ultimately produced more than 5 million gas masks. invested in a massive research effort, eventually deploying the Kops-Tissot-Monroe mask that became standard issue. Initially forced to adopt British small-box respirators when early American gas masks proved ineffective, the U.S. 1,2 The CWS created an array of technologies to protect soldiers. Army Medical Department (AMEDD) created a Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) to develop protective equipment, which allowed its physicians to focus on treatment. did not enter World War I until 1917, it benefitted from the lessons learned by the French and British. Over the next three years, warring countries worked to develop multi-tiered responses to the threat of chemical weapons. While the German military offensive floundered, medically Ypres was a disaster for the British and French. The British had no gas masks, their physicians did not know how to treat gas-related casualties, and their hospital infrastructure was not equipped to handle the strain of thousands of new patients. In this first use of modern chemical warfare, all the advantages lay with the attacker. They released a rolling cloud that tumbled across “no man’s land” and into the unprepared trenches of the British Expeditionary Force defending the line at Ypres, France. Official figures declare about 1,176,500 non-fatal casualties and 85,000 fatalities directly caused by chemical warfare agents during the course of the war.Just before the sun began its slow descent below the horizon on April 22, 1915, thousands of German soldiers simultaneously twisted the knobs on metal cylinders containing chlorine gas. A total of 50,965 tons of pulmonary, lachrymatory, and vesicant agents were deployed by both sides of the conflict, including chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas. The first full-scale deployment of deadly chemical warfare agents during World War I, was at the Second Battle of Ypres, on April 22, 1915, when the Germans attacked French, Canadian, and Algerian troops with chlorine gas.ĭeaths were light, though casualties were relatively heavy. Germany used another irritant, xylyl bromide, in artillery shells that were fired in January 1915 at the Russians near the town of Bolimów, nowadays in Poland. One of Germany’s earliest uses of chemical weapons occurred on October 27th, 1914 when shells containing the irritant dianisidine chlorosulfonate were fired at British troops near Neuve-Chapelle, France. The French were the first to use chemical weapons during the Great War, using tear gases, ethyl bromoacetate, and chloroacetone. The Hague Declaration of 1899 and the Hague Convention of 1907 forbade the use of “poison or poisonous weapons” in warfare, yet more than 124,000 tons of gas were produced by the end of World War I. The canaries were used to detect poisonous gas, and cats and dogs were trained to hunt rats in the trenches. Horses, donkeys, mules, and camels carried food, water, ammunition, and medical supplies to men at the front, and dogs and pigeons carried messages. However, animals remained a crucial part of the war effort. Horse and camel-mounted troops were used in the desert campaigns throughout the war, but on the Western Front, new weapons like the machine gun made cavalry charges increasingly difficult. In 1914, both sides had large cavalry forces. For years few knew of the unimaginable suffering of the beasts transported across the Channel to the Western Front. This is the forgotten tragedy of the Great War – a conflict that pitched as many animals into the line of fire as it did humans. Of the million British horses sent overseas to help with the war effort, only 62,000 returned home. Horses were equipped with gas masks over their muzzles and were protected from inhalation of poison gases such as phosgene.Įquine eyes were not affected by lachrymatory agents so that their masks consisted only of specially made nose bags but, unfortunately, these animal’s eyes were vulnerable to the effects of chlorine and vesicatory gases. Horses, mules, dogs, and pigeons were vulnerable to poison gases so that special protection was necessary for them. Many animals were used during World War One. Two German soldiers and their mule wearing gas masks in World War One, 1916
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