Author: Jessica A. Bandel
April 22, 1915, was a beautiful day for Ypres, Belgium. The bright sun shone through a clear blue sky. On the fields below, patches of green grass swayed slightly in the breeze. “It was a more suitable time for organizing a picnic,” wrote German trooper Willi Siebert, “not for carrying out what we had in mind.” The Germans withdrew all their forces to the safety of their lines. Men attached to a chemical warfare unit, including Siebert, came forward and twisted knobs on large bottles placed strategically in advance of the German trenches.
A green-grey cloud poured from the nozzles and slowly rolled towards the French lines. In all, 150 tons of lethal chlorine gas had been unleashed on the unsuspecting French. When the cloud cleared, the Germans walked over to the French trenches to survey the damage. The scene devastated Siebert:
“What we found was total death. Nothing, absolutely nothing had survived. All the animals had crawled out of their shelters to die. Rabbits, rats, moles, mice, they were everywhere. Death. The smell of gas still hung in the air. [… T]he bodies of the French soldiers were scattered all over the place. […] Further away we also saw the bodies of English soldiers. They had clawed at their faces, at their throats, gasping for air. Some had committed suicide. The horses, some still harnessed, cows, chickens, everything, everything was dead.”
It was the first large-scale use of a lethal chemical weapon during the war and caught the Allies completely by surprise. But the Germans seemed surprised as well. “We…returned to our camp, asking ourselves what we had done and what the consequences would be. We knew that from then on nothing would ever be the same again,” remembered Siebert.
More than fifty different chemical agents were weaponized and deployed on the battlefield during the war, but four main types predominated: tear, chlorine, phosgene and diphosgene, and mustard. Tear gas resulted in no deaths and was used to temporarily incapacitate the enemy. Mustard gas damaged sight, airways, and skin and accounted for only two to three percent of all chemical-related battlefield deaths. In its early days of use, chlorine gas was initially devastating, but the color of the cloud proved a dead giveaway to soldiers, allowing them adequate time to don a gas mask.
Perhaps the most terrifying of the gases were phosgene and diphosgene. These gases were colorless and exhibited a much more subtle smell, meaning soldiers were hard pressed to identify it before it reached their position. Additionally, the effects of the gas were often not identifiable until forty-eight hours after exposure. The stealthy nature of this weapon rendered it the most destructive, accounting for an estimated eighty-five percent of all battlefield deaths attributed to chemical weapons.
The introduction of lethal gases to battefield tactics necessitated the invention of new countermeasures, namely gas masks (which we will cover in a future post) and alarm practices. Various types of gas alarms were employed, including the wooden rattle featured today.
Upon sight of encroaching gas, a soldier would swing the rattle in a circular motion, letting fly a loud, clacking sound that would alert others in the area. The soldiers then put on their gas masks in preparation for the gas’s arrival. This particular rattle was used by German forces in the vicinity of the St. Quentin Canal Tunnel near Bellicourt, France. It was picked up by members of the North Carolina-based 105th Engineers and brought home by the unit’s colonel, Joseph Hyde Pratt. Colonel Pratt donated the rattle to the Hall of History (the North Carolina Museum of History’s predecessor) in 1921.