The firsthand account of Willi Siebert, a German soldier during the first gas attack of the war, at Ypres.


“Finally, we decided to release the gas. The weatherman was right. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining. Where there was grass, it was blazing green. We should have been going on a picnic, not doing what we were going to do. We sent the (German) infantry back and opened the (gas)valves with the strings. About supper time, the gas started toward the French; everything was stone quiet. We all wondered what was going to happen.

As this great cloud of green-grey gas was forming in front of us, we suddenly heard the French yelling. In less than a minute they started with the most rifle and machine gun fire that I had ever heard. Every field artillery gun, every machine gun, every rifle that the French had, must have been firing. I had never heard such a noise.

The hail of bullets going over our heads was unbelievable, but it was not stopping the gas. The wind kept moving the gas towards the French lines. We heard the cows bawling, and the horses screaming. The French kept on shooting. They couldn’t possibly see what they were shooting at. In about 15 minutes the gunfire started to quit. After a half hour, only occasional shots. Then everything was quiet again. In a while, it had cleared and we walked past the empty gas bottles.

What we saw was total death. Nothing was alive.

All of the animals had come out of their holes to die. Dead rabbits, moles, and rats and mice were everywhere. The smell of the gas was still in the air. It hung on the few bushes which were left. When we got to the French lines the trenches were empty but in a half mile, the bodies of French soldiers were everywhere. It was unbelievable. Then we saw there were some English. You could see where men had clawed at their faces, and throats, trying to get a breath. Some had shot themselves. The horses, still in the stables, cows, chickens, everything, all were dead. Everything, even the insects were dead."

Shit...

Sounds like a good way to end a war quickly

War is Hell.    RIP.

I think that's what they were hoping for.

Except it didn't.

Is this an excerpted from a book?  I’d love to read more.  The level of death and destruction in WW1 is absolutely insane.

On the run up to the 1st Gulf War, we were shown smuggled video of Iraqi troops gassing Kurds. It was horrifying.

And how’d that work out?

"Plainly something terrible was happening. What was it? Officers, and Staff officers too, stood gazing at the scene, awestruck and dumbfounded; for in the northerly breeze there came a pungent nauseating smell that tickled the throat and made our eyes smart. The horses and men were still pouring down the road. Two or three men on a horse, I saw, while over the fields streamed mobs of infantry, the dusky warriors of French Africa; away went their rifles, equipment, even their tunics that they might run the faster. One man came stumbling through our lines. An officer of ours held him up with levelled revolver, "What's the matter, you bloody lot of cowards?" says he. The Zouave was frothing at the mouth, his eyes started from their sockets, and he fell writhing at the officer's feet."
-- A. R. Hossack,  Queen Victoria's Rifles

Sounds like.

Isn’t.

The Germans later accused the US of war crimes because they thought the American use of shotguns was inhumane.  

Or make it go on forever.

The German nation should have been obliterated from the face of the Earth for that

Except that when you make a better tank, I will make a better AT missile, ad infinitum[/i].

Yeah, didn’t Hiram Maxim say something like that?

I wonder what would happen if the next time politicians s and generals said "we need a better way to kill human beings" the scientists and engineers just said "no."

I’m pretty sure Curtis Lemay killed more civilians in Tokyo with fire than the Germans killed soldiers with gas.

Lemay himself believed he’d have been tried as a war criminal if we hadn’t won.

Now, I don’t particularly believe there is such a thing as “war crimes.” War is hell, and there’s no refining it. Trying to bring honor or fairness into armed conflict is a fools errand. When you stand on the ashes of a billion dead souls ask them what honor matters. Their silence is your answer.

I am become death, destroyer of worlds.

Dulce Et Decorum Est - Poem by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.-
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

I try to explain the gruesome and epic scale of death and destruction associated with WWI to my students but most have difficulty really placing that into perspective.

Why?  War is inhumane.  It ok to stab and slash men with blades, shoot them, bludgeon them, blow them apart with explosives, and set them on fire, but gassing them is too much?  I can’t see a rational justification for drawing the line there.

I’m guessing the scientists would have more time to learn the language of their enemies because they’ll be there soon.

Yup, nasty, nasty weapon. There is a reason why after WWI, for the most part, poison gas has not been used on front lines.

HOW RIFLEMAN BROWN CAME TO VALHALLA
by
Gilbert Frankau

To the lower Hall of Valhalla, to the heroes of no renown
Relieved from his spell at the listening post, came Rifleman Joseph Brown
With never a rent in his khaki nor smear of blood on his face
He flung his pack from his shoulders, and made for an empty space.

The killer-men of Valhalla looked up from the banquet board
At the untouched breech of his rifle, at the unfleshed point of his sword.
And the unsung dead of the trenches, the kings who have never a crown
Demanded his pass to Valhalla from Rifleman Joseph Brown.

“Who comes unhit, to the party?” a one legged Corporal spoke.
And the gashed heads nodded approval through the rings of the Endless Smoke
“Who comes for the beer and the Woodbines of the never-closed Canteen
With the barrack-shine on his bayonet and a full-charged magazine?”

Then Rifleman Brown looked round him at the nameless men of the line.
At the wounds of the shell and the bullet, at the burns of the bomb and the mine.
At the tunics, virgin of medals but crimson-clotted with blood.
At the ankle-boots and the puttees, caked stiff with the Flanders mud.
At the myriad short Lee-Enfields that crowded the rifle-rack.
Each with its blade to the sword-cross brown, and its muzzle powder-black.

And Rifleman Brown said never a word, yet he felt in the soul of his soul,
His right to the beer of the lower hall, though he came to drink it, whole.
His right to the fags of the free Canteen, to a seat at the banquet board
Though he came to the men who had killed their man, with never a man to his sword.

“Who speaks for the stranger Rifleman, O boys of the free Canteen?
Who passes the chap with the unmaimed limbs and the kit that is far too clean?”
The gashed heads eyed him about their beers, the gashed lips sucked at their smoke
There were three at the board of his own platoon, but not a man of them spoke.

His mouth was mad for the tankard froth and the biting whiff of a fag
But he knew that he might not speak for himself to the dead men who do not brag
A gun-butt crashed on the gateway, a man came staggering in
His head was cleft with a great red wound from the temple-bone to the chin.

His blade was dyed to the bayonet-boss with the clots that were barely dry,
And he cried to the men who had killed their man, “Who passes the Rifleman?... I.”
By the four I slew, by the shell I stopped, if my feet be not too late
I speak the word for Rifleman Brown that a chap may speak for his mate.”
The dead of lower Valhalla, the heroes of dumb renown
They pricked their ears to the tale of the earth as they set their tankards down.

“My mate was on sentry this evening when General happened along,
And asked what he’d do in a gas attack. Joe told him, “Beat on the gong.”
“What else?” “Open fire, sir.” Joe answered. “Good God, man,” our General said,
“By the time you’d beaten the bloodstained gong the chances are you’d be dead
Just think, lad.” “Gas -helmet, of course, sir.” “Yes dammit, and gas helmet first.”
So Joe stood dumb to attention, and wondered why he’d been cursed.

The gashed heads turned to the Rifleman, and now it seemed that they knew
Why the face that had never a smear of blood was stained to the jaw-bones, blue.
“He was posted again at midnight.” The scarred heads craned to the voice
As the man with the blood-red bayonet spoke up for the mate of his choice.
“You know what it’s like in a listening post, the 'Very' candles aflare
Their bullets smacking the sand-bags, our Vickers combing your hair,
How your ears and your eyes get jumpy, till each known tuft that you scan
Moves and crawls in the shadows till you’d almost swear it was man.
You know how you peer and snuff at the night when the North-East gas-winds blow.”
“By the One who made us and maimed us,” quoth lower Valhalla, “We know.”

“Sudden, out of the blackness, sudden as Hell, there came,
Roar and rattle of rifles, spurts of machine-gun flame.
And Joe stood up in the forward sap to try and fathom their game
Sudden their shells come screaming; sudden his nostrils sniff
The sickening reek of the rotten pears, the death that kills with a whiff.
Death! and he knows it certain, as he bangs on his cartridge case
With the gas-cloud’s claws at his windpipe and the gas-clouds wings on his face.
We heard his gong in our dug-out, he only whacked on it twice
We whipped our gas-bags over our heads, and manned the steps in a trice.
For the cloud would have caught us for sure as Fate if he’d taken the Staff’s advice.”

His head was cleft with a great red wound from the chin to the temple-bone
But his voice was as clear as a sounding gong, “I’ll be damned if I’ll drink alone,
Not even in lower Valhalla! Is he free of your free Canteen
My mate who comes with the unfleshed point and the full-charged magazine?”

The gashed heads rose at the Rifleman, o’er the rings of the Endless Smoke
And loud as the roar of a thousand guns Valhall’s answer broke.
And loud as the crash of a thousand shells their tankards clashed on the board
“He is free of the mess of the killer-men, your mate of the unfleshed sword
For we know the worth of his deed on earth, as we know the speed of the death
Which catches its man by the back of the throat and gives him water for breath.
As we know how the helmet cloth may tarry seconds too long
When the very life of the front-line trench is staked on the beat of a gong.
By the four you slew, by the case he smote, by the grey gas-cloud and the green
We pass your mate for the Enless Smoke and the beer of the free Canteen.”

In the lower hall of Valhalla, with the heroes of no renown
With our nameless dead of the Marne and the Aisne, of Mons, and of Wipers town
With the men who killed 'ere they died for us, sits Rifleman Joseph Brown.

If you want a really good book on the matter, read A HIGHER FORM OF KILLING.

It's scary stuff.

But being disemboweled by the 2' long bayonet was ok!....

It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.

The biggest reasons are that gas is risky to employ close to your own troops or in areas you intend to occupy, and that there isn’t much to be gained by employing it against an enemy who is prepared to deal with it and respond in kind.

Other scientists and engineers would say "sure", because they're smart enough to realize that without competitive weapons a person or nation is at the mercy of another.

Chlorine

The people who created and deployed it should have suffered the same fate.

And to think I married a German.

Disgusting.  Hard to say which is worse-- executing Belgian citizens en masse, or this shit.

Well, Holocaust I guess.  But I suppose if you think you are a superior race, all is okay.

Fuck.

So the Germans had an affinity for gassing people? Huh, go figure.

Darwin would drink a toast to such scientists and engineers.

I've got a mental image of Darwin and the first aboriginal that knapped himself a spearpoint having a beer together laughing at you.

Gas was brand new. It's indiscriminate, there was no possible way to prepare for it mentally, and there was no way to shoot straighter, or faster, or parry a bayonet more effectively.

Imagine if our enemies right now had a weapon (like nanotech, or something else), that could melt you no matter what PPE you wore, and killed everything in its path.

Men slowly drowned in their own bodily fluids.

Just the opposite.

Except this wasn't the first gas attack. France used gas grenades about a month earlier, the Germans just didn't notice.  The Allies had a much better propaganda machine, WWI was hardly clean on their side.

Had the French, Brits, or even Americans perfected gas first, they likely would have used it sooner. War is horrific.

Think about the USA dropping atomic bombs on cities in Japan. Evil. It was a necessary evil.

my wife ripped one in bed last night, it was nasty!

Written by Robert Harris, same guy that wrote Fatherland.

He has a section where it is suggested the grenade used to assassinate Heydrich was modified to contain botulism toxin.  I've never found any other source that discusses this, and I imagine if true the papers on it would be under a 100 year hold if they even exist anymore.

The US was cranking out mustard gas artillery shells.
So many were left at war's end that they just buried them - in the area of Maryland near Washington, DC. Construction crews over the past few decades keep digging them up.

My great grandfather’s  brother that was a couple years older died in a German gas attack sometime in 1918 I remember him telling me as a little boy.

I remember him also told he was born in 1899 a different time. Still have a couple of things he gave me a young boy

You mean like us until Russia made their own bomb.....

You'll always find some willing to make a buck, and do it for patriotism, monetary compensation, the chance to experiment, or to be a butcher.

Kharn

The price of a mile
Sure its a song, but maybe that'll help.  500K dead for no real reason.

There was a not so insignificant portion of the government and military that would have happily nuked the Soviets in that brief window if they'd been the ones in charge. Fate be like it do however.

Morality in total war is nothing more than a pipe dream. If roles were reversed the other country wouldn't have hesitated to use it. The hydrogen bomb came about mostly because of the concern that if we didn't, someone else would. You don't really want to be on the losing end of that equation if things goes South

After some genealogy research my wife had a cousin (a several generations back) who died in that push a few days after the fighting started by that gas attack.

Horrible stuff.