Read an Excerpt

The Chemists' War 1914â"1918

The Royal Society of Chemistry

Much More than Chemical Warfare

THE CHEMISTRY OF THE GREAT WAR

When I tell people that I'm fascinated by the Great War, they typically respond with a comment such as: "Me too! I was so fond of my grandfather who fought in the war. He lost a leg in the trenches when he was nineteen." They then enquire if I've seen War Horse, a play adapted from a novel by Michael Morpugo and subsequently made into a film, or read the novel Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks which has also been dramatized. Both are set on the Western Front.

If I mention that I'm writing a book on the chemistry of the First World War, they are likely to relate to me an account of how a great uncle or some other person they knew was gassed in the war. They understandably associate the chemistry of the war with chemical warfare, that is the deployment of chemical weapons, or poison gases as they are often called, against the enemy combined with the use of gas masks and other protective anti-gas measures for defence.

Yet, as I explain to them, chemical warfare was just one component, albeit an important component, of the chemistry of the war. But it wasn't the most important. The opposing armies spent much of their time firing other lethal chemicals at one another, most notably powerful high explosives such as trinitrotoluene (TNT). And to fire shells or mortar bombs filled with these explosive chemicals, other chemicals were also needed, the most important of which were propellants like cordite.

ONE HUNDRED SHELLS A MINUTE

World War I was a conflict between the Allied Powers and the Central Powers that took place from late July 1914 to November 1918. The Allied Powers consisted of Britain, France, Japan, Russia and Serbia. Italy joined in 1915, Portugal and Romania in 1916, and Greece and the United States in 1917. The Central Powers were Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Turkey, with Bulgaria joining in 1915.

Millions upon millions of artillery shells filled with high explosives were fired in the war. At times, the shelling was unimaginably intense. In preparation for the Battle of the Verdun, for instance, the Germans stockpiled around three million shells. The battle, the longest of the war, was fought at Verdun-sur-Meuse, a city in north-eastern France, from 21 February to 18 December 1916. In the first hour of the attack alone, the German army fired a staggering 100000 shells at the French who were defending the city. Over the course of the 10 month battle, the two armies bombarded each other with some 23 million shells. That works out at about 100 shells per minute, day and night. Each shell was filled with chemicals of one sort or another and propelled out of the muzzles of gun barrels by gases at high pressure generated by firing propellants. The battle resulted in almost one million French and German casualties, over half of whom died.

The shelling was similarly intense the following year during the Battle of Messines that took place from 7–14 June along Messines Ridge, south of Ypres, Belgium. Before the battle, British artillery bombarded German defences on the ridge with 3.5 million shells over a ten day period. That equates to three shells per second. Furthermore, army tunnelling engineers from Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand laid 22 mines along a 10 mile front prior to the battle. They contained 450 tons of ammonal, an explosive containing ammonium nitrate and aluminium. The Germans detonated one of the mines in a counter-mining operation. Of the remaining mines, 19 exploded killing or burying alive about 10000 German troops and wrecking German positions as well as the town of Messines.

Between 4 August 1914, when Britain declared war on Germany, and the Armistice on 11 November 1918, over nine million men in the forces of the Allies and Central Powers were killed in battle (Figure 1.3). Artillery shelling accounted for an estimated 58% of the battlefield deaths, machine-gun and rifle fire for 39%, and poison gas less than 3%. It should be noted in passing, however, that these percentages along with many other statistics of the war are no more than rough estimates. Death tolls and causes of death varied from year to year and from front to front, and records, when kept, were not always accurate and even if accurate were sometimes lost or destroyed.

Nevertheless, it is indisputable that death on the battlefields of the war occurred on an industrial scale and that this horrendous slaughter relied on the industrial-scale production of explosives, poison gases, and other chemicals. Chemical plants throughout Europe worked frantically to manufacture these deadly chemicals in sufficient quantities to meet the rapacious demands of munitions factories and the armed forces.

In North Wales, for instance, a plant at Queensferry near Chester produced 250 tons of nitrocellulose, a high explosive also known as guncotton, and 500 tons of TNT each week at the height of the war. There were many other such plants in Britain. Some plants specialised in filling shells with explosives. The National Filling Factory No.6 at Chilwell in Nottinghamshire, England, is just one example. The factory filled more than 19 million shells, 25000 sea mines, and 2500 bombs with explosives during the war.

CHEMICAL WARFARE

The Allies and Central Powers employed a wide range of chemical warfare agents in the war. Chlorine, a gas that caused troops to choke when inhaled in high concentrations, was first used by the Germans on the Western Front on 22 April 1915. Under the supervision of German chemist Fritz Haber (1868–1934), gas troops unleashed almost 170 tons of the gas from cylinders against the Allies at Langemarck, a village north of Ypres, killing as many as 6000 French, Moroccan, and Algerian troops. It was the first time in history that a weapon of mass destruction had been used.

On 25 September that year, the British retaliated with their own gas attacks on the first day of the Battle of Loos in northern France. They released some 140 tons of chlorine from just under 6000 cylinders and at the same time used mortars to fire around 10000 smoke bombs filled with phosphorus. Although some of the gas blew back over British trenches, the attack caused panic and confusion among the German troops and the British were able to break through their lines and capture the town of Loos on the same day.

With the development of masks to protect against chlorine gas, other poison gases were soon introduced: phosgene in December 1915, diphosgene in May 1916, and chloropicrin in August 1916. The Germans introduced mustard gas in July 1917 when they bombarded the British frontlines near Ypres with an estimated 50000 mustard gas shells.

Cloud gas operations continued throughout the war using either chlorine or mixtures of chlorine with other toxic gases. In these operations, the gases were released from cylinders. Millions of artillery shells containing tear gases and lethal gases such as phosgene and diphosgene were also fired by all sides during the war. In the 1917 Messines offensive, for example, the British fired 75000 shells containing a total of more than 160 tons of chloropicrin against the Germans.

Altogether, the Germans, French, and British manufactured around 68000 tons, 37000 tons, and 26000 tons of these so-called "battle gases", respectively, during the war. Austria, Italy, Russia and the United States together manufactured just over 19000 tons. That all adds up to a total of 150000 tons, of which 25000 tons were "left on hand unused" at the end of the war, according to one source.

MANY OTHER CHEMICALS

The chemistry of the war didn't stop with the manufacture of chemical warfare agents and the propellants and explosives needed for weapons and ammunition. Star or illumination shells, signal rockets, and Very flares all contained pyrotechnic compositions similar to those used in fireworks today. When ignited, compositions containing barium chlorate, copper carbonate, strontium carbonate, and magnesium powder produced green, blue, red, and white illuminations, respectively. Very flares were launched by firing cartridges from flare guns known as Very pistols. Each cartridge contained a paper cylinder containing the pyrotechnic mixture, a propellant charge of gunpowder, and a percussion cap that ignited the propellant when the pistol was fired. The flares were named after their inventor, American naval officer Edward W. Very (1847–1910).

Other chemical materials were also essential for the war effort. Iron, steel, bronze, brass, gunmetal, copper, and aluminium, all relied on chemical processes for their production. The metals and alloys were needed for the manufacture of guns, ammunition, armour, military aircraft, battleships, tanks, and submarines, and the railways that carried troops, horses, and supplies to the front and sick and wounded troops back from the front.

We should not forget dyes. Every single soldier, sailor, airman, medical officer, and nurse in the war wore a uniform of one sort or another. British, American, and Russian soldiers, for example, wore khaki uniforms. According to some estimates, around 43 million men in the Allied forces and 25 million men in the forces of the Central Powers fought in the war. That adds up to 68 million military uniforms — all coloured by synthetic or naturally-occurring chemical dyes or mineral pigments.

Khaki and other drab colours, such as the field grey worn by the German army, provided camouflage and therefore helped to protect troops behind the lines, in the trenches, and on the battlefields. Chemical materials were also exploited for a variety of other protective roles, for instance in gas masks. British gas masks introduced in 1916 incorporated canisters containing a variety of chemicals. One of them was a highly porous form of carbon known as activated charcoal. The powder trapped poison gases inside its pores while allowing air to get through.

Some chemicals were used for both destructive and protective roles. Chlorine, for instance, was used not only as a war gas but also to save lives. The element or chemicals such as bleaching powder that released the element were used to purify drinking water and as disinfectants in the trenches. The element therefore prevented the spread of life-threatening infectious diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and typhus.

White phosphorus is another example. The solid ignites spontaneously in air forming a white smoke. It was used not only to fill incendiary shells and bombs but also as an obscurant chemical in smoke shells. Smoke shells were fired at enemy positions to create a fog-like blanket that smothered and confused the troops. On the other hand, obscurant smokes were also used to generate smoke screens for protective purposes. The purpose of the screens was to conceal military manoeuvres.

Steel, essentially an alloy of iron and carbon and sometimes other chemical elements, was used to make weapons and also for defensive purposes. Battleships and tanks relied on steel armour for protection. When the British began to issue front-line troops with steel helmets in 1915, battlefield head injuries dropped substantially. One British design, known as the Brodie helmet, was fabricated from a tough hard-wearing alloy steel containing manganese.

Photography, so important in the war, was another area that totally relied on chemistry. The history of photography can be traced back to the early 1800s and even before with the discovery of light-sensitive chemicals. By the beginning of the World War I, photography had come of age. Photographs and moving films provided enduring images of the war and brought home dramatic pictures of the horrors of the war often in vivid detail (Figure 1.5). Soldiers loved to pose in their uniforms for the camera and send postcards home. Photographs and motion pictures were used for official records, for propaganda purposes, for aerial reconnaissance, for training, for recruitment, and for coverage of the war in newspapers, magazines, and cinemas back home.

Every unexposed photographic plate or film was coated with an emulsion containing a photosensitive silver halide salt. The films were developed with chemical solutions and still photographs printed with inks composed of chemicals.

THE CARING ROLE

Care of the troops, sailors, airmen, and prisoners in the various theatres of engagement added another chemical dimension to the Great War. Troops in the front line, for example, often lived for days in trenches infested with fleas, flies, lice, rats, and unseen pathogenic microorganisms in the mud, soil, dirty water, and dead bodies. When possible and if available, the troops were supplied with disinfectants with bleaching properties, such as calcium hypochlorite or sodium hypochlorite, to sterilize drinking water and disinfect trenches and latrines.

Carbolic acid was widely used as a disinfectant and an antiseptic to treat wounds. The acid was one of many organic chemicals extracted from coal tar that were used in the war. Other antiseptic preparations included tincture of iodine and aqueous solutions of hydrogen peroxide.

A wide range of medicinal chemicals were employed to treat sick and wounded troops, although they were not always available in the casualty clearing stations and hospitals behind the front lines. Chloroform, ether, ethyl chloride, and nitrous oxide were all used as anaesthetics during surgery. Morphine, or morphia as it was also known, was widely used as a painkiller in the war.

CHEMISTRY UNDERPINNED THE WAR EFFORT

As early as 1917, the First World War was becoming known as "The Chemists' War." Richard B. Pilcher (1874–1955), registrar and secretary of the Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland, used the term in an article published in April that year. He wrote: "In addition to competent chemical advisers of undoubted standing, the following appear to be essential: Chemists to control the manufacture of munitions, explosives, metals, leather, rubber, oils, gases, food, drugs; chemists for the analysis of all such materials and for research; chemists on active service, to assist in the control of water supplies, in the detection of poison in streams, in the analysis of water and food, the disposal of sewage, and in other hygienic matters; chemists, both at home and in active service, to assist in devising safeguards against enemy contrivances of a scientific nature, and methods of offence to meet the same, as well as for the instruction of troops in such matters."

His list does not include, but might well have included the production of antiseptics, disinfectants, anaesthetics, natural and synthetic dyes and pigments, and photographic chemicals. Even so, it is clear that chemists, chemistry, and chemicals underpinned the war effort in the trenches, in the tunnelling operations, in the air and at sea, and in the casualty clearing stations and military hospitals. Chemistry was unquestionably the sine qua non of the war.

Calling All Chemists

ALLIED CHEMISTS MOBILISE

The British Army "owes a great debt to science, and to the distinguished scientific men who placed their learning, and skill at the disposal of their country." The compliment came from Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig (1861–1928) in his final despatch as Commander-in-Chief of the British Armies in France following the end of the First World War. The despatch was dated 21 March 1919 and published the following month when Haig was appointed Commander-in-Chief of British Home Forces.

Without science, he suggested, the Allies could not have attained "general superiority" in the development of the "mechanical contrivances" which contributed so powerfully to Germany's defeat in the war. Haig referred specifically to "the development of motor transport, heavy artillery, trench mortars, machine guns, aeroplanes, tanks, gas and barbed wire." He also alluded to smoke shells, new fuses, aerial photography, anti-gas precautions, submarine warfare, and hospitals.

After the war of movement on the Western Front in August and September 1914, the conflict evolved into a stalemate "with creation of continuous trench lines from the Swiss frontier to the sea," Haig noted. The war became a war of not just men but also of materials, the materials being the guns and ammunition to fight the enemy and the raw and intermediate materials required to manufacture the munitions.

The conflict therefore gradually developed into a war of attrition or a "wearing out struggle" as Haig called it. The British Royal Navy blockade of German imports played an important role that contributed to Germany running out of essential material resources towards the end of the war. "The rapid collapse of Germany's military powers in the latter half of 1918 was the logical outcome of the fighting of the previous two years. It would not have taken place but for that period of ceaseless attrition which used up the reserves of the German Armies while the constant and growing pressure of the blockade sapped with more deadly insistence from year to year at the strength and resolution of German people."

---

Excerpted from The Chemists' War 1914â"1918 by Michael Freemantle. Copyright © 2015 Freemantle. Excerpted by permission of The Royal Society of Chemistry.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---