Gas in World War I

In a way, it's strange wars have "rules", whether or not they're followed. I guess the idea is that if you stick to it, hopefully the other side does as well. (It must be the same logic as when two guys are in a streetfight, you still don't employ the highly effective crotch-kick.) Essentially, most of them follow some sort of "reduce excessive human suffering" ideals; taking in prisoners, rules against torture (I'm looking at you, Jack Bauer, in my extremely dated 24 reference), only fighting combatants as opposed to citizens, no name-calling, etc. etc.. I'm sure both sides of the coin appreciate those rules, but when one side starts losing, well, maybe they're a little more willing to bend. In the Great War, gas was one such rule.

Gas bomb, gas bomb, you're my gas bomb!
Sidenote: While researching this joke, I watched the video for
Tom Jones' song "Sexbomb" which, if you haven't seen, is well worth your time.

Neither side particularly liked the use of gas. To shoot your enemy was one thing, but there was something about sending noxious fumes over a field and asphyxiating and blinding the enemy felt to the common soldier so far from the romanticized, gallant ideals of warfare that it was frowned upon pretty much everywhere. Don't forget, these wars were fought predominantly in countries that still had knights in their collective conscience. When the Germans first employed the use of chlorine on the battlefield, they downplayed the number of casualties, maybe in the same way a student won't brag about a high mark on a test they cheated on. Nevertheless, it was effective, and considering the scope of the First World War it only makes sense that it would be employed. At some point, chivalry goes out the window when it's winner-take-all for the whole of Europe.

British soccer team, equipped with gas masks. Because if you're
fighting in what looks like a post-apocalyptic hellscape, you've
still got to get some footy in.

So what do the allies do in this moral quandary? Sink to the level of the Germans, or hold out with their moral code? The decision was made mostly due to the effectiveness of the first few attacks against them. At Ypres, the sight of the first gas attack, broke through the French with incredible ease, unprepared and unfamiliar with gas as a weapon as they were. It took the Canadians, fearlessly and selflessly charging into the gaps - quite often accepting the grim fate of holding positions overwhelmed with gas - and held the line long enough for reinforcements. They won the day, but they knew it would be used again. In order to fight on a level playing field, they had to do the same.

Although feelings were mixed, the British were the first on the other side to try it out, quickly realizing that it wasn't the easy fix to trench warfare many thought it would be. Wind conditions can easily blow the gas right back in the direction from which it came, it was difficult to move, hard to release, and once respirators came out in force, not even all that effective. (The exception for this is on the eastern front, where poorly equipped Russian troops often lacked respirators, and gas attacks were often extremely effective. This goes with the Russian World War ethos of using an abundance of men in lieu of an abundance of material.)

Both sides quickly learned that gas was a weapon that wasn't meant to win straight away, but rather an attrition weapon. Most people wouldn't die from gas, but rather be severely injured, blinded (temporarily or occasionally permanently) or beleaguered by having to wear cumbersome, uncomfortable respirators for long hours. Only 5% of those gassed died, as opposed to 25% for conventional weapons. That's what's interesting about gas casualties; plenty of casualties, but not that many deaths. Many that were gassed came back, although in a sense, so did the gas. Countless soldiers had respiratory problems upon returning from the war. However, even if it didn't often kill outright, it had to be addressed, as gas was becoming increasingly common (and more potent) as the war went on. 

A group photo demonstrating a variety of gas masks on the Western -
hey, wait a minute, the guy on the bottom isn't wearing a mask! He just has
an incredibly large head!

In comes the importance of gas discipline. Masks were to always be near, practice was to be done to put on the respirator with speed, and it was never to be taken off early. The latter had a few exceptions as commanders, who were hit especially hard by gas attacks, felt they had to call orders to their troops and thus had to remove their respirators, choosing to heroically fall victim to gas in order to continue to lead. The Canadians soon had men strictly devoted for instructing those at the front on the importance of gas discipline, as well as the basic knowledge behind it. Don't forget, most of the troops were uneducated, and didn't know very much about basic scientific theories. The way they'd usually learn was to have men go into a gas chamber wearing a respirator, and show them that they'd come out unharmed - except for the occasional mask that was put on improperly, or when a man would remove it in a panic. 

With proper gas discipline,

Soldiers wearing hypo helmets, one of the first anti-gas masks.
When the world leaders heard about the front lines, they thought
"It just isn't scary enough. Make everyone wear spooky masks!
Can we go even scarier?"

 casualties, even with the advent of mustard gas, went down significantly. Respirators were very commonly used, as even during artillery barrages some gas shells were lobbed in as well. With mustard gas having the ability to stay in small pockets on the ground for days, sometimes weeks, respirators were worn very frequently. Unfortunately, the respirator was often a heavy burden. The first, called the hypo helmet, was blinding, extremely hot, and in one soldier's description, smelled "like last year's bird seed." While they got better with time, they were never welcome, always keeping the same core issues of overheating, general discomfort, and varying degrees of difficulty in breathing. Nevertheless, the Canadians were excellent with their gas discipline, and as a result took much fewer casualties. The Americans, coming late into the war and not having the same battlefield experience, had 27% of their casualties due to gas. This was in stark contrast to the Canadians, which came in around 5%. 

"Not that scary, dial it back a notch" the world
leaders said upon seeing a child's gas mask.

Of course, the respirator was still preferable. Gas attacks were typically split into two different kinds; harassing agents and non-persistent. Non-persistent attacks were ones that would be short-term, high damage gasses that would tend not to linger for very long. Ideally, they would catch the enemy off-guard and create as many casualties as possible. The harassing agents were typically used to constantly force the use of respirators to wear away at the enemy's resolve. If they had to wear a respirator more frequently, their entire lives got much, much harder. 

Gas leaves a strange legacy in the World Wars. Initially thought of as a means to end the war, it was not nearly as effective as planned. Nevertheless, it was used with incredible frequency, and forced both sides of the line to adapt quickly. If anything, it was just another factor in making life in the trenches that much worse, helping to solidify in my mind World War I as the worst war to be in of all time. After all, in the second, mostly due to the much greater quality of respirators, gas all but disappeared. The idea of it dissipated into thin air I guess, just like... heck, I don't know.

-------------------

Information for this blog comes from Tim Cook, the preeminent Canadian war historian, and his book on all things gas in "No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the First World War."

Canada's Great Depression: Part 3 - Police Brutality

Is there a country-wide version of "fight or flight"? I know it's not that clear-cut, but when a country falls into tragedy mode, in this case the collapse of the economy, it's going to inevitably react with big, sweeping measures. No one's ever sure of what the right thing to do is, but everyone's certain that the right way is something. Just as no man set on fire will wait for it to burn itself out, a country with a shattered economy is going to go into panic mode. In Canada's case, their big, sweeping measure was to bring down the iron fist of extreme control. The events of the time feel like something out of a third-world country (or America, maybe) where personal freedoms are trounced upon, being poor is criminal, and may God have mercy on your soul if you say a bad word about capitalism.

A riot in Regina. I think. People look awfully casual for
a riot, but things just moved slower back in those days.

A small percentage of the population thought that with the economic collapse in full force, capitalism was proven to be a failure and it was time to usher in communism. This mostly came from the fact that there were people literally starving to death, and that Canada seemed like a country that was still plentiful in terms of resources. The problem was everyone hated communism, the police included, and speaking up about it was a surefire way to get busted up. 

That's not to say it was illegal; the Communist Party went against no laws, and the police had no real cause to dismantle any rallies, but that still didn't stop it from happening. Communists were arrested and beaten before they even started their (remember, perfectly legal at this time) meetings. Rallies in public areas were set upon by police before they would even start speaking, sometimes catching unfortunate passerby in the crossfire. Eventually, they got tired enough of the communists - I'll note that their voter support was still at a bare minimum - that they outlawed communist organizations. Men with communist ties would be subject to raids of their homes in an attempt to find ties to Russia (yes, yes, there's a Donald Trump joke in here but low-hanging fruit isn't that fun to pick). Their belongings were to be confiscated, leaving those that were already destitute with somehow less than they had before. 

Since there still was a semblance of law and order, they would have to be given a trial if they were to be actually convicted of supporting communism, and thus subject to deportation. Here's the kicker - they'd basically take them away with little media attention and send them off to Halifax. The reason for that was they wouldn't have anyone there that could stand witness for them and they wouldn't be able to pay for a proper lawyer, effectively stacking the deck against them hard enough to ensure a conviction. "Proven" communist, they'd be shipped off somewhere and the problem would be more or less solved. The prosecution of the communists was so strong that Tim Buck, a leader of the communists in spite of having the least communist-sounding name imaginable, was almost killed after a prison riot when eight shots were fired into his cell. He had no part whatsoever in the riot, sitting quietly and listening to the fracas outside. 

While being communist seemed the worst thing you could be, it was little better than being poor. "Tin canning", a practice that's basically begging on the streets, was also outlawed. Those that were out canning would get arrested, but that doesn't mean that they'd stop. The tin canners eventually organized (which is partly proof that the men that were dirt poor were not stupid or lazy, but rather hard-working everyday people who simply couldn't find a job) and had a network of canners that would replace those that would get arrested with another man on that corner, forcing the police to acknowledge that they couldn't arrest all of them. 

The government's solution was to create "relief camps" where men without work were given manual labour jobs for essentially no pay but a place to rest. The camps were in shocking condition, the pay was insulting, and the work trivial - sometimes it would be as simple as digging a ditch that would later just be refilled, all of which able to be done by machine that they had access to. Further, those that would quit would be blacklisted and prevented from re-entering.

Partly in protest to the laws against tin canning and also due to the conditions of the relief camps, a mass protest came to fruition. The plan was to have as many men as they could bring ride the rails to parliament and state their case. They called it the "On to Ottawa" trek, which brought around a thousand unemployed. Police threatened to arrest anyone who would help the trekkers, but of course this was absurd as there was no true charge that could be given.

A picture from the "On to Ottawa" trek. Everyone's
clamouring to get to the top because that's where you
have the coolest fight scenes in movies.

The threat of arrests culminated into a riot in Regina. The RCMP, ordered remotely by Ottawa to quell the protests, worked with the police to storm in and make arrests. About 100 mounties and 29 officers met at a busy square where several hundred strikers in addition to over a thousand spectators met. Immediately there was confusion, as no clear orders were given to either police or RCMP; some were told to storm in at the sound of a whistle, while others were told to sit back and let a few officers usher people out. When a whistle blew, chaos erupted and everyone tried to flee, causing the police to go in swinging and rioters to fight officers. 39 RCMP were hospitalized, as well as seventeen strikers and citizens injured with gunshot wounds. The stunning part about this all was that up until then, the protests had been entirely peaceful; the trekkers knew that discipline had to be kept to the maximum as any destruction or property damage would be grounds to run their name through the mud in the press.

Rioters after having been kicked out of the post office in
Vancouver. The man on the left is, strangely, beaming. You could
remove him, say he's skipping rocks with his family,
throw him in a Tim Horton's commercial and no
one would know the difference.

This was far from an isolated incident. In Vancouver, a thousand-strong crowd of protesters had a sit-down over the course of a month in a post office. Again, everything was entirely peaceful until the police came in to break it up, without charge, by gassing and then beating any that refused to leave. 42 were hospitalized along with five officers. Another riot in Saskatchewan ended in a similar manner, where coal miners demanded livable conditions. Clearly planning on a peaceful protest as they brought women and children along, the police came in and effectively caused the panic and bloodshed that soon followed. Three men died by their wounds, and a monument to the event still stands with the words "Murdered by the RCMP".

The Canadian police and RCMP were given a difficult hand to play. That much is certain. They had to suppress riots and protests to the best of their ability, but from every account it seems they caused more harm than good. The violent suppression of political dissidents and the iron-fist style of putting down riots sounds so distinctly un-Canadian that it I could hardly believe it happened in our country. Surely, it's a black mark on our history, redeemed in part by the decency of many of the poor and those that helped them along the way.

Canada's Great Depression: Part 2 - Bennett, King, and Government Mismanagement

During the Great Depression, wheat prices dropped 54% while the prairies had the worst drought in history (Saskatchewan had 1/10th of the grain of previous years). Locust were so thick in the skies they'd form their own clouds, going so far as to even stop traffic from plugging up radiators with their corpses. Even the winter proved every bit as brutal, as 1936 held the coldest on record. There was no way possible the country was going to come out looking anything but beaten and defeated, and the role of government at the time would be to stymie the damage as best as it could. Of course, like any government inheriting a bad hand, they'll be blamed for the peoples' misfortune whether justly or unjustly. It's a tough sell for a government to play the "hey, everything sucks right now, but it could have been worse!" card. But that wasn't the case with the Great Depression. Canada in the '30s was plagued by incompetent, unfeeling and often bizarre leadership which took a sinking ship and tried to keep her afloat with a few anchors.

Our first leader of the governmental powers that be was William Lyon Mackenzie King, our longest serving Prime Minister and by all accounts a bit of a weirdo. You'd think a Prime Minister who serves as long as he did would be a point of Canadian pride, but sheesh - there's things you just can't overlook. We know more about him than most as he kept thousands of diary entries, inundating the history buffs with page after page of mostly useless scribblings with the occasional bit of juicy gossip. It shows him to be a hypochondriac, prone to falling for flattery, and oddly, a man who would make himself deliberately boring as a political ploy. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

One would have thought King would be quite
the ladykiller with that mischievous half-raised
eyebrow.

King breaks the mould of the "tough-as-nails early 20th century man" type. He never married, yet  found himself constantly pining over women (one hilarious and awkward diary entry details King ogling the shapely legs of ladies at the beach in what can only be assumed are comically conservative bathing suits). Also a bit of a mother's boy, he counted on her dearly, and after her passing needed her guidance so terribly he would hold seances to try to reach her. In fact, the supernatural was a guiding force in many of his political decisions, basing much of his belief in how the depression would play out through the work of fortune tellers and other such charlatans. Further in that vein, he would also try to contact the spirit of Sir Wilfrid Laurier to guide his actions (asking for experienced advice is a good play, but it typically works better if they're amongst the living). If you're not thinking it already, yes, yes it is indeed disturbing that when our country was in one of the worst crises of its history some of the decisions were guided by crystal ball.

His successor as Prime Minister (and also predecessor, as King would return later) was less of an oddball, but not much better in terms of leadership. R. B. Bennett of the conservatives was something much more of what one would expect from the times. Cold, hard and calculating, Bennett was a shrewd, wealthy businessman; one of the richest in Canada. He was also almost the worst possible thing for Canada at the time, as he was one of the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" type in a time where it was impossible to do so. Unable to see the plight of the poor for what it was (not an unwillingness to work, but an inability to find it) he took a terrible situation and piled on.

Bennett, pictured smugly satisfied after having
noted his bootstraps are quite thoroughly
pulled up by his own accord. His wry
smile just screams "but why can't yours be?"

However, while in the 1920s, who would have guessed you'd need a strong leader? When everyone's making money faster than they can spend it, you could put just about anyone in power and they'd find their way through. Perhaps it was because of that '20s optimism that right when the depression began to hit in full, the liberal government under King believed it to be a seasonal, one-off event that would more or less repair itself. The federal government could help the poverty stricken west, but municipalities would have to take on a part of the load as well, and with none willing to do so, it mostly was left unattended. Through a lack of foresight, King didn't think the Great Depression was something lasting nor important; more of a... Mild Sadness, perhaps. To be fair, I don't blame him on this particular issue as almost everyone thought that things would bounce back pretty darn quickly.

Meanwhile, the conservatives under Bennett played into it hard, acknowledging it fully as a crisis and jumping in headfirst. In the election that followed he won easily, promising to go to an old school method of raising tariffs (up to as high as 50% in some cases) which, unfortunately, didn't do much. Beyond that, Bennett lacked a plan; he ran on a belief that yes, the Great Depression was very real, will last, and things have to be done about it. What those things were, however... that's where things went downhill. Bennett had the idea that the fault lay with the people asking for the money, thinking that the reason they couldn't find jobs was due strictly to laziness. He went as far as to tell the downtrodden "look at yourself in the mirror" when asking why times are tough.

A "Bennett Buggie". Those that couldn't afford gasoline
would have horses pull the cars instead. Because somehow
it makes fiscal sense to lack the money for gasoline but
have the money for two full-grown horses.

He would eventually be voted out (only to be replaced by King) but not after going heavily against his own principals in a last-ditch plan to save his political future. Opting for an increase in pensions, unemployment insurance, minimum wage, and other such safety-net economic plans, he hoped to win over the voters but it was too little too late. That, and much of it didn't work. Take the minimum wage and maximum work week hours, for instance. Employers would circumvent the hours by simply punching your card out early even if you were still at work. Others would work on a piece rate and have to greatly increase the amount of work they got done in an hour just to meet the minimum wage - otherwise they'd be fired. Many of the reforms only caused a shift in workplace abuses from one form to the other; there would be stories of people working almost triple-digit work weeks for pennies both before and after the changes.

It's impossible to say how things would have turned out with greater competence at the helm. When unemployment goes from 2% in Ontario in 1929 to 36% later in the decade, of course the government will struggle, but the flat out weirdness of King's prophetic visions and Bennett's coldness and lack of empathy towards the common man twisted the knife in the deeply wounded Canada.

Canada's Great Depression: Part 1 - From Prosperous to Penniless

Imagine living through the Roaring Twenties. Economically, things seem to have gotten figured out by the powers that be in the government sector. Capitalism has made everyone rich, there's wealth and growth everywhere, and as a Western Nation, you're on top of the world - now that the fight that almost destroyed it is done and dusted, that is. I think it's fair to say you've got to be pretty darn optimistic. Heck, everyone was. It wasn't just the general public either, as the newspapers were reporting how things were just going to keep getting better and better, whereas the rare exception seeing things for how it really was would be pushed to the back for being too doom-and-gloom.

Men lining up for a free meal. This was back in the day where
being homeless and out of work still required the dignity of a
peacoat and three-piece-suit.

Those that foresaw the collapse told of how over-developing the nation and having far too much supply and not enough demand was going to ruin the markets. Of course, that sounds like something far off in the future or just some vague possibility - until all of a sudden it knocks you off your feet. After all, how could things go wrong? Many were so optimistic that the good times would keep on rolling they would buy on margin. One such man, who bought $80,000 worth of stock from a broker with $8,000 as a down payment (pretty well everything he had) was hoping to hold onto it and sell it later, making more than the cost of the interest by a landslide. People had been doing this for years. He was one of many that was struck suddenly and debilitatingly by the collapse of the market. The next day, he realized that $8,000 was not only gone, but he owed $8,000 to the bank.

Here I am, feeling like I gambled away my life savings if I drop $20 at the casino. That Kitty Glitter machine is a cruel mistress.

The cause for that poor man's sudden economic demise was the crash of the market in October, 1929.  Seeing as how the market had just veritably exploded in the American stock exchange, speculators began selling their shares at record rates. Montreal averaged 25,000 trader shares on an average day, but on Black Tuesday, the 29th of October, they sold 400,000. So many were selling so quickly that you could get a different price on a stock just depending on what side of the room you were on, so loud and crazy was the stock exchange. People were crying, feinting, screaming, and whatever other human emotions come out in a mix of tragedy and panic (nervous peeing?), and just like that, the Great Depression was born.

A man during the Dust Bowl, desperately searching for where
he dropped his keys.

Canada, for the remainder of the decade, plunged into a world that seems so against how one would expect our nation to handle a trainwreck like this. The government became exceedingly heavy handed, thinking that an iron fist would fix things when a soft touch was desperately needed. Canada was ruled by distant, callous and ineffectual leadership, made worse by the fact that it was already a near impossible situation to escape. All the while, any dissenting voice would get - quiet literally - beaten down. The rise of communism was a looming spectre reaching over Canada, and the government did everything in its power to push it down by any means necessary whenever it popped up, like some ideology-based game of Whack-a-Mole.

Busy with the reds, the government failed to help was the average, everyday citizen, ready and willing to work but unable to do so. People were quite literally starving to death, a problem that sounds so out of touch with Canada. Conditions were so terrible that in Halifax 192 houses were condemned that had 370 families living in them. Unemployment in Toronto had, at one point, jumped 34% from the level in 1929. 1,357,262 Canadians were on relief by 1933 - and that was long before the worst of the Depression had struck.

I know I'm harping on this, but why do these poor men
dress better than I literally ever have? How can you
be both dapper and destitute?

Of course, these are all just numbers, and once you hit a certain point it fails to hit quite the way it should. When numbers get too high they cease being understandable, and it becomes difficult to relate to it. It's when you look at the personal toll on people, and the occasional individual story of tragedy and heartbreak brought on by the Dirty Thirties, that's when it stops becoming a laundry list of distressing facts and the brutal nature of it truly becomes real. If I had to sum up the degree of tragedy with one such story, it would be the life of Ted Bates, his wife Rose, and their nine-year-old son. Reading on history has a tendency of inundating you with such a slew of horrible things that you almost get desensitized, but man... this one stuck with me.

Ted and Rose had lost everything they had. With their final scraps of cash, they rented a car and just enough gas to lock themselves in a garage and attempt to commit suicide as a family through carbon monoxide poisoning. However, misjudging how much they needed or simply not having enough to afford the amount required, it only managed to kill their young boy and severely weaken the husband and wife. Dizzy from the fumes, Ted tried to knock his wife out cold - by her wishes - to then stab her to death, but neither was able to do so. Instead, they only managed to cut each other deeply but not enough to kill. Taken to hospital, they managed to survive their wounds. Contrary to how one would think the story would go, and a testament to the dire situation Canadians found themselves in, the town - in a shocking display of sympathy - agreed to not only pay for the funeral of their son but to provide them money to cover their legal expenses. The couple was found not guilty.

This is the Canada in the 1930s. Brutal, desperate, and filthy. A government that couldn't provide, a police force making a mockery of the law, and good, hardworking people pushed to the depths of despair. It kind of makes today look like a walk in the park.