Trouble in the Air: Poison Gas

^{National Archives from War Dept.}

^{French troops launch a gas attack during World War I.}

April 22, 1915 had been a delightful day, warm and sunny – not all that common a spring day in Flanders. The war‑ravaged village of Neuve‑Chapelle was being held by French Algerian and Canadian troops. About 5 p.m. a gray‑ish‑green fog seemed to rise from the German trenches across no‑man’s‑land from the Allied line and drift toward the Algerians. The fog covered the Algerian trenches and flowed into them like water. Then the Canadians saw the North African riflemen running to the rear, coughing and choking. Their de‑parture left a gap in the line 8,000 yards wide. A few minutes later, a bit of the fog drifted into the Canadian lines. The Canadians got a small taste of what the Algerians had been through, but fortunately, it was only a taste. They were able to hold their line and beat back the German infantry, who pushed forward as the green fog began dissipating.

This was the first use in modern times of deadly gas in war. A few months earlier, on January 3, 1915, the Germans had used tear gas on the Russian front, but it had had no effect on the Russians. The weather was so cold that the chemical in the gas shells had frozen instead of vaporizing. This may have been the reason the Germans made their second gas attack by opening cylinders when the wind was right: they could see whether the gas was vaporizing.

The gas this time was chlorine, a common chemical used in scores of compounds. Second‑year high school students produce small quantities of chlorine gas in school labs. Engineers at I.G. Farben, the German chemical giant, worked out a way to produce vast amounts of chlorine gas, pack the liquid gas in cylinders, and release it from the trenches. It was the second scientific triumph for Farben and Germany’s leading industrial chemist, Fritz Haber of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Earlier, Farben and Haber had invented a way to draw nitro‑gen from the air, a development essential for Germany’s war effort, because the British Navy had cut off Germany’s usual source of nitrates, imports from Chile. Haber reportedly said the gas would “settle the hash of the wicked English.”

The Algerians took the rap for the British in the first gas attack. Two days later, the Canadians were the target of the second attack. On the 23rd, though, Canadian officers had identified the mysterious cloud as chlorine. Chlorine is soluble in water, so the Canadians tied wet cloths over their faces. That helped to mitigate the effects of the gas, and the Allies had moved more reinforcements up behind the Canadians. The line held, and Canadians, British, and French counterattacked. On May 1st, Haber’s invention was finally used against “the wicked English,” the First Battalion of the Dorset Regiment. Somehow, the Dorsets seemed not to have heard about the wet rag counter. When the men began to choke, many of them fled. A second lieutenant named Kestell‑Cornish picked up a rifle one of the men of his platoon dropped and fired into the green cloud rolling toward him. The four men remaining from his platoon of 40 men joined him. Other British soldiers joined them. Once again, the Germans were beaten back, but the price the British paid was high. Ninety men died in the trenches. Some 207 were evacuated to the aid station. Of them, 46 died immediately; 12 others after long suffering.

Chlorine causes the lungs to fill with fluid, and the victim drowns. It was not the only gas in the German arsenal. The next one used was phosgene, a colorless gas that smells like new‑mown hay and chokes its victim much more quickly than chlorine. Then there was mustard gas, a blistering agent. Mustard gas burns and blisters any tissue it touches – any exposed skin and also the lungs. It is extremely lethal, and many of the men it didn’t kill were crippled for life. Basil H. Liddell Hart, the British military commentator, was invalidated out of the army as a result of injuries from mustard gas. The Allies quickly countered the German gas offensive with gases of their own. The United States entered the race late but produced Lewisite, a byproduct of a search for synthetic rubber that out‑blistered the blistering mustard gas.

One product all these gases had in common was that they were heavier than air. Instead of billowing into the upper atmosphere, they flowed to the lowest points on the ground. A veteran of World War I once told the author that he was more afraid of gas than any other weapon. He was in the Signal Corps, and his job was to help operate a telephone switchboard deep underground. His dugout was so deep, he explained, that he might not hear the gas alarm. Even if he did, the alarm might be too late. He wouldn’t have time to take off his head‑phone and put on his gas mask before phosgene laid him low.

Gas was a true terror weapon – one that can cause fear out of proportion to its effectiveness. Actually, of the deaths on the Western Front, only about 1.1 percent were caused by gas, but fear of gas terrified whole nations on the eve of World War II. Governments tried to issue gas masks to their civilian populations, but there were far too few gas masks. Fortunately, no belligerent tried to gas an enemy’s civilians. Even if there were enough masks, they wouldn’t solve the problem. Mustard gas and Lewisite burn on contact with the skin, and the new nerve gases can quickly kill without being inhaled. Of the three most common nerve gases, Tabun will cause death if 1,000 milligrams touches the victim’s skin; Sarin takes 1,700 milligrams, but VX requires only 15 milligrams on the skin to kill, less than half a fatal dose if inhaled. A person attacked by any of these gases is a grave threat to would‑be rescuers. Good Samaritans may get a fatal dose just touching the victim’s clothing.

Gas masks, covering the face and allowing a potential victim breath through a filter, usually composed of activated charcoal, were issued to all soldiers, and those in especially hazardous areas got protective overalls as well. Poison gas was hazardous to everyone near it, especially when used as it was on April 22, 1915, being released into the wind from cylinders. The wind could always shift.

As a result, all belligerents went back to using gas primarily in shells.

In World War II, the Allies, it has been said, were waiting for the Germans to use gas first. Then they would retaliate. The Germans, in spite of all their preparations for war, were not able to deal with poison gas. One reason, according to some experts, was that they had been unable to devise a gas mask for horses.

Although when the war began, the German Army was believed to be the ultimate in mechanization, it still relied heavily on horses for towing artillery and general transport. It continued to do so until the end of the war. German officers complained during the Russian campaign that their “modern” horse‑drawn wagons broke down on the awful Russian roads and they had to comandeer Russian peasant carts to carry supplies.

Poison gas did not entirely disappear in spite of its general non‑use. The Japanese used mustard gas and other chemical agents against the Chinese in World War II, before the United States and other Western nations became involved, because the Chinese could not retaliate. Iran used poison gas in the Iran‑Iraq War of 1980–1988. The Iranians, fanatical followers of the Shi’a Aya‑tollah Ruhollah Khomeini, were willing to use anything available in what they considered a holy war. The Iraqis, under the pragmatic and self‑centered Saddam Hussein, retaliated with their own gas. That war ended in a stalemate, but Hussein then turned on the Iraqi Kurds, a minority that wanted independence, and slaughtered thousands of them with gas. The Kurds, of course, had no way to retaliate.

Poison gas was one of the “weapons of mass destruction” Iraq was supposed to be hoarding before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2002. The only gas found was one artillery shell filled with nerve gas that an Iraqi guerrilla tried to turn into a roadside bomb, apparently believing that it was filled with high explosive. The shell apparently had been scheduled to be disposed of with the rest of Saddam’s gas but got lost among the hundreds of thousands of high explosive shells that seem to be buried every couple of square miles in Iraq.

The future use of gas is uncertain. As time goes on, the chemists are inventing ever more deadly gases – gases that kill quicker, that penetrate filters and protective gear, that kill with the merest touch. It is becoming as horrible as the other components of what the military calls CBR – chemical, biological, and radiological – warfare. Whether or not it is ever used again, it will influence the thinking and action of governments for years to come.