Dated:
Zyrardow, Poland,
June 5, 1915.

One of the finest stories of fortitude and heroism that the war on this front has produced is of how the Siberian troops met the first large scale attack upon their lines in which the enemy made use of the gas horror, that latest product of the ingenuity of the Germans who boast so loudly and so continuously of their kultur and the standards of civilization and humanity which they declare it is their sacred duty to force upon the world.

There has been a lull in the fighting on this immediate front for some time, due to the fact that the Germans have diverted all the troops that they could safely spare to strengthen their concentration in Galicia. Only an occasional spasm of fighting with bursts of artillery firing, first in one point and then another, have created sufficient incident to mark one day from another. During this time the reports of the use of poisoned gases and shells containing deadly fumes have drifted over to this side, and it has been expected that sooner or later something of the same sort would be experienced on the Bzura front. Many times we have had shells containing formaline fumes and other noxious poisons sent screaming over our trenches, but their use heretofore seemed rather in the nature of an experiment than of a serious innovation. Enough, however, has been said about them here, and when the effort on a wholesale scale was made, it found our troops prepared morally, if not yet with actual equipment in the way of respirators.

The first battle of the gases occurred early on the morning of Sunday, the 30th of May. The days are very long here now, and the first pale streaks of grey were just tinging the western horizon, when the look-outs in the Russian trenches on the Bzura discovered signs of activity in the trenches of the enemy which at this point are not very far away from our lines. War has become such an every-day business that an impending attack creates no more excitement in the trenches than a doctor feels when he is called out at night to visit a patient. Word was passed down the trenches to the sleeping soldiers, who at once crawled out of their shelters and dug-outs, and rubbing their sleepy eyes took their places at the loopholes and laid out, ready for use, their piles of cartridge clips. The machine gun operators uncovered their guns and looked to them to see that all was well oiled and working smoothly, while the officers strolled about the trenches with words of advice and encouragement to their men.

Back in the reserve trenches the soldiers were turning out more leisurely in response to the alarm telephoned back. Regimental, brigade, division and army corps head-quarters were notified, and within ten minutes of the first sign of a movement, the entire position threatened was on the qui vive without excitement or confusion. But this was to be no ordinary attack; while preparations were still going forward, new symptoms never hitherto observed, were noticeable on the German line. Straw was thrown out beyond the trenches and was being sprinkled with a kind of white powder which the soldiers say resembled salt. While the Russians were still puzzling about the meaning of it all, fire was put to the straw in a dozen places. Instantly from the little spots of red flame spreading in both directions until the line of twinkling fire was continuous, huge clouds of fleecy white smoke rolled up. The officers were quick to realize what was coming, and instantly the word was passed to the soldiers that they must be prepared to meet a new kind of attack. After a rapid consultation and advice from head-quarters over the telephone, it was decided that it would be best for our men to remain absolutely quiet in their trenches, holding their fire until the enemy were at their barbed wire entanglements, in order to beguile the Germans into the belief that their gases were effective, and that they were going to be able to occupy the Russian trenches without losing a man.

Officers and non-commissioned officers went through the trenches telling the soldiers what they must expect, and imposing silence on all, and prohibiting the firing of a gun until the enemy were almost upon them when they were to open up with all the rapidity of fire that they could command. In the meantime the wind of early morning air was rolling the cloud gently toward the waiting Russians.

I have been able through certain channels, which I cannot at present mention, to secure a considerable amount of information as to the German side of this attack. When it became known in the trenches of the enemy that these gases were to be used, there is reason to believe that there was a protest from the soldiers against it. Many of the Russians are charitable enough to take the point of view that the common soldier resorts to these methods because he is forced to do so, and they say that the German private rebelled at the idea of using so hideous a method of conducting warfare. Others, while they accept the story of the soldiers’ opposition, declare they only feared the effects of the gas upon themselves. In any event there is evidence that their officers told them that the gas was a harmless one, and would simply result in putting the Russians into a state of unconsciousness from which they would recover in a few hours, and by that time the Germans would have been able to take their trenches without the loss of a man. It was at first believed that the white powder placed on the straw was the element of the poison gas, but it later appeared that this was merely to produce a screen of heavy and harmless smoke behind which the real operations could be conducted. The actual source of the gas was in the trenches themselves.

Steel cylinders or tanks measuring a metre in length by perhaps 6 inches in width were let in end downwards into the floor of the trench, with perhaps half of the tanks firmly bedded in the ground. At the head of the cylinder was a valve, and from this ran a lead pipe over the top of the parapet and then bent downwards with the opening pointed to the ground. These tanks were arranged in groups of batteries the unit of which was ten or twelve, each tank being perhaps two feet from its neighbour. Between each group was a space of twenty paces. I have not been able to learn the exact length of the prepared trenches, but it was perhaps nearly a kilometre long. As soon as their line was masked by the volumes of the screening smoke, these taps were turned on simultaneously and instantly the thick greenish yellow fumes of the chloral gas poured in expanding clouds upon the ground, spreading like a mist upon the face of the earth.

There was a drift of air in the direction of the Russian trenches, and borne before this the poison rolled like a wave slowly away from the German line toward the positions of the Russians, the gas itself seeking out and filling each small hollow or declivity in the ground as surely as water, so heavy and thick was its composition. When it was fairly clear of their own line the Germans began to move, all the men having first been provided with respirators that they might not experience the effects of the “harmless and painless” gas prepared for the enemy. Ahead of the attacking columns went groups of sappers with shears to cut the Russian entanglements; and behind them followed the masses of the German infantry, while the rear was brought up, with characteristic foresight, by soldiers bearing tanks of oxygen to assist any of their own men who became unconscious from the fumes.

The advance started somewhat gingerly, for the soldiers do not seem to have had the same confidence in the effects of the gas as their officers. But as they moved forward there was not a sound from the Russian trench, and the word ran up and down the German line that there would be no defence, and that for once they would take a Russian position without the loss of a man. One can fancy the state of mind of the German troops in these few minutes. No doubt they felt that this new “painless” gas was going to be a humane way of ending the war, that their chemists had solved the great problem, and that in a few days they would be marching into Warsaw. Then they reached the Russian entanglements, and without warning were swept into heaps and mounds of collapsing bodies by the torrent of rifle and machine gun fire which came upon them from every loophole and cranny of the Russian position.

The Russian version of the story is one that must inspire the troops of the Allies, as it has inspired the rest of the army over here. Some time before the Germans actually approached, the green yellow cloud rolled into the trenches and poured itself in almost like a column of water; so heavy was it that it almost fell to the floor of the trenches. The patient Siberians stood without a tremor as it eddied around their feet and swept over their faces in constantly increasing volumes. Thus for some minutes they stood wrapping hand-kerchiefs about their faces, stifling their sounds, and uttering not a word while dozens fell suffocating into the trench. Then at last in the faint morning light could be seen the shadowy figures of the Germans through the mist; then at last discipline and self-control were released, and every soldier opened fire pumping out his cartridges from his rifle as fast as he could shoot. The stories of heroism and fortitude that one hears from the survivors of this trench are exceptional. One Siberian who was working a machine gun had asked his comrade to stand beside him with wet rags and a bucket of water. The two bodies were found together, the soldier collapsed over the machine gun, whose empty cartridge belt told the story of the man’s last effort having gone to work his gun, while sprawling over the upset bucket was the dead body of the friend who had stood by and made his last task possible.

Officers in the head-quarters of regiment and divisions tell of the operators at the telephones clinging to their instruments until only the sounds of their choking efforts to speak came over the wire, and then silence. Some were found dead with the receivers in their hands, while others were discovered clutching muskets fallen from the hands of the infantry that had succumbed. In this trying ordeal not a man, soldier or officer budged from his position. To a man they remained firm, some overcome, some dying, and others already dead. So faithful were they to their duty, that before the reserves reached them the Germans were already extricating themselves from their own dead and wounded, and hurriedly beating a retreat toward their own lines. From the rear trenches now came, leaping with hoarse shouts of fury, the columns of the Siberian reserves. Through the poisoned mist that curled and circled at their feet, they ran, many stumbling and falling from the effect of the noxious vapours. When they reached the first line trench, the enemy was already straggling back in retreat, a retreat that probably cost them more dearly than their attack; for the reserves, maddened with fury poured over their own trenches, pursued the Germans, and with clubbed rifle and bayonet took heavy vengeance for comrades poisoned and dying in the first line trench. So furiously did the Siberians fall upon the Germans that several positions in the German line were occupied, numbers of the enemy who chose to remain dying under the bayonet or else falling on their knees with prayers for mercy. Somewhat to the south of the main gas attack there came a change in the wind, and the poisoned fumes blew back into the trenches of the Germans, trenches in which it is believed the occupants were not equipped with respirators. The Russians in opposite lines say that the cries of the Germans attacked by their own fumes were something horrible to listen to, and their shrieks could have been heard half a mile away.

Thus ended the first German effort to turn the Russians out of their positions by the use of a method which their rulers had pledged themselves in treaty never to adopt. The net results were an absolute defeat of the Germans, with the loss of several of their own positions, and a loss in dead and wounded probably three times greater than was suffered by the Russians. Even although it was unexpected and unprepared for, this first attempt was an absolute failure; the only result being an increase of fury on the part of the Russian soldiers that makes it difficult to keep them in their trenches, so eager are they to go over and bayonet their enemies.

SOME DETAILS REGARDING THE GAS HORROR