THEIR OWN GAS.

Taihape Daily Times, 22 August 1918, Page 3

THEIR OWN GAS.

HOW THEY WERE CAUGHT. GERMAN POISON HELPS THE ALLIES. The intensive gas-shell bombardment with which the German precedes his attacks has had somewhat unforeseen after-effects on the Germans themselves. For the purpose of the offensive they emplay a shell containing a double-purpose chemical, affecting first the eyes and then the skin. It is an improvement on the normal “tear gas shell,” and the usual distinctive colour is very much reduced, so that the gas is not so easy to detect. Men who suffer from its effects are temporarily blinded, and close contact with the fumes produces an unpleasant skin irritation. For the average case eight or ten days’ hospital treatment is necessary, but the gas is neither fatal nor does it inflict permanent injuries, for our men are not exposed to it for long. So much for our side of the question. From the German point of view the weapon has proved decidedly doubleedged. This was especially the case on the Somme during the last offensive. The chemical was so concentrated that it was markedly less volatile than the usual gas-shell content, and wherever a shell exploded a considerable proportion of the charge impregnated the surrounding ground. The fumes suspended in the air dispersed fairly rapidly, but the actual site of the explosion remained virulently poisonous. In the usual Avay the spot where a gas shelT lias burst is dangerous for 48 hours or so, but this concentrated chemical remained active for infinitely longer periods. The result was decidedly comic, for it was evidently one of the many little things that the “Grosser General Stab” omitted in tis calculations. The German artillery lathered the Allied ! positions with gas shell in the most lavish manner. Every redoubt, support line, ruined village, and road centre was plastered with the stuff. The great assault was launched, and the Allied line yielded ground. The Germans moved up and occupied it. Their bombardment had been miles deep; > their advance was in proportion. I

Thousands of German troops poured up into the gas-infected area, sat down for cover in virulently poisoned shell holes, billeted themselves in abandoned hutments sprayed with their own gas—and only began to notice the effect about six hours later! During the action Our men had been exposed to the fumes for a short period, but the Germans came and, in their ignorance, literally steeped' themselves in it. Exhausted men lay down in the dusk on dew-wet ground where the stuff had burst; they woke later to find the venom actually corroding their bodies through their clothes. Forward machine gun units dug emplacements in innocent-looking shell holes. Two hours later the men were wandering about blind, and screaming in their pain and terror. A day or two of wet weather seemed to clear the infected areas; new troops were marched up, the remnants of old divisions withdrawn, and the terror of their own gas hushed up and forgotten. Then came the blazing sun drying up the clcay and loam,’ heating the earth surface inches deep. The latent poison awoke again, j and for no apparent reason shelters' and dugouts that had been safe and habitable for days became deadly as puff adders. The unsuspecting troops were overwhelmed.

The Germans are sorry they ever started gas, still sorrier that they improved it; but one can feel no pity for them. The effect on their morale is bad, for no man can now tell what terror of their own sowing lurks in the ground that they occupy at the cost of thousands of lives.