France, Western Front, World War I.
Photographer: Unknown.
A vintage photo archived with the National Library of Congress shows a French army sergeant and his canine companion wearing a pair of gas masks while on duty on the western front in 1916. Dimly visible in the background are two stretcher-bearers transporting a wounded back to base for medical attention – clearly suggesting this photo was captured quite close to the action.
Chemical warfare was one of the defining features of World War I and the first weapon of war to be banned by the Geneva convention in 1925. Employed extensively by the central powers and the allied nations to incapacitate their opponents, especially in the trenches. Chemicals like chlorine, phosgene, diphosgene, chloropicrin and dichloroethly sulphide were used to produce some 46 types of poisonous gasses that was directly responsible for nearly 1.3 million casualties and 1,00,000 confirmed deaths.
Like ordnance, ammunition and other necessary weapons of war, these killer gasses were mass-produced on an industrial scale with approximately 1,25,000 tons used in combat. The first combatant to use chemicals were the French on the western front. In the Battle of the Frontiers, August 1941, the French bombarded German positions at Alsace and Lorrain with rifle grenades loaded with ethyl bromoacetate, a chemical compound more commonly known as the tear gas.
Some eight months later on the 22nd of April 1915, the Germans unleashed 170 tons of chlorine on French, Morrocan and Algerians troops at Langemarck in West-Flanders, Belgium. On the 25th of September 1915, in what is considered to be a British retaliation, 140 tons of chlorine and 10,000 smoke bombs filled with phosphorus harassed the Germans at Loos in Northern France. In June 1916 Austro-Hungarian armies targeted the Italians with a mixture of chlorine and phosgene, and by 1917 other nations had joined the fray.
The French soldier in the photo is wearing an M2 Gasmask that was originally issued in March 1916 and subsequently upgraded in April. The M2 was a one-piece mask with sewen in goggles and thick antigas pads for protection against chemical attacks including chlorine and phosgene for up to six hours. The M2 had evolved out of an earlier variety of gasmasks known as Tampon P which in its final version, the Tampon TN, had included three pads soaked in a different chemical solution – usually castor oil, sodium ricinate, sodium sulfanilate and nickel acetate.
The M2 Gas Mask: A Farbound.Net Wallpaper.
Gas masks were a natural byproduct of World War I that is also known as the Chemist’s war for the obsession the major combatants had developed in inventing stronger and more lethal killing gasses – especially the German empire that in 1917 had introduced the Mustard Gas, considered to be the deadliest of all the killer gasses.
In this war, like the armies of the belligerent nations, gas masks and killer gasses had constantly contested and evolved to gain the upper hand. For the allies, the race to invent a better and more efficient gas mask had started with the German attack on the French line at Langemarck, a village that lay to the north of Ypres. For the Germans, it was possibly the battle at Loos.
Horse, mules and especially canines were also issued with gas masks for better protection. In the case of canines, the protective masks were specially made to cover the entire face of a dog including the eyes. Eyepieces were mandatory and in most models, up to eight layers of woven cotton gauze, each chemically treated, was used to filter the air. The muzzle portion had enough space for the dogs to comfortably work their jaws.
Furthermore, special medical units and teams of veterinarians were also near at hand to tend to their wounds and treat them for exhaustion and gas exposure much like their human counterparts. The British Blue Cross and the American Red Star Animal Relief were two animal welfare groups that provided care.
The use of killing gasses by the participating nations, especially Britain, France and Germany, was a direct violation of the Hague Declaration of 1899 and the Hague Convention on land warfare 1907. However, right up till the end of the conflict, the nations had relied heavily on the killer gasses to gain the advantage.
