Delivery By Train; Pershing is Not Impressed.

‘A Ghastly Ride.’

Special to The Great War Project.

(16 July) On the Western Front in France, “a new method of gas warfare was being used in the Allied armies.”

So reports historian Martin Gilbert. “It was a railway train whose wagons were loaded with gas cylinders that could be brought up by narrow gauge railway to the war zone, and the wagons then taken off the rails and pushed manually to within a quarter mile to the front.”

“On July 12th more than 5,000 gas cylinders were discharged simultaneously by this method.”

“Captain Donald Grantham was in charge of the attack. Corporal Martin Fox, a soldier who had been with the gas companies from their start, describes what happened.”

“Everybody stood well back as the detonators showered in the explosion. “As Zero approached, conditions became eminently suitable. At 1:40 a.m. Grantham ‘pooped’ the whole train successfully. Immediately there ensued a terrific hissing noise as a huge release of gas commenced.

“The dense grey cloud made an awe-inspiring sight as it rolled steadily forward, widening as it went.

We watched it as it poured over our own front lines and continued across No-Man’s-Land.”

“Such a threatening cloud as this we had never before witnessed. Over the enemy lines, the gas belt spread wider and wider, engulfing them from sight.”

Historian Martin Gilbert reports that “Captain Grantham was pleased with the results of the multiple attack, noting in his diary: ‘I fired train by switch near engine. Magnificent cloud.’ Reports of several hundred German casualties confirmed the sense of achievement.”

But this method had one big problem. It left the ‘Allied dispensers of the gas cannisters totally exposed.’

Pulling the train back from the front, “there were hazards for the men who carried out these new methods. On the return journey, noted Corporal Fox, the train set off before everyone was on board. ‘I raced toward the front, but it was of no avail. Some of the guards scrambled onto the trucks as the train gathered speed. It rattled homewards across the plain at a frightening rate, with the men clinging on for dear life.”

“They were engulfed in the gas, which still issued from the dripping cylinders. Their respirators saved them, though it was a ghastly ride.”

Gilbert quotes an anonymous member of this gas warfare unit with its epitaph:

Then chemist, student, artisan answered Duty’s call;

Our arms, our arts, our poison fumes

Gained Liberty for all.

“Neither Pershing nor his chief of staff were supporters of gas,” Gilbert reports, “Nevertheless, there were 3400 American soldiers operating gas cylinders at the front by the summer of 1918.”

The Americans fought a serious battle with the Germans on the Western Front in those days a century ago. Reports Gilbert, “more than a thousand American soldiers were incapacitated by gas in the early hours of July 15^th. Many were blinded, but only six were killed.”

Among those killed that day, reports Gilbert, was a pilot named Quentin Roosevelt, son of the former president Teddy Roosevelt. His plane was shot down in northern France.