History 20

One of the more horrific weapons used during the war was gas. A variety of gasses were utilized throughout the war. The German army was the first to use gas in April of 1915 at Ypres. The bulk of the attack fell upon the French and Canadian Armies defending that part of the frontline.

The gas that the Germans deployed was called chlorine. It looked like a greenish-yellow cloud six feet in height as it moved towards the Allied line. Then the troops could smell something they describe as pineapple/pepper combined. The chlorine worked by suffocating the lungs, in effect plugging the lungs ability to take air into the bloodstream.

Chlorine was not used much later in the war because it caused the solder inhaling the gas to cough. The cough forced the gas out of the lungs making it less likely to kill the infected man. Stronger gasses were introduced to increase fatalities like phosgene.

It produces a flooding of the lungs - it is an equivalent death to drowning only on dry land. The effects are these - a splitting headache and terrific thirst (to drink water is instant death), a knife-edge of pain in the lungs and the coughing up of a greenish froth off the stomach and the lungs, ending finally in insensibility and death. The color of the skin from white turns a greenish black and yellow, the color protrudes and the eyes assume a glassy stare. It is a fiendish death to die.

The worst type employed during the war was mustard gas. This gas was slow acting and its effects would develop up to twelve hours later. It had a light musty, wet hay smell to it, but had the effect of "rotting" the body because it was an airborne acid. In effect, the gas would burn away the lining of the lung that allows air to enter the bloodstream. Without air entering the body, suffocation results.

The gas would also produce massive blisters upon exposed skin and attack the eyes. Massive yellowish sticky blisters would emerge from exposed areas that were very painful. Men that had been exposed had to be strapped to their beds to stop tearing at their throats. They believed that they could not get air into their lungs, but the problem was the lungs themselves. The effect was much like watching a fish out of water, constantly opening their mouths to gulp in air that their damaged lungs could not use.

I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war, and the orators who talk so much about going on no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case - to say nothing of 10 cases of mustard gas in its early stages - could see the poor things all burnt and blistered all over with great suppurating blisters, with blind eyes - sometimes temporally, some times permanently - all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, their voices a whisper, saying their throats are closing and they know they are going to choke.
Field Nurse 1918
Vera Brittain

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