We’ve talked before about the innovations developed during the war that all sides created
to try and gain an advantage or breakthrough, and this week you can add one more to the list:
mustard gas.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week Russia launched a major offensive on the Eastern Front and it met with immediate
successes.
The Arab Revolt captured Aqaba, giving them a vital port to receive supplies, and there
was turmoil in the Reichstag in Berlin.
That turmoil was because of the pros and cons of Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare
campaign, in effect for nearly six months now.
On July 10th Walter Rathenau, German industrialist, journalist, and former chairman of the War
Raw Materials Department, went to see Quartermaster General Ludendorff.
Ludendorff believed that the Allies were really going to be unable to continue the war because
of the submarine campaign, but his statistics had given him false hopes and we saw last
week that there were many in the Reichstag who realized the campaign had failed.
Rathenau warned Ludendorff that the British were making every effort to replace ships
as fast as they were sunk, and that America might be building even more tonnage than was
being sunk.
Ludendorff didn’t buy it, but Rathenau was right.
Arthur Salter, British shipping expert, had organized such a replacement program that
by now the British needed very little time to make up any losses in tonnage.
In fact, Britain was quite busy with organizing the war effort.
This week a British women’s auxiliary army corps was established.
This is the first time Britain would put women in uniform and send them to France, as clerks,
telephonists, cooks, and gas mask instructors among other jobs.
Now, only men could hold commissions in the army, so these women could not be officers,
but they got titles like controller or administrator.
The main idea behind this was to release the men who had been doing these jobs for service
at the front.
Of course, women were already working in droves at munitions factories in Britain and the
dangers there were pretty serious.
Women who worked with TNT were often known as canaries because of the yellowish skin
discoloration they got which was a sign of TNT poisoning.
Some died of such poisoning, and others from industrial accidents like explosions.
Last year the Faversham explosion had killed 115 men and boys, no women being working because
it happened on a Sunday morning, but just a few months ago in January there was an explosion
at the Silvertown factory in London, where 69 of the deaths caused by the explosion of
50 tons of TNT and 72 of the injuries were women.
That explosion, by the way, destroyed a square mile of East London, and caused more destruction
on London than all the air raids on the city during the war combined (Gilbert).
But that war in the air continued.
On the 7th came a daytime airplane raid on Margate and London causing 250 casualties,
mostly civilian.
This was the last raid on London by daylight since 11 German aircraft were taken down.
The British were not just making logistical plans behind the lines either.
Lawrence of Arabia met with General Edmund Allenby this week in Cairo.
After last week’s success at Aqaba, Lawrence outlined his plans for the next stage of the
Arab Revolt - a coordinated attack by seven different forces at the end of August.
Allenby would provide support with a British army push into Palestine at the same time.
Allenby said he’d be ready for that by mid-September, and convinced the War Cabinet in London to
reinforce his forces with two further divisions.
These were by no means the biggest plans the British were making, though.
They were planning a huge offensive in Belgium, but Commander Sir Douglas Haig was sort of
in the same position French General Robert Nivelle had been a few months ago, i.e., proceeding
in the face of great skepticism and refusing to be dissuaded.
Ferdinand Foch called Haig’s plans for a Flanders offensive, “Futile, fantastic,
and dangerous”.
The goal, which we mentioned last month, was to drive the Germans back 5km the first day,
and 25km in eight days.
Once the British had taken the railway junction at Roulers, a specially trained division with
a force of tanks was going to be landed on the coast behind the German lines.
Then the British 4th army, from near where the Yser River enters the sea, would head
east under the protection of the British navy’s big guns and link up with the landing force.
The Germans would supposedly not have the strength by this time to form new defensive
lines and would withdraw from the coast entirely.
One of the problems with the plan, and there were more than one, was that the Germans knew
what was coming.
The only thing that was still a secret was the amphibious landing and that was under
such tight security that the men training for it on the Thames weren’t allowed to
write home at all.
But (World Undone), “The Germans, from the air and from their observation points on the
low ridges circling Ypres, had a clear view of the gathering of the greatest concentration
of soldiers and weapons in the history of the British Army.”
So they transferred 14 divisions to the Ypres region.
With them came Fritz von Lossberg, the actual originator of the new German flexible defense
system, who then became the new Chief of Staff of the German 4th Army.
They did that a few weeks ago, so he had already had over a month to prepare.
By this point, the German confidence of withstanding an offensive was very high.
“My mind is quite at rest about the attack, as we have never possessed such strong reserves,
so well trained for their part, as on this front.”
- Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria.
On the 10th the Germans launched what was known as Unternehmen Strandfest - Operation
Beach Party - on the British 4th Army at its bridgehead on the Yser.
This was German marines with strong artillery and air support, and a perfectly executed
creeping barrage.
They drove most of the British back to the west side of the river and even found a tunnel
that the British had planned to use to blow up German advanced positions.
They well knew something big was being planned for the coast, and capturing the “high”
ground by the Yser had given the British a much less advantageous position for the future,
and had possibly ruined even the possibility of an amphibious attack.
That proposed amphibious landing would be something very new if it happened, but this
week something both new and sinister did happen there, as the Germans used two new gas weapons.
In that attack I just mentioned, the Germans premiered a gas known as blue cross.
The blue cross gas shells were not designed to cause death or injury, but created a fine
dust of particles that were to penetrate the respirator and cause sneezing and coughing
fits that would force the affected soldier to tear off his respirator and then be affected
by phosgene or other gas.
This was not actually very effective, partly because of the glass bottle delivery system,
and partly because the British had already introduced this concept and had introduced
particle filters to their gas masks.
Two days later, a more effective gas was also introduced.
The yellow cross - Mustard gas.
The Germans fired it on the British near Ypres and it was initially to be used as a defensive
agent to poison the whole area.
Over 50,000 gas shells were fired and over 2,000 troops were affected that day.
87 died.
Over the next few weeks the Germans would fire over a million shells of the gas, kill
500 more men and incapacitate thousands more.
The British would retaliate next week with 100,000 shells of chloropicrin and cause 75
German deaths.
But you know what?
For all those gas shells, a single incident on the 9th killed more people than all of
them combined.
At Scapa Flow the battleship Vanguard exploded, killing all but three of 840 men aboard (one
source says all but two, some sources list the total men as 804 and 840).
It was an explosion of the cordite charges in the main magazine, but though there are
theories as to how this happened, it’s never been entirely determined.
And big action continued in the field this week over on the Eastern Front in the new
Russian Offensive.
On the 8th, the Austrian front was broken west of Stanislau by General Lavr Kornilov,
7,000 prisoners were taken and Russian cavalry chased the enemy.
Only German reserves prevented a total rout.
On the 9th Kornilov had crossed the Dniester River, on the 10th the Russians captured Halicz,
on the 12th they crossed the Lomnica River and on the 13th they were heading for the
Hungarian border.
Halicz actually gave them control of the southern approaches to Lemberg.
They had cleared most of the Bukovina of enemy forces and were heading for the Carpathian
passes.
In the first two weeks of July, Russia claimed 36,634 prisoners taken, 93 artillery pieces,
and 406 machine guns.
The Central powers had given up two important river lines and the Russians had cut all but
one road leading to Lemberg.
And that was the week.
More Russian successes on the Eastern Front, British plans for offensives in the West and
the Middle East, British efficiency at home, an explosion at sea, and mustard gas has its
premiere in the field.
First tear gas, then chlorine gas, then phosgene gas, and now mustard gas, the progression
of chemical weapons in this war is truly terrifying.
The Germans called mustard gas yellow cross from the markings on the shells, the British
called it HS for Hun Stuff.
It’s heavier than air so it lingers in the soil of battlefields for weeks or even months,
still effective.
It attacks any exposed skin, causing horrible blisters; it attacks the eyes and the lungs,
causing internal bleeding and vomiting.
It is extremely painful and victims could take weeks to die.
Nurse Vera Brittain described, “great mustard colored blisters, blind eyes, all sticky and
stuck together, always fighting for breath with voices a mere whisper, saying their throats
are closing and they know they will choke.”
It was not the most deadly of the gases used in this war, but it was easily the most feared.
If you want to learn more about gas warfare in World War 1, check out our special episode
right here.
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