In Their Words

The Fog of War: Gas Attacks

A virulent fog rolls across no-man’s land a warning alarm is heard ringing above the shouts of men. A green rocket shoots quickly into the air, signaling the soldiers below to hastily don masks designed to protect them from the coming gas. Those who fail to do so will hopefully live to regret it. For when the gas shells drop and the toxic fumes roll towards your position, you are one of two types of people: the quick or the dead.
“The quick or the dead” was a term coined during the First World War to refer to soldiers who respectively could or could not quickly put on their gas masks. Many deadly gases were being used for the first time in combat to a great effect, to halt infantry advances or neutralize enemy positions. Toxic clouds could quickly incapacitate large numbers of soldiers and make an area nearly uninhabitable for at least a short time. While both sides made use of various types, each with its own unique and withering effect, all forms of gas were equally feared by the soldiers who faced down the clouds of gas as they rolled in.

Chemical warfare was nothing new when the war to end all wars began in 1914. A long-standing history, one stretching back to ancient Greece, existed of chemicals being used for combative purposes. In the modern era, the French were arguably the first to make use of chemical weapons when, in 1912, French soldiers procured several hand-grenade type weapons that had been filled with a non-lethal tear gas. The gas vapor dispersed rapidly and had little effect on its target, yet it still marked the beginning of the terrible chemical legacy of World War I. In October of 1914, German soldiers fired shells filled with a type of chlorine from 105mm howitzers into French lines. German officials wanted to see the capabilities of gas warfare on the battlefield, but with no results to speak of, the German High Command considered chemical warfare to be unpromising. The second battle of Ypres (pronounced: E’prah) in 1915 finally proved to the German army the value and terror of gas warfare. On April 22nd, the first day of the battle, a specially trained and equipped German unit released a cloud of chlorine gas along a seven thousand meter segment of French trenches. The gas had the intended effect, choking the French soldiers subjected to the gas, causing them to either attempt to flee across no-man’s land or to stay in their trenches and die of asphyxiation. Ypres was all the proof that was needed to underscore both the lethality and usefulness of gas warfare.

German and Allied successes with gas marked the arrival of a “new method of warfare”. Toxic gases and other chemical attacks were capable of breaking the stalemate of the trenches by allowing an attacker to strike at enemy troops stationed in trenches without having to resort to lengthy artillery barrages or costly infantry advances. The introduction of deadlier gases such as phosgene and mustard made gas a much more viable weapon, one that could readily cause enemy casualties.

Despite their late arrival into the war, American soldiers were initially ill prepared to face the horrors of chemical warfare. Although toxic gases had been used on the battlefields of Europe for two years prior to the A.E.F.’s arrival in France, no American department dedicated to the defensive or offensive properties of gas warfare existed. The Chemical Warfare Service, headed by General William L. Sibert, was quickly formed in response to this dilemma in 1918. A document published by the C.W.S. states, “The work of supply of the entire army with this equipment had to be developed from a starting point of nothing. There were no plants in existence when the U.S. entered the war, and we were utterly without experience.” To help remedy this situation, the U.S. Army Medical Service and the U.S. Bureau of Mines were both drafted in hopes that the experts within each field could find a solution to the problem of gas defense. In the meantime, American soldiers made use of existing Allied gas equipment (particularly the British Small Box Respirator SBR and the French M-2 gas mask) and began to form their own gas discipline based off of the experiences of their Allied comrades. Emphasis was placed on the individual soldier’s knowledge of the use and maintenance of gas equipment in order to ensure risk of exposure, injury, or fatality was kept to a minimum. These factors served to create an American gas discipline on par with those of America’s British and French Allies and established the U.S. military as ready for the “new method of warfare” introduced by the toxic chemicals of World War I.

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