July 12, 1917, mustard gas causes havoc


July 12, 1917, mustard gas causes havoc

On the Western Front, on July 12, 1917, mustard gas, which the Germans fired at the British near Ypres, was first used. More than fifty thousand projectiles were thrown and more than two thousand allied soldiers were affected by the gas. Eighty-seven died.

British medical services did their best to try to cope with them, but the mortality rate was high. The Commander J. W. McNee, in charge of a walking laboratory, pointed out with regard to a typical case: 

“Exposed to mustard gas on July 28, 1917, in the morning.” Admitted to the dispensary on July 29, at night with severe conjunctivitis and superficial burns on face, neck and scrotum. Respiratory symptoms evolved gradually and survived death about a hundred hours after exposure to gas.

 In the six weeks following July 12, just over nineteen thousand British soldiers were disabled by mustard gas, many of them went blind and 649 died within the week or ten days of the attack.

On July 17, the British took retaliation: they fired one hundred thousand projectiles containing a gas called chloropicrine and caused the deaths of seventy-five Germans. As a result of that counterattack, no breakthrough was made.

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