Gas attacks of WWI

Added 1661928885 by Photographer Gino Cinganelli.

On 22 April 1915, German forces launched a renewed offensive against the Ypres Salient. Their attack featured a weapon that had not been used before on the Western Front – poison gas. Archibald James, an observer in the Royal Flying Corps, saw it being used for the first time.

I witnessed from the air the first gas attack when the Germans used chlorine gas in the Ypres Salient. Suddenly we saw to the north of us in the salient this yellow wall moving quite slowly towards our lines. We hadn’t any idea what it was. We reported it of course when we landed. And an hour or so later the smell of chlorine actually reached our aerodrome.

Other attacks soon followed. British officer Martin Greener watched as one gas cloud approached his position.

Just at dawn they opened a very heavy fire, especially machine-gun fire, and the idea of that was apparently to make you get down. And then the next thing we heard was this sizzling – you know, I mean you could hear this damn stuff coming on – and then saw this awful cloud coming over. A great yellow, greenish-yellow, cloud. It wasn’t very high; about I would say it wasn’t more than 20 feet up. Nobody knew what to think. But immediately it got there we knew what to think, I mean we knew what it was. Well then of course you immediately began to choke, then word came: whatever you do don’t go down. You see if you got to the bottom of the trench you got the full blast of it because it was heavy stuff, it went down.