The First Poison Gas Attack at Ypres

0:00You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're in a podcast, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com. I want you to picture a spring evening. Okay. It's April 19, 15, and we are on the Western front. Right in the think of it. Exactly. The sun is just starting to set over this heavily scarred landscape in Western Belgium. And for a brief moment, there might actually be, you know, a lull in the fighting. A rare, quiet moment. Yeah. But then if you're looking out across the craters, you see something strange, something that shouldn't be there. Right. A low, heavy cloud begins to drift across the mud. It's not fog.

1:01It is this sickly yellow-green color. Wow. And as it creeps silently toward the allied trenches, it is about to completely shatter the rules of engagement. I mean, it's going to forever change the face of modern warfare. It really is a genuinely chilling pivot point in military history. Yeah. I mean, that cloud represented the definitive end of one era of combat. And the terrifying dawn of a new one. Exactly. A highly mechanized chemical reality. And that is exactly what we are getting into today. Welcome to this deep dive. Glad to be here. Today, we're relying on a single, comprehensive source. It's a meticulously detailed Wikipedia article on the second battle of Iprich. A really fascinating read. It is. Our mission for this deep dive is to unpack not just the military maneuvers of this historic month-long clash, but the horrifying introduction of weapons of mass destruction to the battlefield. The human cost was just, it was unprecedented. Yeah. We're going to look at the desperate human ingenuity that followed that yellow-green cloud.

2:02And really, what this whole ordeal means for how we understand massive technological leaps. Especially when they happen in times of absolute crisis. Right. To really grasp the impact of this, we need to properly set the stage. The second battle of Iprich took place from April 22nd to May 25th, 1915. Over a month of fighting. Yeah. And graphically, we are looking at the Iprich salient in Western Belgium. At this particular time, the northern end and the eastern bulge of this salient were being defended by a mix of French, Canadian, and British divisions. And as we are about to explore, this battle marked the first mass use of poison gas by Germany on the western front. Okay. Let's unpack this. Because the origin of this attack actually starts far away from the mud of the trenches. Right. It starts in the pristine laboratories of the German Empire. Exactly. This period is often referred to as the chemist's war. And there's a dark historical absurdity to it. You essentially had some of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, arguing over the

3:02optimal deployment of chemical agents. Like they were trying to design a more efficient household cleaner or something? It's so strange. Initially, you had this German chemist, Walter Ernst. He was actually serving as a volunteer driver at the time. Okay. Which the idea of using tear gas to a German general staff officer to clear out opposing trenches? Right. But then another chemist steps in. Fricks Harbor. Yes. He observes a field test of Ernst's tear gas and essentially says it isn't enough. He pushes for something far more lethal. Heavier than air chlorine gas. Which completely shifts the scale of what they're trying to do. What's fascinating here is the sheer logistical nightmare required to turn Habers scientific theory into a battlefield reality. Because they couldn't just drop it from a plane. Right. We aren't just talking about dropping a bomb. The German troops had to manually haul 5,730 individual gas cylinders into the front lines. That is why. And to give you some perspective, the largest of these cylinders weighed 88 pounds.

4:04Almost 90 pounds of dead weight. Yes. They had to carry them through the trenches at night, bury them in the parapets and cover them with sandbags. Just to protect them from incoming artillery. Exactly. It was a massive physical undertaking. And it was supervised on the ground by Haber himself. Along with other prominent scientists. Right. Guys like Otto Hahn, James Frank and Gustaf Hertz. Imagine being an infantryman tasked with dragging an 88 pound metal cylinder of poison through trench mud, knowing a single stray bullet could rupture it right next to you. It's terrifying. And it gets even more complicated because they couldn't just open the valves and spray it. Why not? Inside would cause the valves to freeze solid upon release due to the rapid temperature drop. Ah, basic chemistry working against them. Right. So they had to siphon the liquid chlorine, allow it to vaporize. And then they literally just had to wait for the breeze. Wait for the wind. Yeah. Wait for the wind to blow in the exact right direction to carry the vapor toward the British and French lines.

5:05If we connect this to the bigger picture, we have to look at the strategic motivation of the man who approved this deployment. General Eric von Falkenhann. Yes, the professional head of the German Army. This wasn't simply a terror tactic designed in a vacuum. He had a specific goal. Falkenhann had a very specific strategic objective. He wanted to use the profound shock and chaos of a massive gas attack to mask the transfer of his military units to the Eastern Front. Because the Austro-Hungarian Army were struggling. Exactly. They were taking heavy losses against the Imperial Russian Army at the time. So Falkenhann needed a massive distraction on the Western Front. So he could quietly move his troops east to reinforce them? And that brings us to the reality of April 22, 1915, the Battle of Greven Staffel Ridge. The first day. It's about five in the evening. The troops are likely settling in, maybe preparing evening rations. The wind is finally cooperating for the Germans. Yes. The wind is blowing in the right direction. The order is given, and the German Fourth Army releases 168 tons of chlorine gas.

6:10Across a four mile front. Between the hamlets of Langmark and Greven Staffel, and sitting right in the path of this rolling cloud are the French 87th Territorial Division and the 45th Infantry Division. These were men entirely unprepared for chemical warfare. No warning at all. None. The 87th was made up of older reservists, and the 45th comprised troops from French North Africa. And that heavy gas rolled into their trenches, displacing the oxygen. The human toll was instantaneous. In that initial wave, the French suffered between 2,000 and 3,000 casualties. With up to 1,400 fatalities. Reading Colonel Henri Mordex account of the 45th Division really puts you in the boots of those soldiers as the gas enveloped them. What did he say? He described his men as haggard. Their overcoats thrown off for open wide. Scarves pulled off. Just desperate for air. Something like madman, directionless, shouting for water, spitting blood. He noted some were even rolling on the ground, making desperate efforts to breathe. It is a portrait of absolute panic.

7:11Total chaos. And structurally, this attack did exactly what it was designed to do. It created a massive 3.7 mile, undefended gap in the Allied line. The front was completely broken. But wait, hold on. I want to pause here. Okay. It was launched a nearly 4 mile wide hole straight through the Allied lines. The road teapot is practically wide open. Wide open. Why didn't they just keep walking? Why wouldn't Falcon Han have had reserves ready to exploit that gap immediately and take the city? It is the ultimate tactical irony of this battle. The Germans had just engineered a massive breakthrough, but they were terrified of their own weapon. Really? The German infantry advancing behind the gas cloud were only equipped with rudimentary protection. Basic cotton pads soaked in a sodium thio-sulfate solution. That's not much. No. They entrust the masks. They didn't trust the gas to dissipate quickly enough. It's so they held back. Instead of pushing their immense advantage and marching straight into IEPRA almost unopposed, they advanced very cautiously.

8:12They hesitated. They hesitated. And ultimately decided to dig in at the small villages they had just captured. And that hesitation, that fear of their own creation, gave the Allies a tiny, precious window of time. A very brief window. The Canadian troops who were defending the southern flank of this newly created gap had to step up. Right. Interestingly, the Canadians actually recognized what the gas was right away. Because of the smell. Yeah. The chlorine smelled exactly like the chemicals they used to purify their drinking water. That familiarity, as grim as it was, likely helped them process what was happening faster than the French units had. But the situation was still utterly desperate. That night, after 11 p.m., the 10th and 16th Canadian battalions were ordered to launch counter-attack into the gap at a place called Kitchener's Wood. Put yourself in their booth for a second. It's pitch black. You have absolutely no idea what the terrain looks like. Because there hasn't been any reconnaissance. You just know the enemy is out there in the dark and the air still smells like poison.

9:16Halfway to their objective, they hit unexpected obstacles, a hedge interwoven with wire. And they take heavy, small arms fire. So they launched an impromptu midnight bayonet charge. They physically ran into the dark and fought hand to hand. Incredibly, they succeeded in clearing the woods of German soldiers. But the cost was unfathomable. How bad was it? Those battalions suffered a staggering 75% casualty rate in that single action. 75% that's devastating. It's a testament to raw courage, certainly. But it also heavily underscores the brutal reality of throwing human bodies against a mechanized chemical advantage. And unfortunately, for the troops on the ground, the terror was only just beginning. Right. Because two days later, on April 24th, we moved to the Battle of St. Julian. This is the moment the terrifying realization truly sets in for the Allies. The gas attack wasn't a one-off experiment. It was their new standard tactic. At St. Julian, another massive yellow-green cloud was released.

10:17The troops there described the gas as having a highly distinct odor. Something resembling a mix of pineapple and pepper. The initial confusion was profound. French officers actually thought the advancing cloud was just a conventional smoke screen. meant to hide an infantry advance. Exactly. It wasn't until the soldiers started collapsing, complaining of severe chest pains and a burning sensation in their throats that the true nature of the attack was understood. Here's where it gets really interesting. Because with no official gas masks issued, the troops had to improvise instantly. They had to think fast. And they relied on some incredibly quick thinking from their medical personnel. Canadian medical officers. The specifically, chemist and bacteriologist, Lieutenant Colonel George Naismith and Captain Francis Scrimcher, they identified the chemical properties of the quarry. What did they do? They passed an urgent order down the line for the troops to urinate on their handkerchiefs or cotton pads. And hold them tightly over their mouths and noses. It sounds shocking to modern sensibilities. But chemically, it was entirely sound advice in a life or death scenario.

11:20How does that work? The urea, naturally present in human urine, actually reacts with and neutralizes the chlorine gas. It creates a compound called dechloraria. Wow. In the absence of an actual engineered respirator, that damp urea-soaked piece of cloth was literally the only chemical barrier standing between a soldier's respiratory system and a highly cost of gas. But even with that improvised defense, the reality on the ground was a nightmare. We get a sense of this visceral horror from the account of private W.A. of the Royal Scots. He was just a 20-year-old kid who arrived and eaten right after the first gas attack. He described walking along the railway line and seeing the road choked with refugees. Moving alongside dead and dying civilians and soldiers. He called it a horrible sight that he would never, ever forget. To truly understand what these men were facing, we have to look at the physical effects of chlorine exposure. It is agonizing. Lance Sergeant Elmer Cotton provided a very clinical grim description.

12:22What did he say? He stated that the effects of chlorine gas were equivalent death to drowning only on dry land. That is a brutally mechanical way to describe it. It completely strips away any romanticized idea of combat. Drinking on dry land. He detailed the splitting headaches, the terrific first. He noted that drinking water was supposedly instant death and the coughing up of a greenish froth from the stomach and the lungs. That's awful. He noted the skin turning greenish black and yellow due to oxygen deprivation and the glassy stare of the eyes. Just completely helpless. As he bluntly put it, it is a fiendish death to die. Yet amidst all that unimaginable panic and pain, you still had acts of almost unbelievable discipline and courage. Lance Corporal Frederick Fisher is a prime example. During the fighting at St. Julian, he went out not once, but twice, which is a handful of men and a cult machine gun. He set up his position under heavy fire and successfully prevented the advancing German troops from passing through the village and flanking the Canadian front line.

13:25He saved countless lives and held the line together. But he was killed in action the very next day. His actions were vital. The delay caused by localized stands like fishers, combined with the German infantry's ongoing fear of moving too quickly into the residual gas. It gave the British and Canadian troops just enough time to plug that massive gap before the entire line collapsed. But plugging the gap didn't mean the battle was over. No, it just meant the shock value of the initial gas attack faded and the relentless industrial grind of conventional warfare took over, which leads us into the subsequent massive engagements at Friesenberg and Bellward. Stretching this nightmare deep into May. Exactly. The narrative of Epresse often focuses so heavily on the gas that we forget the sheer scale of the conventional slaughter that followed. Between May 8th and 13th at the Battle of Friesenberg, the Germans brought their field artillery forward. They assembled three entire corps and subjected the British 27th and 28th divisions to a massive

14:28punishing bombardment. We are talking about days of relentless, heavy-shelling on static positions. The tactical nightmare of holding a trench under that weight of fire is hard to wrap your head around. You can't retreat, but you also can't advance. You just have to sit there and take it. The decimation of individual units during this phase is staggering. Look at Princess Patricia's Canadian light infantry. They were ordered to counterattack and hold the line at Friesenberg. They went in with 700 men. By the time they artillery barrage and the fighting were done, they were reduced to a mere 150 survivors. Essentially, an entire regiment was wiped out in a matter of days. They were in no shape to fight. And even as this conventional artillery slaughter was peaking, the chemical threat remained a constant terror. During the Battle of Belford on May 24th, the Germans launched yet another major gas attack. But by this point, the tactics were rapidly evolving on both sides. There's this eerie, almost cinematic detail from Belford. The Germans started throwing red lights flares up over their own trenches.

15:30This was a visual signal to their own men that a gas release was imminent. And because the Allies were watching the sky, it gave commanders like Captain Thomas Lee he of the Royal Dublin fuseliers just enough warning. He noted that seeing those red lights gave them exactly enough time to get their makeshift respirators on before the gas washed over them. It became a macabre routine. You see the red flare, you grab the chemically soaked cloth, you brace for the cloud to pass over you. And then you immediately prepare to fight off the infantry assault that would inevitably follow right behind it. So what does this all mean? When the guns finally fell silent on May 25th, the ledger of war was almost too massive to comprehend. The casualty numbers are absolutely devastating. The records show over 35,000 German casualties. The British suffered 59,275 casualties. And the French suffered an estimated 21,973 casualties. Strategically, after all that blood and poison, the British forces were ultimately forced

16:31to withdraw to a new defensive line, three miles closer to IEPRA. The salient was compressed and the city of Iprey itself was completely demolished by the relentless artillery fire. It was a shattered landscape. But the Allies did survive the onslaught, they held the line. And that survival forced an incredibly steep learning curve. The Canadian Division alone suffered nearly 6,000 casualties in just the first couple of weeks. They paid in blood to learn that 19th century tactics had absolutely no place in a 20th century war. Up until in prey, military doctrines still heavily favored large linear formations. But commanders quickly realized that moving a full company of men as a single block was completely suicidal against machine guns and poison gas. One gas cloud or one well placed machine gun nest could wipe out 100 men in seconds. This battle triggered a massive shift in how armies organized themselves. Because of the lessons learned here, by 1917, the primary tactical maneuvering unit would be reduced from a large company down to a much smaller, far more agile, section level

17:36unit. Allowing for squad level autonomy and dispersed movement. They also learned hard lessons about the reality of their equipment. It wasn't just about tactics. It was about the lethal disconnect between procurement politics and trench reality. Take the Canadian Ross rifle. It was a finely made weapon, highly accurate on a pristine target practice range. But in the mud, grit and rapid fire conditions of the Belgian trenches, it jammed constantly. A rifle that jams the second it touches mud is worse than useless. It actively costs lives. It forced soldiers to throw the way and scavenge Lee and Field rifles from fallen British troops. The rapid, almost frantic technological race to counter the chemical threat. The evolution of protection moved at an incredible pace. They went from those desperate urine soaked cotton pads in April. To mass producing the pea helmet, also known as the two-pummet, by the end of 1915. These were flannel bags soaked in sodium fanate and sodium phyosulfate. And just to clarify the chemistry there, sodium phyosulfate basically acts as a chemical

18:37sponge. When the chlorine gas hits the soaked fabric, the phyosulfate reacts with it. Converting the highly toxic chlorine into benign water soluble compounds like sodium chloride. Just basic salt. Right before it can reach the lungs. It was a chemical shield, and the arms race didn't stop there. By early 1916, as the Germans introduced new chemical agents, the Allies developed the pH helmet. Adding hexamethylinitramine to make it effective against phosphine. And even stealthier and deadlier gas that both sides eventually deployed. Out of all this horror, all this industrial-scale death and frantic adaptation, there is also a profound cultural legacy that I think many of you listening will immediately recognize. It was during this exact battle, surrounded by the devastation we've just spent the last 20 minutes describing, that a Canadian medical officer named Lieutenant Colonel John McCray sat down and wrote a poem. That poem is in Flanders Fields. It's an incredible juxtaposition. Such a poignant enduring piece of literature was born directly out of the chaos of the

19:39first mass chemical attack in history. It gave a voice to the dead, that is still recited on Remembrance Day and Memorial Day over a century later. It really makes you pause. I want you, the listener, to try and imagine what it would be like to stand in those trenches in April 1915. You are facing an entirely unprecedented form of technological terror. A creeping cloud that turns the very air you breathe into a weapon. And yet amidst all that panic, people found the resolve to hold the line with literally nothing but a chemically soaked piece of cloth over their mouths. This raises an important question, especially for us today. When we look at rapid, disruptive technological change, whether it's in modern warfare, artificial intelligence, or bioengineering, we often feel entirely overwhelmed by the pace of it. But Epre shows us the extreme edge of human adaptability. It demonstrates how incredibly quickly we can analyze a completely novel existential threat, adapt our defenses, and endure. Endure, but at a terrible, terrible cost.

20:41Always a cost. And that brings me to a final thought I want to leave you with today. Something to mull over on your own after this deep dive is done. We spend a lot of time talking about the brilliant German chemist, Fritz Haiber. The man who forcefully advocated for and directly supervised this deadly chlorine gas attack. And consider this, Fritz Haiber is the exact same scientist whose work on synthesizing ammonia for fertilizer currently sustains the global food supply. Without his chemical discoveries regarding nitrogen fixation, billions of people alive today simply could not be fed. So how do we reconcile the legacy of brilliant minds that possess the dual capacity to both feed the world and engineer its most horrific destruction? Something to think about. Thanks for joining us on this deep dive. You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're in a podcast, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and

21:42more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Pour your new podcast for free today at rss.com.