First World War: Body Armor and Gas Attacks

With the start of the First World War man started the use of body armor and poison gas as a weapon.

Helmets used by different countries

Protection against gas attacks

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First World War Images: British Soldiers: Part 2

This is Flanders, France. The soldiers are British.

British soldiers move forward in the shelter of the stream

These man are ready for action

The Tommies watch as wounded German prisoners walk by

The trenches had knives poking out from the barbwire fence

This man peeks out from the bunker
cautiously as a German shell bursts

More German prisoners

These British soldiers take some rest

Pulling a heavy gun forward

This gun is so big that its shells have to be loaded with help of a pulley

Wounded German soldiers wait for medical relief from British doctors

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First World War Images: British Soldiers: Part 1

The First World War was a messy affair. If there was little movement as compared to World War Two, the fighting was equally fierce. Trench warfare was dominant feature of the Great War. The trenches have been compared to hell on earth. Shown below are trenches as well as other dramatic pictures from the Great War. Shown are the British soldiers.

A big British gun booms

This man is capturing the war on a movie camera

Another heavy British gun

The British artillerymen

There has been a victory over the Germans and British soldiers move forward

Clearing the ruins to make a road

The trenches! British soldiers get some relaxation

Lull in the fighting. Everybody is trying to get a breather

German prisoners

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Rare German WW1 pictures: Part 3

A German soldiers exposes himself as he throws a hand grenade towards an enemy trench.

QUOTES

"All through the war the great armament firms were supplied from the enemy countries. The French and the British sold war materials to the Germans through Switzerland, Holland and the Baltic neutrals, and the Germans supplied optical sights for the British Admiralty. The armament industry, which had helped stimulate the war, made millions out of it."

British historian C.J. Pennethorne Hughesz, 1935

German machinegunners in a flooded shell-hole during the Battle of Ypres.

QUOTES

"In war-time the word patriotism means suppression of truth."

S. Sassoon in 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer'

CASUALTIES DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR (DEAD & KILLED)

Allied Powers

Russia 1,700,000
France 1,357,800
British Empire 908,371
Italy 650,000
United States 126,000
Japan 300
Romania 335,706
Serbia 45,000
Belgium 13,716
Greece 5,000
Portugal 7,222
Montenegro 3,000

Total 5,152,115

Central Powers

Germany 1,773,7000
Austria-Hungary 1,200,000
Turkey 325,000
Bulgaria 87,500

Total 3,386,200

Grand Total 8,538,315
Several allied countries, e.g. Canada, Australia and New Zealand, are not itemized. They are counted under the British Empire.
Canada: Enlisted 595,000. Served overseas 418,000. Killed in Action 35,666. Died of wounds 12,420. Died of disease 5,405. Wounded 155,799. Prisoners of War 3,575. Presumed dead 4,671. Missing 425. Deaths in Canada 2,221. Total Dead 60,383.
Australia: 416,809 Personnel enlisted (including the Australian Flying Corps). 331,781 of these people served overseas. Among them at least 400 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Total casualties: 215,585 (captured, missing, wounded or killed). Killed: 53,993. Wounded: 137,013 plus 16,496 gassed.
New Zealand: A total of 110,386 men and women served, 100,444 of these served overseas (in Samoa, Egypt, Turkey, Palestine, France, Belgium and Germany). Casualties: 58,526, of whom 18,166 died.

Hiding in a trench hole in the first line Germans assail the French garrison troops at Fort Vaux, near Verdun.

QUOTES


"There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene."


American novelist and WW1 veteran Ernest Hemingway, in 'A Farewell to Arms', 1929

Germans in a trench left behind by the French. It ran right through a French village!

QUOTES

"This is a war to end all wars."

American President Woodrow Wilson


"Only the dead have seen the end of war."

George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher, in a counter to Wilson's words

Germans in a trench

CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES

"We and the Germans met in the middle of no-man's-land."

Frank Richards was a British soldier who experienced the "Christmas Truce". We join his story on Christmas morning 1914:

"On Christmas morning we stuck up a board with 'A Merry Christmas' on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one. Platoons would sometimes go out for twenty-four hours' rest - it was a day at least out of the trench and relieved the monotony a bit - and my platoon had gone out in this way the night before, but a few of us stayed behind to see what would happen. Two of our men then threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans done the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench.

Buffalo Bill [the Company Commander] rushed into the trench and endeavoured to prevent it, but he was too late: the whole of the Company were now out, and so were the Germans. He had to accept the situation, so soon he and the other company officers climbed out too. We and the Germans met in the middle of no-man's-land. Their officers was also now out. Our officers exchanged greetings with them. One of the German officers said that he wished he had a camera to take a snapshot, but they were not allowed to carry cameras. Neither were our officers.

We mucked in all day with one another. They were Saxons and some of them could speak English. By the look of them their trenches were in as bad a state as our own. One of their men, speaking in English, mentioned that he had worked in Brighton for some years and that he was fed up to the neck with this damned war and would be glad when it was all over. We told him that he wasn't the only one that was fed up with it. We did not allow them in our trench and they did not allow us in theirs.

The German Company-Commander asked Buffalo Bill if he would accept a couple of barrels of beer and assured him that they would not make his men drunk. They had plenty of it in the brewery. He accepted the offer with thanks and a couple of their men rolled the barrels over and we took them into our trench. The German officer sent one of his men back to the trench, who appeared shortly after carrying a tray with bottles and glasses on it. Officers of both sides clinked glasses and drunk one another's health. Buffalo Bill had presented them with a plum pudding just before. The officers came to an understanding that the unofficial truce would end at midnight. At dusk we went back to our respective trenches.

...The two barrels of beer were drunk, and the German officer was right: if it was possible for a man to have drunk the two barrels himself he would have bursted before he had got drunk. French beer was rotten stuff.

Just before midnight we all made it up not to commence firing before they did. At night there was always plenty of firing by both sides if there were no working parties or patrols out. Mr Richardson, a young officer who had just joined the Battalion and was now a platoon officer in my company wrote a poem during the night about the Briton and the Bosche meeting in no-man's-land on Christmas Day, which he read out to us. A few days later it was published in The Times or Morning Post, I believe.

During the whole of Boxing Day [the day after Christmas] we never fired a shot, and they the same, each side seemed to be waiting for the other to set the ball a-rolling. One of their men shouted across in English and inquired how we had enjoyed the beer. We shouted back and told him it was very weak but that we were very grateful for it. We were conversing off and on during the whole of the day.

We were relieved that evening at dusk by a battalion of another brigade. We were mighty surprised as we had heard no whisper of any relief during the day. We told the men who relieved us how we had spent the last couple of days with the enemy, and they told us that by what they had been told the whole of the British troops in the line, with one or two exceptions, had mucked in with the enemy. They had only been out of action themselves forty-eight hours after being twenty-eight days in the front-line trenches. They also told us that the French people had heard how we had spent Christmas Day and were saying all manner of nasty things about the British Army."

References:
This eyewitness account appears in Richards, Frank, Old Soldiers Never Die (1933); Keegan, John, The First World War (1999); Simkins, Peter, World War I, the Western Front (1991).

Source

After the Armistice German troops march through the Dutch province of Limburg back to Germany. The (neutral) Dutch government had given permission for this shortcut. This roused anger in Belgium and France.

QUOTES

"I saw them tie a soldier to a cartwheel with his arms outstretched as a punishment. I also knew of men who did themselves in. British soldiers weary of sitting in the trenches who cut their throats during leave. If order hadn't been maintained, they would have deserted. They were coerced. When you're in the army, you can't just do whatever you want."

Gaston Boudry, in the (Belgian) book 'Van den Grooten Oorlog'

Under an heavy artillery attack a German machine gun unit retreats. Last stages of the war

QUOTES

"Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street."

-- American president Woodrow Wilson, on the evening before declaring war on Germany

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In the trenches rats were a big problem. They ate up both the corpses and the rations of soldiers.

German soldier moves through poison gas

GAS ATTACK 1916 (Eyewitnesstohistory)


Arthur Empey was an American living in New Jersey when war consumed Europe in 1914. Enraged by the sinking of the Lusitania and loss of the lives of American passengers, he expected to join an American army to combat the Germans. When America did not immediately declare war, Empey boarded a ship to England, enlisted in the British Army (a violation of our neutrality law, but no one seemd to mind) and was soon manning a trench on the front lines.


Emprey survived his experience and published his recollections in 1917. We join his story after he has been made a member of a machine gun crew and sits in a British trench peering towards German lines. Conditions are perfect for an enemy gas attack - a slight breeze blowing from the enemy's direction - and the warning has been passed along to be on the lookout:


"We had a new man at the periscope, on this afternoon in question; I was sitting on the fire step, cleaning my rifle, when he called out to me: 'There's a sort of greenish, yellow cloud rolling along the ground out in front, it's coming ---'


But I waited for no more, grabbing my bayonet, which was detached from the rifle, I gave the alarm by banging an empty shell case, which was hanging near the periscope. At the same instant, gongs started ringing down the trench, the signal for Tommy to don his respirator, or smoke helmet, as we call it.


Gas travels quietly, so you must not lose any time; you generally have about eighteen or twenty seconds in which to adjust your gas helmet.


A gas helmet is made of cloth, treated with chemicals. There are two windows, or glass eyes, in it, through which you can see. Inside there is a rubber-covered tube, which goes in the mouth. You breathe through your nose; the gas, passing through the cloth helmet, is neutralized by the action of the chemicals. The foul air is exhaled through the tube in the mouth, this tube being so constructed that it prevents the inhaling of the outside air or gas. One helmet is good for five hours of the strongest gas. Each Tommy carries two of them slung around his shoulder in a waterproof canvas bag. He must wear this bag at all times, even while sleeping. To change a defective helmet, you take out the new one, hold your breath, pull the old one off, placing the new one over your head, tucking in the loose ends under the collar of your tunic.


For a minute, pandemonium reigned in our trench, - Tommies adjusting their helmets, bombers running here and there, and men turning out of the dugouts with fixed bayonets, to man the fire step.


Reinforcements were pouring out of the communication trenches.


Our gun's crew was busy mounting the machine gun on the parapet and bringing up extra ammunition from the dugout.


German gas is heavier than air and soon fills the trenches and dugouts, where it has been known to lurk for two or three days, until the air is purified by means of large chemical sprayers. We had to work quickly, as Fritz generally follows the gas with an infantry attack. A company man on our right was too slow in getting on his helmet; he sank to the ground, clutching at his throat, and after a few spasmodic twistings, went West (died). It was horrible to see him die, but we were powerless to help him. In the corner of a traverse, a little, muddy cur dog, one of the company's pets, was lying dead, with his two paws over his nose.


It's the animals that suffer the most, the horses, mules, cattle, dogs, cats, and rats, they having no helmets to save them. Tommy does not sympathize with rats in a gas attack.


At times, gas has been known to travel, with dire results, fifteen miles behind the lines.


A gas, or smoke helmet, as it is called, at the best is a vile-smelling thing, and it is not long before one gets a violent headache from wearing it.


Our eighteen-pounders were bursting in No Man's Land, in an effort, by the artillery, to disperse the gas clouds.


The fire step was lined with crouching men, bayonets fixed, and bombs near at hand to repel the expected attack.


Our artillery had put a barrage of curtain fire on the German lines, to try and break up their attack and keep back reinforcements.


I trained my machine gun on their trench and its bullets were raking the parapet. Then over they came, bayonets glistening. In their respirators, which have a large snout in front, they looked like some horrible nightmare.


All along our trench, rifles and machine guns spoke, our shrapnel was bursting over their heads. They went down in heaps, but new ones took the place of the fallen. Nothing could stop that mad rush. The Germans reached our barbed wire, which had previously been demolished by their shells, then it was bomb against bomb, and the devil for all.


Suddenly, my head seemed to burst from a loud 'crack' in my ear. Then my head began to swim, throat got dry, and a heavy pressure on the lungs warned me that my helmet was leaking. Turning my gun over to No. 2, I changed helmets.


The trench started to wind like a snake, and sandbags appeared to be floating in the air. The noise was horrible; I sank onto the fire step, needles seemed to be pricking my flesh, then blackness.


I was awakened by one of my mates removing my smoke helmet. How delicious that cool, fresh air felt in my lungs.


A strong wind had arisen and dispersed the gas.


They told me that I had been 'out' for three hours; they thought I was dead.


The attack had been repulsed after a hard fight. Twice the Germans had gained a foothold in our trench, but had been driven out by counter- attacks. The trench was filled with their dead and ours. Through a periscope, I counted eighteen dead Germans in our wire; they were a ghastly sight in their horrible-looking respirators.


I examined my first smoke helmet, a bullet had gone through it on the left side, just grazing my ear, the gas had penetrated through the hole made in the cloth.


Out of our crew of six, we lost two killed and two wounded.


That night we buried all of the dead, excepting those in No Man's Land. In death there is not much distinction, friend and foe are treated alike.


After the wind had dispersed the gas, the R. A. M. C. got busy with their chemical sprayers, spraying out the dugouts and low parts of the trenches to dissipate any fumes of the German gas which may have been lurking in same."


References:
Empey, Arthur Guy, Over The Top (1917); Lloyd, Alan, The War In The Trenches (1976)

German bunkers. The Allies hated them. Shells made no impact on them. The man in the white coat is a doctor.

Wearing gas masks, German soldiers wade through a gas attack by the British.

Germans walk past an abandoned British tank at Verdun.

By 1917 the tide had changed. Incessant bombardment by the Allies shook up the German defences in the trenches.

QUOTES

I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of agression and conquest.

British Captain S. Sassoon, in "The Times", 30 July 1917

The German machine-gun made a big impact on the war.

German soldiers move forward with their machine gun

A German soldier dies in as an Allied shell hits the German gun position. Another German soldier had died before.

TRENCH WARFARE QUOTES

You were between the devil and the deep blue sea. If you go forward, you`ll likely be shot, if you go back you`ll be court-martialled and shot, so what the hell do you do? What can you do? You just go forward because that`s the only bloke you can take your knife in, that`s the bloke you are facing.

-- A British soldier

Germans huddle around their dead colleague.

WW1 QUOTES

For a young man who had a long and worthwile future awaiting him, it was not easy to expect death almost daily. However, after a while I got used to the idea of dying young. Strangely, it had a sort of soothing effect and prevented me from worrying too much. Because of this I gradually lost the terrible fear of being wounded or killed.

-- Reinhold Spengler, A German soldier

A German soldiers dresses a wounded British soldier

QUOTES

The whole earth is ploughed by the exploding shells and the holes are filled with water, and if you do not get killed by the shells you may drown in the craters. Broken wagons and dead horses are moved to the sides of the road, also many dead soldiers lie here. Wounded soldiers who died in the ambulance have been unloaded and their eyes stare at you. Sometimes an arm or leg is missing. Everybody is rushing, running, trying to escape almost certain death in this hail of enemy shells. Today I have seen the real face of war.

-- Hans Otto Schette, German soldier

These Germans are quite cheerful as they head for the front. Their aim was, as their superiors wanted it, to 'bleed the French to death'. Deployed in this war of attrition only a few of these soldiers returned alive. Summer 1915.

QUOTES

The enemy started to advance in mass down the railway cutting, about 800 yards off, and Maurice Dease fired his two machine-guns into them and absolutely mowed them down. I should judge without exaggeration that he killed at least 500 in two minutes. The whole cutting was full of bodies and this cheered us all up.

Lieutenant K. Tower, Royal Fusiliers, 1914

A surly German guards British POWS

QUOTES

A soldier (who had just returned from the Western Front) was so disordered while he was going down the stairs into the London tube station, he became suddenly aware of the crowds of people coming up, he looked haggardly about, and evidently mistaking the hollow space below for the trenches and the ascending crowd for Germans, fixed his bayonet and charged. But for the women constable on duty at the turn of the staircase, who was quick enough to divine his trouble and hang on to him with all her strength to prevent his forward advance, he would have wounded many and caused danger and panic.

British policewoman Mary Allen, in her autobiography

This guy has just made two Belgian girlfriends.

The German trenches were usually very well built. There were strong and they had loop-holes. The picture shows two soldiers throwing hand-grenades while two others take an aim at the enemy.

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