


Gassed British soldiers wait in line for treatment.

FORMER Scottish hockey captain Charles Foulkes was the man entrusted with turning around World War I, thanks to an innovative new weapon.

But his first use of the chlorine gas was a disaster, resulting in the deaths of swathes of British soldiers after the direction of the wind was misjudged thanks to a single puff of cigarette smoke.

The poisonous cloud swept back into the Allied lines, causing mayhem, while the Germans were left almost unscathed, mowing down hapless troops in the planned assault that followed.

A new book, Chemical Soldiers, tells the horrific story of the senior officers who ordered the gas discharges, without thought for the lives of their own men.

The Germans were first to unleash a deadly gas attack on Canadian and French forces at the second Battle of Ypres. It ripped a massive hole in the British frontline and Allied forces were only just able to hold on.

At the time, Foulkes was a major in the Royal Engineers, best known for his sporting prowess.

Charles Foulkes

Although born in India, he captained Scotland’s hockey team in the 1908 Olympics and played first-team football for Hearts. He was 39 when he was ordered to take command of the gas unit.

Foulkes was a forceful character who could be very obstinate. He had won the Distinguished Service Order, for rescuing a wounded man under fire, and was contemptuous of the dangers of the Western Front.

Foulkes’ orders were to produce chemical weapons that could kill off the occupants of the German trenches around the mining town of Loos.

Across Britain, young chemists were hurriedly snapped up to join the newly-formed special units. They would be given higher rates of pay and the rank of corporal.

Major Foulkes knew nothing about gas and chemistry, and freely admitted it, but within six days of his appointment he wrote a paper on the offensive uses of gas and how to defend against it.

The first release, from cylinders sited in the frontline, was supposed to be over a 5000-yard area ahead of an assault.

A demonstration in front of General Haig was a success, but that was in perfect conditions away from the fighting.

Haig needed a successful wonder weapon with his artillery critically short of shells and jumped at the chance to execute Foulkes’ hasty plan.

The gas companies were ordered to lay pipes from the cylinders to the jumping-off points along the line. Foulkes was short of men but he pressed on.

Foukes' chemical unit prepares gas cylinders in the front line at Loos.

There was friction between the infantrymen, who had to lug most of the pipes and cylinders up the line, and the special forces. On top of that it was raining heavily and rations were slow to arrive. But Foulkes had another, much bigger problem – the wind had to be in the right direction. But when one of Haig’s staff officers lit a cigarette and the smoke drifted north-eastwards, Foulkes ordered the release.

Within an hour, soldiers from the Black Watch were coughing and scratching their faces. The yellow cloud was being released faster than the wind could carry it. In fact, even though it was flat calm in some places, staff officers ordered the continuation of the gas release. It was mayhem.

To add insult to injury, the Germans were ready for the so-called wonder weapon anyway.

When the gas cloud eventually reached them, they lit fires in tar boxes and the heat lifted the gas above the trenches.

And the German troops had plentiful supplies of gas masks to ward off any wisps of gas that made it through the heat wall.

Expecting a walkover to face a thoroughly incapacitated enemy, the British soldiers instead found themselves marching into a hail of machine-gun bullets.

Despite the evidence, Haig still thought gas was a wonder weapon but some of his staff and divisional commanders were dubious. The cylinders were also a danger to the gasmen themselves, if hit by German shells.

In October, Sergeant James Lennox Dawson, from Tillicoultry, Clackmannanshire, won the Victoria Cross for saving his own men under such circumstances.

He was in a trench in the Ypres Salient when he noticed three gas cylinders leaking. Under enemy fire, Dawson hauled the heavy cylinders over the parapet into No Man’s Land and shot them to make the gas disperse.

He received his medal from King George V at Buckingham Palace in December 1915. The gallant sergeant survived the war.

Despite the failures at Loos, Foulkes managed to increase the numbers of men under him and developed a mortar to hurl gas cylinders at the enemy.

Foulkes realised weather maps were inadequate and asked for more trained meteorologists to be assigned to his unit. They would be in action on the Somme, using a new gas, a combination of phosgene and chlorine, called White Star.

Foulkes was hamstrung by his superiors who wanted the gas released as soon as wind conditions allowed. The infantry commanders wanted to “get rid of the stuff as quickly as possible”.

Assault Commander General Sir Henry Rawlinson was contemptuous of the gas.

In an appeal to the War Office he said: “Are you not going to send us out some proper gas? These stink bombs that have arrived are perfectly useless, they only leak and poison our own men.”

A young chemist at the Somme said the gas had killed 300 of our men for the loss of one German.

But an inventive officer under Foulkes’ command came up with a solution. Captain William Livens had already produced a flamethrower which, although successful, needed too many men to operate it.

He built the Livens Projector, which could hurl gas canisters into the German lines where they would ignite on impact, and the project was authorised by General Sir Hubert Gough.

The hierarchy, though, were still less than impressed with gas. One anonymous divisional commander said gas was as much use as “a horse farting in the desert”. However, in 1917, Foulkes was promoted to Brigadier General in command of all the special brigade activities.

During the fighting at Passchendaele, gas was used sparingly and when the war became mobile, following the failure of five massive German offensives early in 1918, it became wholly irrelevant.

After the war, Foulkes was gradually sidelined, a failure. But he survived the conflict, while so many men didn’t. He died in 1969.

Chemical Soldiers by Donald Richter is published by Pen and Sword, £14.99