed at the end. The range of these large projectors is 33-44 yards and they can cover a front of 55 yards with flames.
It is probable that in the attack at Hooge that both large and small flammenwerfer were employed.
It is possible with the above equipment for a flame company to cover a total front of 1100-1600 yards.
Service in the Guard Reserve Pioneers is apparently a form of punishment. Men convicted of offences in other regiments are transferred either for a time or permanently, and are forced under threat of death to engage in the most hazardous enterprises and carry out the most dangerous work. The following incident will serve to show how the German soldiers are hounded to their death in these engagements.
In the summer of last year a small flammenwerfer attack was made against our line at a point near Monchy, south of Arras. Two boches armed with flame projectors of a modified pattern were instructed to attack one of our advanced posts which was at the head of a sap running out toward the German trenches. In broad daylight and with no covering fire worth talking about these two poor devils were forced over the top with revolvers pressed into their backs. One was shot down immediately. The other managed to get clear of his own barbed wire and then discarded his apparatus, with the intentionof crawling over to us and deserting. By this time, however, he had been badly shot up—whether by his own people as well as by us, I cannot say. His left arm and his right thigh were both smashed, and he had two bullets in his abdomen. Nevertheless this man managed to crawl into our lines and was taken care of. He was sent down to a Casualty Clearing Station in a perilous condition, but despite his terrible injuries I understand the doctors managed to patch him up, and that he recovered completely.
The portable flammenwerfer used in the attack just described was brought in by our patrols the following night, the spot where he had left it being accurately described by the wounded prisoner. It was found to be of a new pattern and other specimens of the same construction have since been captured, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Lens where they were employed by the boche in the course of abortive counter attacks against the Canadians.
In this pattern, which is shown in detail in the photograph, the compressed nitrogen is contained in a spherical-vessel which is contained inside a ring-shaped oil container.The whole thing looks like a life preserver and is mounted on a light frame so that it can be comfortably carried on the back. For a man who may suddenly have to get down on his stomach and crawl, the apparatus is much more compact and better fitting to the body than the original type, but it has no advantage over the older varieties as regards range or duration.
The flexible hose which carries the lighting nozzle is made of canvas and rubber, and enemy documents which have been captured show that only one tube is provided for each three reservoirs. After the discharge of one apparatus the long tube is supposed to be fitted with a new nozzle and handed on to the others in succession.
The flammenwerfer companies are divided into squads. Following the German army habit of adopting contractions—a habit presumably forced on them by their cumbersome word-building language, the squads are designatedGroftruppeorKleiftruppe, according as they are armed with large or small projectors. The former is a contraction forGrosser-flammenwerfertrupp(large flame projector squad), and thelatter forKleiner-flammenwerfertrupp(small flame projector squad).
In the case of attacks with the large projectors, or a combined attack with both sizes, the chief thing is secrecy of installation in the trenches. If it was ascertained or suspected that flammenwerfer were being put in, our gunners would open on the position in no time and blow the apparatus sky-high. As it is necessary to sap out to within 27 yards of our lines in order to get in a “shot,” it can readily be seen that the possibilities of using the large projectors are very limited, and as a matter of fact little use has been made of them.
Attacks with the portable projectors are more possible owing to their greater mobility. But here again the essential part of the tactics and the most difficult thing to do is to get near enough the target to make the shot effective. The range is only fifty to sixty feet. The German idea is to cover the advance of the “Kleif” men by protecting machine-gun fire.
In an attack, the advance of the company is covered by machine-gun fire from each side, converging at a point on the opposingtrenches. In the triangle thus formed the attacking force, the “Kleiftruppe” in front, then a party of bombers, and finally the raiding or attacking party take up their positions in No Man’s Land and crawl as far forward as possible in the “protected area.” As soon as the flame projectors are within range, the machine guns switch outward to each side, the flame is discharged and the bombers rush in and try their luck in the trench. If things go well, the infantry follows the bombing party and proceeds to its objective.
In an attack of this kind, or a less well-supported attack such as that at Arras, mentioned above, the attackers suffer from two such severe disadvantages that against well-disciplined troops they stand little chance. These disadvantages are (1) the flammenwerfer carriers have to get so near their objective that they are almost certain to be shot, and they then become a source of danger to their own side; (2) men in trenches know they are perfectly safe from frontal flame attack if they keep well down and hug the parapet side of the trench. The reason for this is that the flame will not sinkdown into a trench, but having little force behind it at the end of its journey is curledupwardby the rising currents of hot air. The result is that any sort of head cover (unless made of wood) makes perfect protection, and a man crouching in a trench or even lying prone in a shell hole, is very unlikely to be more than slightly scorched at the very worst. I can vouch for this, for I have lain at the bottom of a trench with the flames playing over my head and have not been injured in the slightest, though I confess to being very much relieved when the flame stopped. The only danger in trenches to men who keep their heads is that of “blobs” of burning oil falling from the end of the fiery stream, but this is not a very serious chance.
Another serious disability in the German liquid fire is its very short duration. The stream of flame from the portable flammenwerfer lasts rather less than one minute. It is impossible to charge up again on the spot, and the result is that once the flame stops the whole game is finished and the operators are at our mercy. Without making the apparatus of a prohibitive weight, the durationof the flame cannot be increased. Even the heavy projectors give only a flame lasting at the best one minute and a quarter.
It must be realised that it is discipline and coolness (if one may use the word) which count, and that the moral effect on unsteady troops, unaware of the fact that the appalling flames have little destructive value, may be very great indeed. When men have bolted from the trenches into the open they are an easy prey.
An enfilade attack, i.e., one made from a flank, would be much more dangerous were it not for the difficulty of approach and the fact that the traverses of a fire-trench are as good protection against flame as the parapet. Only where the “Kleif” squad can approach under cover and get in its shot at an exposed target is the flammenwerfer likely to have much success nowadays.
A certain amount of value was obtained from their use in this way in the attack on Verdun for reducing isolated strong-points, notably fortified farmhouses and broken down cottages in the ruined villages. In certain cases the flame projector carriers were enabled to approach under cover or by crawling among the ruins and heaps ofdebris, to within striking distance of the otherwise well protected machine-gun emplacements and positions. By suddenly playing the fire jet into the loopholes, enough flame penetrated into the interior of the emplacement to put the machine-gun and its crew out of action—either temporarily or permanently. This was the opportunity awaited by the covering party of bombers who would rush the post the minute the flame ceased, having made their approach while the projectors were in action.
But even for special cases like these the circumstances must be so favourable and the inherent disadvantages are so great that the flammenwerfer cannot be counted on to attain the required result.
The low value placed by the Allies on the German flame attack can be realised from the fact that no special form of cover is provided against it. There is no special form of fireproof clothing or other protection issued to the troops, and the instructions for meeting the attack may be summarised as “Shoot the man carrying the apparatus before he gets in his shot if possible. If this cannot be done take cover from the flames and shoot him afterward.”