By the end of the war, the Ministry of Munitions was a huge organisation. There was a staff of 65,000 running two hundred factories and employing more than three million workers. The factories not only manufactured and filled shells but also produced rifles, guns, aircraft and hundreds of other components needed for the war effort. When it came to machine guns, for instance, Haig had said at the beginning of the war that two machine guns per battalion ‘were more than sufficient’. Kitchener, on the other hand, recommended four. Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions said, ‘Take Kitchener’s figure. Square it. Multiply by two. Then double again for good luck.’27 The army had begun the war with 1330 machine guns. During the war, under the management of the Ministry of Munitions, 240,506 were produced. In August 1917, during the battle of the Menin Road Bridge, the British Army was able to employ 240 machine guns over a 4000-yard front – equivalent to one machine gun every seventeen yards.
One of the winners as the demand for explosives grew between 1914 and 1918 was the United States. As Britain and France were denied access to German output they not only began to increase their own production but also turned to new suppliers. Exports of explosives from the US in 1914 were valued at $6 million; by 1918 they had grown more than sixty-fold to a remarkable $379 million. In the 1920s and 1930s, America would become a world leader in the chemical industries and Germany would never recover its pre-war ascendancy.
The chemical industry had done much to increase the impact and effectiveness of explosives and, as shortages of raw materials became apparent, to provide new processes for the manufacture of explosives. But it was for something far more ghastly and terrible that the industry would become notorious during the Great War.
8
The Yellow-Green Cloud
On the late afternoon of 22 April 1915, a beautiful clear spring day, Captain Louis Strange was flying his RFC reconnaissance aircraft over the front line just to the north of Ypres, near Langemarck. Looking down, he spotted to his surprise a yellow-green mist floating from the German front line over the French trenches. Although he did not know it, he was witnessing a ghastly escalation in the science of war – the first use of poison gas. The soldiers in the front line facing the gas cloud were a French Territorial and an Algerian division, who struggled to breathe as the hideous cloud enveloped them and filled their lungs. They began to panic and then fled. Those that died were mostly left lying on their backs with fists clenched, their faces and lips slowly turning blue. A vast gap appeared in the French line, but the aerial observers reported that the Germans were slow to take advantage and British and Canadian troops soon rushed in to fill the breach. In the chaos of the asphyxiating chlorine gas attack, it was only aerial observers who were able to keep the high command informed of what was happening on the ground.
Although this incident in the spring of 1915 was the first significant use of poison gas in a modern war, the development of chemical warfare went back a long way. For hundreds of years, assailants had catapulted diseased animals into a town or castle during a siege in order to spread infection among the inhabitants. Greek fire, an early form of incendiary, had been thrown at enemy troops since ancient times. But during the late nineteenth century the growth of the modern chemical industry exponentially increased the scale of the killing that was possible by the use of poisonous gases. In 1899, in an attempt to lay down the international rules of war, the First Hague Convention had agreed that all parties should ‘abstain from the use of projectiles, the object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases’.1 Great Britain and the United States of America did not sign the Convention, but Britain did sign the declaration at the second Hague Convention in 1907. Nevertheless, before the war, Sir William Ramsay, a prominent British chemist and Nobel Prize winner, carried out experiments with a form of tear gas and similar work took place in France, where the police expressed an interest in using the gas. As this gas was felt to fall outside the terms of the Hague Convention, a series of experiments to find a more powerful type of tear gas took place at Imperial College in London’s South Kensington in early 1915. The new gas was given the name SK, after the location. But no use of it was made on the battlefield at the time.
With the unexpected stalemate that followed the beginnings of trench warfare in late 1914, however, the German high command began to look for alternatives to conventional artillery shells for dislodging troops from well-entrenched positions.2 Colonel Max Bauer, the man responsible for the supply of munitions to the German army, turned to Professor Fritz Haber, the distinguished industrial chemist who had invented the Haber-Bosch process before the war and who later received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work in synthesising ammonia. Director at the time of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry, Haber willingly offered his services to the German army and agreed to carry out some tests. His initial attempt, shells filled with a combination of high explosives and tear gas, was first tried on the Eastern Front in February 1915, but the gas was diffused by the wind and the cold temperatures prevented it from vaporising, dramatically lessening its effect. The Russians did not even notice or record the use of the gas.
Haber then suggested using cylinders as a far more practical way of releasing a concentrated form of gas. And he proposed the use of chlorine. Bayer was already producing chlorine industrially and it could be made in liquid form to fill the cylinders that would then be transported to the front line and discharged. As it was released the liquid chlorine would turn into a vapour and would blow across no man’s land towards the French and British trenches. Being much heavier than air, the chlorine gas would cling to the ground and sink into trenches, accumulating at the bottom. But in time it would disperse in the air and allow attacking troops to move forward without fear of being gassed.
The German General Staff were initially troubled by the morality of carrying out a gas attack like this, but were assured that it was technically not in breach of the Hague Convention as the poisonous gas would be released not from ‘projectiles’ or shells but from cylinders. There was also talk of a French attack using tear gas shells in March 1915 providing a justification, although if such an assault ever took place only very small quantities were used.
The German chief of staff, General Erich von Falkenhayn, was less bothered by the morality of the issue than by the possibility that the Allies would quickly retaliate and use poison gas against the German lines. However, Haber assured him that because of the superiority of the German chemical industries, this would be impossible. With this reassurance, Falkenhayn decided to use chlorine gas released from cylinders in the offensive being planned at the Ypres salient in the spring. The attack would form the opening of what became known as the Second Battle of Ypres.
Bauer formed a special Pioneer Regiment and started to train men in the use of gas. Several prominent chemists were recruited into this regiment, the first example of German ‘scientists in uniform’ (one of them, Otto Hahn, twenty-five years later, played a significant role in the attempt by the Nazis to produce an atom bomb). At a trial run on 2 April chlorine was released and proved so effective that both Haber and Bauer, supervising the experiment, were mildly gassed. Over the next two weeks, 1600 large cylinders weighing 187 lb each and standing more than four feet high, along with more than 4000 smaller cylinders, were filled with liquid chlorine and carried up to the front line near Ypres. But for the cylinders to be effective it was necessary for the wind to carry the vaporising poison in the direction of the Anglo-French front line. The Pioneer Regiment waited for the right conditions, but realised from the prevailing winds that they had selected the wrong place and so moved the thousands of cylinders to a new site further north near Langemarck. Having waited several more days for the wind to blow in the right direction, at 5 p.m. on 22 April they launched the first ever cloud of poison gas, ushering in a new era in the horrors of warfare.
At first, the French and Algerian troops in the front line thought that the yellow-green cloud ap
proaching them was some form of smoke screen covering the advance of German troops. However, as the foul, bleach-smelling gas reached the trenches the men began to complain of pains in the chest, nausea and a horrible burning sensation in their throats. Chlorine kills by entering a person’s lungs and causing such irritation that the lungs flood with fluid and the person literally drowns. Victims’ lips and faces go blue as they are starved of oxygen. It was a terrible death, coming slowly and unstoppably to its first victims who had no idea what was happening to them. There were 4000 casualties, of which more than 1200 were fatal. The French line completely broke as thousands of men fled in panic, opening up a gap four miles wide. Even the gunners behind the lines abandoned their weapons and ran. But the Germans advanced slowly, with only minimal protection against the gas, and as they came upon the dead or those screaming with the agony of asphyxiation they were not encouraged to penetrate much further. Besides, Falkenhayn had minimal expectations for the attack and had provided no reserves. As a consequence the Germans failed to exploit the opportunity before them. British and Canadian troops on either flank fired at the advancing enemy and then retook the abandoned trenches. Within a few days the German line was almost back where it had started.
The Pioneer Regiment made two further small-scale gas attacks over the next two weeks. The first was against the Canadian troops who had been on the right flank of the French at Langemarck; the second, rather bigger, was against the British trenches positioned at what was known as Hill 60 on 1 May. Although British chemists had successfully identified the gas the Germans had been using as chlorine, there had not been enough time to prepare and issue proper gas masks, so the men at the front were told to soak field dressings in bicarbonate of soda and hold them over their mouths. This would neutralise the effect of the poison. A whole variety of improvised techniques followed in which dipping any available cloth, towel or handkerchief in an alkaline solution was found to be effective. Where nothing else was available the men were told to dip a cloth in urine and hold it over their mouths. Even this had some effect.
When, however, British soldiers came up against a poison gas attack for the first time in the attack on Hill 60, there were substantial casualties. A group from the 1st Battalion of the Dorset Regiment bore the brunt of the ghastly assault. Out of 600 men, 90 died of gas poisoning in the trenches and 207 were admitted to dressing stations, of whom 46 died quickly and another 12 after horrible suffering. Seventeen of the men poisoned in the first few hours of the attack were taken to a Casualty Clearing Station near Bailleul, but the next day only three survived. Sergeant Major Ernest Shepherd of the Dorsets wrote in his diary that they had been told the purpose of the gas was only to stupefy the defenders, but ‘We soon found out at a terrible price that these gases were deadly poison... The scene that followed was heart-breaking … Had we lost as heavily while actually fighting we would not have cared as much, but our dear boys died like rats in a trap.’3
The need for some sort of immediate protection for front-line troops was urgent. The French found that a chemical designed for developing photos and known as ‘hypo’ was effective in dampening a mask. A group of chemists came up with a design for a tight-fitting respirator and the French army ordered one million to be produced. But this would take time. So before they could be manufactured and distributed the army called for all the mine rescue breathing masks in the whole of France to be gathered together and gave them out to officers and machine gunners. Several French scientists were drawn in, including Dr André Kling, the director of the Paris municipal laboratory. Over the next few months Kling was allowed excellent access to the French front line; quickly identifying the gas as chlorine, he started to explore more effective forms of protection against it.
In London, Lord Kitchener summoned Professor John Haldane to the War Office and asked for urgent advice. An expert on gas poisoning in mines, within days Haldane had designed a primitive respirator consisting of a pad of three layers of cotton gauze that was to be dipped in a sodium solution, placed over the mouth and tied around the back of the head with tape. The problem was that it was not easy to tape the gauze around the head in a hurry and it only provided about five minutes of protection before the cotton needed to be dipped in the solution again. So before long this was replaced by a rough flannel hood with celluloid window patches for the eyes, soaked in a solution of ‘hypo’. A soldier could quickly pull this over his head and it provided greater protection. When Haldane tried it on he thought it was too uncomfortable to use, but a group of younger chemists who were in the army thought it worked well. The ‘Hypo Helmet’ looked like some scary medieval hood, but was more effective than the cotton respirator and so was adopted as its replacement. By July almost every British soldier in France had been issued with one of these anti-gas hoods. Once more the scientific experts had rallied around in a crisis, and had contributed their knowledge to reducing the effects of this new form of warfare. But there was still a strong sense that the army high command was not paying sufficient attention to what the men of science were telling them.
On 24 May both types of protection were put to the test when the Germans launched another big gas attack against British lines along the Ypres salient. This time the men did not panic, and although the casualties were severe the line held. The gas soon passed behind the trenches, and determined machine gun and artillery fire from the defenders prevented any major German advance. On the following day the Germans called off their offensive and the Second Battle of Ypres came to a close. British losses in the five-week period of the battle amounted to 59,000 men, although only a small number of these had succumbed to gas.
There was a widespread sense of outrage at the German use of poison gas in the spring battle of Ypres. The Times denounced it as an ‘atrocious method of warfare’ and a ‘diabolical contrivance’.4 It was seen as yet another example of German beastliness and as contravening the rules of war. The soldiers, more practically, felt that when they could not even breathe the air around them they became helpless victims who had to endure slow, ghastly, asphyxiating deaths, or watch their comrades suffer a tortuous end. The possibility of breathing poisonous air arouses a primitive fear, and throughout the war that fear was to undermine the fighting ability of soldiers on both sides. ‘The mere mention of gas,’ a battalion commander in the Black Watch remembered, ‘could put the “wind up” the Battalion.’5
However diabolical poison gas might be, there was no doubt in the minds of the Allied general staff that they must prepare to employ it as soon as possible. At GHQ in France, Haig’s head of intelligence, General Charteris, wrote quite simply in his diary, ‘We shall of course now have to use gas ourselves, as soon as we can get it going.’6 Colonel Jackson, in charge of the use of new weapons in the British Army, took advice from the War Committee of the Royal Society. And despite their indignation at the German crime, the eminent men of science seem to have been perfectly willing to help. Professors Baker and Thorpe, prominent chemists based at Imperial College where the earlier testing on tear gas had been carried out, were quite happy to recommend different types of gas for use at the front and to advise on the best ways of directing it at the enemy. There was only one firm in Britain, Castner-Kellner at Wallsend on the Tyne, that was capable of producing chlorine and George Beilby, a member of the Royal Society War Committee who was also a director of the company, put the War Office into immediate contact with them. Colonel Charles Foulkes of the Royal Engineers was charged at GHQ with forming special companies that were to prepare to carry out gas attacks. Chemists or chemical students from universities who were already in the army were recruited into these companies, just as German scientists had joined their Pioneer Regiment.
The British government reviewed the situation and despite outward declarations of outrage and horror at the German use of gas, approved the use of gases ‘which were as harmful, but not much more so, than those used by the enemy, though preparations and experiments might proceed for the employment of more d
eadly things’.7 Testing began during May, but there were problems with the gas cylinders, which began to leak at the welded joints where the valves were supposed to discharge the chlorine. After trying to resolve this, further tests in June were witnessed by Foulkes and a group of officers. Surprisingly, no scientists attended, the British Army being keen, unlike the French, to keep the men of science at arm’s length. Foulkes was impressed, and a large order for liquid chlorine was placed with Castner-Kellner on behalf of both the British and French armies, as France did not have a single company capable of producing the poison in bulk. Over the next few months, thousands of heavy gas cylinders were filled and dispatched to the front, where the special companies of chemists manhandled them up to the front-line trenches.
Meanwhile, in early 1915, the Germans had carried out the first bombing raids along the English coast from giant Zeppelin airships. In April, London was bombed for the first time. There was understandable concern that instead of high explosives, the Germans might start dropping poison gas bombs. Sir Edward Henry, the Commissioner of Police, wrote from Scotland Yard to the Royal Society asking for advice on precautions. The members of the Physiology Committee, a sub-group of the main War Committee that included Professor John Haldane, wrote back to him on 5 July assuring him that if the Germans dropped gas bombs on the streets of London, ‘the enormous ventilating power of the atmosphere will prevent any dangerous concentration of gas’. The men of science advised that if gas bombs penetrated a building then the building should be evacuated, but there would be no need for panic. They also advised against issuing gas masks to the general public as they would not be necessary. Masks, they claimed, ‘are necessary for the use of our troops because, if gas reaches the trenches, the men must stay on duty there in spite of it’. However, as long as people were directed away from the scene of an attack, the low concentrations of gas likely to be present would cause no general harm. The price at which gas masks were being offered to the public, said the scientists, was ‘indefensibly high’ and labour spent on their manufacture could be more usefully spent elsewhere, for example in making masks for the troops.8 The Metropolitan Police followed this guidance and, again on scientific advice, recommended against the use of chemical liquid fire extinguishers as well because standards could not be guaranteed, preferring the use of water and sand. Fortunately gas bombs were never dropped on civilian populations during the war.
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