Leather for boots was in short supply to the German army. He is wearing the feldmtze, with the canvas camouflage strip, the 1915 Transitional tunic, and ankle boots with Gamaschen (Puttees). In a less formal way, dogs improved morale within the trenches by hunting rats and acting as companions to troops in miserable conditions. This Prussian soldier is somewhere near the front lines, but not too near or he would be carrying a gas mask in an airtight metal can. The German army successfully used poison gas for the first time against Allied troops at the Second Battle of Ypres, Belgium on April 22, 1915. Their small size helped them slip over and between trenches to deliver messages, shuttle medical supplies, or lay down communication wires. Some dogs pulled heavy machine guns on trolleys, others used their keen sense of smell and hearing for sentry and scout work. The Germans used some 30,000 dogs on the Western Front, and the Entente kept around 20,000. The German army successfully used poison gas for the first time against Allied troops at the Second Battle of Ypres, Belgium on April 22, 1915.
Because of the critical combat role played by dogs at the time, they also developed canine gas masks.
1915 GERMAN GAS MASK SERIES
The devastating effects of these gases accelerated the development of masks, worn to counteract those agents.Īfter the first use of poison gas by German forces in April 1915, the British and American governments sent out a series of quickly designed masks to filter out the toxic gases and keep their soldiers alive. On a sunny 22 April 1915, the Germans released their gas cloud, some 10 km long and almost 1 km deep. About one million dogs were killed in action in World War I, a conflict that also saw the first large-scale use of chemical weapons. And it wasn’t just human combatants who suffered - many military working animals died from chemical weapons.ĭogs have been used in warfare since ancient times, serving as sentries, messengers, attackers, and even mascots. The German gas warfare program was headed by Fritz Haber (1868 1934) whose first try for a weapon was chlorine, which he debuted at Ypres in April 1915. Soldiers succumbed to the strangling effects of chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas for years as the stalemated armies searched for new ways to defeat each other. Exploring the history of the gas mask in Germany from 1915 to the eve of the Second World War, Peter Thompson traces how chemical weapons and protective. This warning cry sent men scrambling for their masks as the poisonous fog enveloped them. There was nothing more terrifying in the trenches than the call of a gas attack - “Gas! Gas!”. Dogs have been used in warfare since ancient times, serving as sentries, messengers, attackers and even mascots.
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