Franco-British military co-operation in the Great Gas War 1915-1918

I. Introduction

Among the personal possessions of a German officer of the 7th Bavarian Reserve Regiment was his private diary. It was retrieved from the Western Front battlefield in May 1917 and handed over to French military intelligence. What excited French interest in the officer’s journal, and subsequently generated a dedicated file in the records of the deuxième bureau, ¹ was that it contained a fragmentary but revealing summary of the allied gas war from the time of the first German chemical attack on 22 April 1915. ² The writer noted the disadvantageous position that the allies had found themselves in following what he called the German ‘surprise’ at Second Ypres, but he acknowledged the painstaking progress that the Franco-British enemy had made in the intervening period. By the spring of 1917, his judgement was that the allies had made huge strides in developing their range of poisonous gases. The German officer wrote, ‘The allies have worked intensively and today they have completely reached our level. They are now rubbing shoulders with us when it comes to offensive chemical combat procedures.’ ³ Notwithstanding the value of the diary’s contents to French intelligence assessors at the time, one of the reasons this captured document commends itself to the present study is that the diarist reminds us that the allied Western Front gas war was a joint enterprise. This is underlined by the comments he made about the specific performance of both allied armies. ⁴ Many histories of the gas war might well have been enriched by exploring the combined contribution of the two allies rather than focusing more narrowly on either the French or the British Commonwealth input. The joint Franco-British chemical war was, moreover, an exceptional material undertaking for both countries in their vital contributions to a collective effort. ⁵

During the Age of Empire, Baron Jomini put it, ‘Of course, in a war an ally is to be desired, all other things being equal’. In the time of menace, coalition is perceived as a, if not, the strategic option. Carl von Calusewitz along the same lines echoed Jomini by maintaining that alliances were the ‘proper means to resist a superior power. What better is there?’ ⁶ Withal clashing stakes, controlling spheres of influence, human/national pride tainted more often than not by sheer jealousy, language/cultural barrier, the (mis)management of unilateral action by one coalition partner, the French and the British did not hesitate to shed their blood together. ⁷ Such ambivalence is what gave Franco-British gas war co-operation its unique characteristics. The problematic of this study is to critically highlight the significance of Franco-British gas war co-operation with particular reference to the early and later stages of joint allied initiative.

The emphasis placed upon the fact that Britain conducted its war against Germany, not alone but as a dependent part of an allied coalition has become commonplace in much of the recent writing about World War I. ⁸ Within that coalition, Britain’s partnership with France was central to the prosecution of the conflict.

However, capturing the essence of the Anglo-French alliance of 1914-1918 is perhaps a more nebulous challenge than at first appears. There has been a tendency in the literature to focus on the divisions and tensions which at times threatened to unravel it rather than on the common interests and shared objectives that kept the alliance intact. ⁹ Nevertheless, the two great west European nations that entered the war against the German empire in 1914 had no enduring tradition of alliance or even of strong friendship. While a broader discussion of this general area belongs elsewhere, it is against the background of historic rivalry, entrenched traditions, and national pride that French and British co-operation in the Great Gas War should, perhaps, be understood – if only to appreciate what, in fact, was accomplished by 1918.

Despite the welcome recent additions to the historiography of World War I chemical warfare, historians have largely ignored, examined too narrowly, or discussed too superficially the narrow niche of Franco-British military co-operation during the Great Gas War. ¹⁰ To do justice to the topic, a broader investigation than that adopted in previous studies is necessary while what has been written about this subject would appear to require qualification. Ludwig Haber, while grudgingly acknowledging inter-allied co-operation stressed the generally negative context in which it took place. Referring to French and British efforts to develop chemical weapons, he observed,

The time wasted by mismanagement and the toleration of incompetence could not be made up. The efforts would have been even more serious if inter-allied co-operation had been less effective. ¹¹

Such a generalization deserves a detailed and qualified assessment which this article will provide. A few recent works, such as that by Albert Palazzo, have briefly referred to Franco-British co-operation but Olivier Lepick in particular deserves specific mention. ¹² He devoted a few pages in his study to a selective overview of this topic. ¹³ While stressing the importance of Franco-British industrial co-operation in the development and production of poison gasses, he nevertheless suggests that it took a considerable time for the two allies to achieve any degree of scientific co-operation. However, at the operational level of allied chemical warfare, Lepick emphasizes that no co-operation between France and Britain occurred. ¹⁴ Although this and Lepick’s other conclusions will be examined in more detail below, it should be pointed out here that while the two armies largely fought their own war on the Western Front – a state of affairs unquestioned in the popular histories of the conflict – operational co-operation in the gas war took many forms other than the immediately obvious ones. ¹⁵

There remain pressing questions about how openly, how comprehensively, and how effectively France and Britain worked with each other at the level of research and production, anti-gas protection, and battlefield application following the German Army’s first use of chemical weapons. The German army’s first gas attack highlighted a number of serious, shared allied weaknesses. To begin with, there was the intelligence debacle in April 1915 ¹⁶ which presented Germany with an unparalleled strategic opportunity while demonstrating gaping deficiencies in allied intelligence gathering and assessment. While the pitiful rout of Canadian and French colonial troops – fleeing unprotected from the lethal chlorine gas clouds – would appear to confirm the assumption of surprise and complete unpreparedness, there is in fact evidence to suggest that the French High Command were less unsuspecting than their hapless front-line troops. ¹⁷ Revealing fragments of information spanning a period of three weeks prior to 22 April 1915 suggest that the French first bureau had sufficient material to piece together a convincing intelligence picture of an impending enemy chemical attack. Three major imperatives faced the allies after April 1915. First, there was a new intelligence reality where failure could result in catastrophe on the battlefield. Second, France and Britain were hastily driven to develop efficient anti-gas equipment and to improvise appropriate defensive tactics to protect their troops. And finally, having decided to respond in kind with offensive gas warfare, they had to intensively produce effective chemical weapons of their own from a weaker resource position.

To address a range of inter-related issues, the discussion of three major areas of Franco-British co-operation in the Great Gas War will form the centrepiece of this study: research and industrial co-operation, anti-gas defence, and offensive operations.

II. Franco-British research, development, and production co-operation

What little published work exists concerning French and British co-operation during the Great Gas War has focused, albeit summarily, on the related issues of research, development, and production. ¹⁸ Due to the extent of the surviving evidence, it is a more accessible area of investigation. The material throws light on how extensive and close allied co-operation was on many levels and indicates how near France and Britain came to creating a formal inter-allied programme for chemical warfare by 1918. ¹⁹ But the evidence also reveals an underside to this picture which, on occasions, was punctuated by tension, disagreements, and suspicion.

Only days after the first German gas attacks and before the institutional creation of the two nations’ gas warfare services, the allies exchanged letters and reports concerning the protective methods urgently needed to combat the German army’s poison gas threat. At this stage, even the identity of the gas had still to be confirmed. A leading French engineer, Cartier, collaborated with his British counterpart and they agreed that the gas used at Ypres was chlorine. ²⁰ Liaison and exchange between the newly created gas services of France and Britain began soon afterwards. British officers of the Chemical Warfare Department and the Chemical Warfare Committee made frequent visits to France while officers of the French gas service were often present in Britain. Most of the British communications concerning gas warfare co-operation were sent from their High Command to the Chief of the French Military Mission, General Huguet, who in turn informed the French first bureau.

In this regard, a new welcome if timely addition to the historiography of coalition literature is worth of special mention here. Largely based on history from below approach, Chris Kempshall uses striking evidence from postal control records and private accounts. He provides new insights about the love/hate relationship between the allied soldiers on the Western Front. ²¹ He probes into the intricacies of inter-allied relations and explores the way their encounter transmogrified during the Somme into a softer approach at soldiers and officers levels. Building on Kempshall’s claims, although a matter of conjecture, it is perhaps appropriate to speculate about the French and British ‘gas’ personnel’s almost obsessive preoccupation with exchanging correspondences, conference organizations, and joint gas experimentations – as suggested by the sheer quantity of documentary material in the Vincennes archives. At the High command level however, suspicion and distrust ruled supreme which in one way or another mirrored the ‘sweet enemies’ relationship between British Commander-in-Chief Haig and French Generalissimo Joffre. It could be argued that inter-allied gas war co-operation occurred more at individual and personalities’ level in line with the spirit of internationalism that prevailed in Western European states at the Fin de Siècle. Ann Rasmussen asserts that towards the turn of the nineteenth century and up until the Great War, the rational and energetic scientific internationalism helped scientists and intellectuals to target geographical spaces beyond their own. ²² This among others paved the way for a smoother meeting of minds among engineers, chemists, scientists, physicians, and other specialists in the two allies’ chemical services.

The extent of co-operative activity and the volume of information exchanged increased after the first joint allied reprisal gas attacks in September 1915. Following the first British gas attack at Loos on 25 September 1915, the French, who did not use chlorine in their own attack at Champagne, were anxious to know the effects of the British gas upon the enemy. ²³ They also requested permission for French chemists who oversaw poison gas research for the French army to join the British team of chemists working at St. Omer. ²⁴ The British welcomed the suggestion and in doing so, the two allies moved further along the path of co-operation which anticipated integration rather than perpetuating a relationship of mere liaison. In this correspondence, the British also promised to send the French samples of their gas cylinders. ²⁵

Investigations into the potential and limitations of gas cloud attacks followed the initial allied use of chemical weapons. The British Chemical Warfare Committee under the command of General Jackson arranged a series of demonstrations over a five-day period in early December 1915 at Cannock, Staffordshire, for the benefit of the gas personnel of both armies. ²⁶ Captain Ch. Greschel of the French military mission attached to the British army sent his findings to General Huguet while engineer Cartier’s report went to the French War Ministry. ²⁷ While both reports concentrated in detail on the technical aspects of gas cloud discharges, it is probable that a major reason for this extended series of demonstrations concerned the similar problems and disappointments that both armies had experienced in their respective chemical attacks. The French reports repeatedly stressed the cardinal importance of thorough specialist troop training including perfected anti-gas discipline. All soldiers participating in gas attacks were expected to wear their respiratory devices and oxygen bottles. These gas soldiers, one of the reports maintained, would need to be ‘masters of their weapons’ which would include both an informed appreciation of the technical functions and the associated hazards of poison gas cylinders. ²⁸ The need to stress such apparently self-evident strictures was perhaps a reflection on the performance of allied troops in their early gas attacks which had been compromised by inadequate training and poor anti-gas discipline.

At Cannock, several poison gasses were demonstrated via cloud discharges. Chlorine was considered to be more effective than hydrogen sulphide while phosgene was confirmed as the most lethal. Smoke producers were also tested there and judged to be effective for battlefield use. ²⁹ Further jointly attended demonstrations were held near London shortly afterwards. Full details of these later demonstrations were included in Captain Gerschel’s separate dispatch to the French C-in-C of the first bureau. ³⁰

A measure of how openly and comprehensively the French and British co-operated at the level of poison gas research and development can be inferred from a highly detailed account of a visit to France in October 1916 by the British Chemical Advisory Committee. In the introduction of the report sent to the head of the British Mission Brigadier General Jackson, the liaison officer Lieutenant Colonel Arthur W. Crossley explained the background to the visit:

[The] French Authorities have instituted weekly courses in both offensive and defensive methods of chemical warfare, which are attended by about 50 officers of all ranks from the French front. It was the experiments conducted on the two concluding days of such a course that my colleagues and I had the opportunity of witnessing. ³¹

At one of the military experimental grounds at Satory, near Versailles, the British visitors joined their French colleagues for the demonstration of nine wide-ranging experiments. In the first experiment, Red Star was released from six closely spaced cylinders, creating a thick cloud which provided the officers present with an opportunity to test their gas masks. Jackson observed that several (unidentified) officers coughed ‘appreciably’, adding with a hint of implied if diplomatic criticism that the French masks were ‘perhaps more than any other one, dependent on a perfect fit to the face’. ³² In a second cylinder experiment, Red Star with a 30 to 33 per cent mixture of Opacite (code name for chlorine) was released. Again, due to favourable weather – especially wind conditions – a dense cloud was created and the observers re-tested their gas masks. Colonel Perret who was in charge of this experiment drew Jackson’s attention to the ability of Opacite to penetrate the German masks allowing its non-lethal vapours to provoke coughing spasms. A third experiment addressed the problem of silencing the discharge of gas from cylinders. Although French technicians had found a way of achieving a noiseless discharge, it was at the expense of effective operational use. This experiment was a complete and disappointing failure. ³³

Some of the experimental results, such as the demonstration of air purification of large dug-outs, clearly impressed Jackson while others did not. He considered the French attempts to protect cylinders from shell damage by using deep emplacements as both unnecessary and dangerous fearing they would become ‘veritable death-traps in case of a leaking cylinder or a faulty joint’. ³⁴ Jackson was ambivalent about an experiment involving hand fans to remove poison gas from dug-outs. Although the fan worked well, he was concerned about the weight of material that would have to be carried into the trenches. Overall, he felt that the French hand fans lacked the advantages of the simple device ‘which General Thuillier informed me is now used in our lines’. ³⁵ This was a traditional open brazier where the burning of two pounds of wood would clear poison gas in a dug-out within four minutes. ³⁶ The three remaining experiments at Satory concerned projectiles. The two final experiments successfully demonstrated both the non-persistency and the lethality of VN shells. ³⁷

The following day (22 October 1916), the Chemical Advisory Committee members were at Fontainebleau to join French officers whose course concluded with further firing of VN shells. With highly favourable weather conditions, the British visitors witnessed an unprecedented phenomenon: the gas liberated from the 75-mm shells formed one continuous cloud which Jackson observed ‘completely enveloped the front trench’. ³⁸ As Captain [n] Nebout pointed out to the class of officers present, the gas from each shell normally produced a small individual cloud which was soon dissipated by the wind. ³⁹ It was clearly an impressive finale. From Fontainebleau, the British delegation visited the shell filling station at Fort d’Aubervilliers where they were given a full explanation of the process involved and shown detailed plans of the apparatus used by the French. ⁴⁰ Earlier liaison reports concerning the work of this plant had been dispatched to Britain in February and May 1916, an indication of the continuity which characterized this area of Franco-British co-operation. ⁴¹

Jackson also had the opportunity to talk at length to General Henri Ozil, Colonels [n] Vinet and [n] Perret, and Captain Nebout of the Ministry of Munitions Section Matérial Chimique de Guerre and Commandant Nicolardot who was Director of the Chemical Laboratory Section Technique de l’Artillerie. ⁴² During their meeting, Jackson and his French hosts discussed a wide range of mutually important topical issues. Perret and Vinet showed Jackson reports from the French front detailing the effects of their VN shell while Ozil, confirming that VN shells had been used successfully by the French army at Verdun, promised to forward copies of these findings to England. ⁴³ For his part, Jackson discussed the use of lethal shells in guns and howitzers, the British manufacture of Bromacetone, and the experimental use of PS in cylinders. ⁴⁴ He promised his French counterparts that the weekly reports of the Chemical Advisory Committee would be forwarded to General Ozil. ⁴⁵

Franco-British gas warfare co-operation was not, however, without some attendant problems and tensions. These were invariably associated with issues of national self-interest and while they appeared to be more common in the earlier days of the gas war, some competing interests remained unresolved until the end of the war. The first serious disagreement occurred only a couple of months after the first German gas attacks and it concerned the control of the Laire chemical factory in Cologne, near Calais. It is to be noted that, Laire’s scientists had – by accident – produced phosgene. Taking advantage of this development, the British army initiated its own experiments with the gas at the Laire factory in early June 1915.

The British were not only highly impressed with the lethal and weaponisible characteristics of phosgene but were committed to producing extensive amounts of it. Lacking a domestic production facility of their own, the British army sought the permission of the French High Command to take control of the Laire factory. Moreover, the British High Command was anxious to know whether there were other French factories producing phosgene. ⁴⁶ These requests were conveyed by General Huguet to the French first bureau on 6 July 1915 but the official response, 10 days later, was unequivocally negative. The British proposals were rejected on a number of grounds, the most critical being the safe-guarding of French national self-interest. ⁴⁷

The dispute over the control of the Laire factory coincided with another, broader, area of inter-allied tension. On 10 July 1915, the French War Ministry issued a report which was critical of the British for dominating the American market for the import of gas agents. In particular, the British purchase of huge quantities of bromine was portrayed as a threat to the French army because of its dependency on imported supplies of the chemical. The French War Ministry went so far as to suggest that 80 per cent of US bromine exports should be supplied to France with the remaining 20 per cent allocated to Britain. ⁴⁸ It was to protect its interests that France went on to develop its domestic bromine industry, but this issue remained a source of friction between the two allies throughout the gas war. Later instances of tension and disagreement included the refusal by the owner of the Cologne factory near Calais to allow a visit, in August 1915, by British War Office representatives to observe the filling process of gas cylinders. ⁴⁹

It should be pointed out perhaps that these and other instances of Franco-British friction represented exceptions to an evolving pattern of constructive bi-lateral co-operation.

For instance, in Senator Paul Caseneuve’s ⁵⁰ report to the French Senate, it was claimed that by the time of the Armistice in November 1918, France had met her production targets in the field of offensive gas agents. ⁵¹ Far from being a victor’s hyperbole, the empirical evidence would appear to support these claims. Apart from chlorine production, France not only satisfied her own chemical weapon needs but also became a wartime net producer and exporter of poison gasses. ⁵² The British were particularly dependent on the French for additional supplies of phosgene. Of the French phosgene production figures for December 1917, nearly 31 per cent or 210,000 kg were supplied to their British allies. ⁵³ By the late summer of 1918, French mustard gas production was outstripping its use enabling them to provide more of the gas to their allies. ⁵⁴ Shortly before the Armistice (in November 1918), British and American production of mustard gas had increased exponentially, so much so that they were out-producing Germany by a factor of four to one. ⁵⁵ The two English-speaking allies benefitted from applying the superior manufacturing methods made available to them by the French Gas Service. ⁵⁶

Within the broader picture, Elizabeth Greenhalgh in Victory through Coalition touched upon the vast and unprecedented problems of fighting a war that necessitated a certain degree of commitment to alliance. ⁵⁷ Nevertheless, the combined assets of the British and French coal industries and British shipping were crucial factors in the defeat of the German army. A major added problem for the enemy was the combined and growing output of the French and British chemical industries. Despite political and military friction, Greenhalgh concluded,

It must be said that the Franco-British coalition, for all it was a defective mechanism, was effective enough to defeat one of the five perfect institutions that Europe is supposed to have produced . . . The Prussian Great General Staff. ⁵⁸

The first part of this investigation has identified an additional area of the positive side of the Franco-British coalition: chemical weapon production. It has been briefly commented upon by Lepick and others. ⁵⁹ While comprehensive integration appeared to remain an unbridgeable goal, what can be argued is that despite the much-vaunted historical legacy of La différence – whether it be language, culture, tradition, military and organizational ethos, or so on – by 1918, the two allies were within reach of endorsing a joint programme for chemical warfare which went far beyond piecemeal co-operation. Arguably, it took France and Britain nearly three years to officially and actively pursue a formalized modus operandi of their chemical war coalition. For example, in February and March 1918, there was a flurry of diplomatic paper between Paris and London concerning suggestions for the creation of an inter-allied bureau or secretariat to act as a clearing house for a formal interchange of information concerning the war chemical manufacturing of both countries. ⁶⁰ Much more was at stake than information, however. Had some of the more ambitious proposals been adopted, Franco-British war gas production could have become subject to evaluation, control, and even direction by a new inter-allied supply organization. ⁶¹ However, concerns about national control and self-interest along with a number of specific unresolved issues such as French bromine production and British Red Star supplies appear to have forestalled any comprehensive agreement. ⁶² But the very fact that in 1918 such a dialogue took place at all, even in the circumstances of total war and when allied defeat remained a real possibility, is perhaps a telling indication of how far France and Britain had travelled along the, albeit uneven, path of gas war co-operation in the intervening three years.

III. Franco-British anti-gas co-operation

From the earliest days of the gas war, there was a comprehensive display of mutual support and co-operation as the French and British armies grappled with the imperatives of protecting their troops from the dangers of poison gas. This materialized into a wide range of practical help; the exchange of information and ideas; invitations to attend conferences, demonstrations, and training courses; and with both armies supplying each other with examples of their latest gas masks and other anti-gas equipment for evaluation. Unfortunately, this co-operation is rarely, if ever, stressed in the scholarly literature on the gas war. This is partly because almost all of the corpus, including the recent Anglo-Saxon revisionist contributions, lack a Franco-British comparative perspective and fail to highlight the reciprocal initiatives, let alone their wider significance. Yet, it is also important to underline the point that while the two allies co-operated closely in anti-gas defence, in the main both armies resolutely preferred and retained their own anti-gas equipment. Consequently, an impression can perhaps be too superficially formed of two, almost wholly self-contained, armies engaging the German poison gas threat in their own ways while obstinately utilizing their own specialist equipment largely without regard to the thinking, methodology, and experience of their ally. It is necessary therefore to draw attention to the wider background of Franco-British anti-gas co-operation. This will be discussed, in part, with special reference to the most important artefact of anti-gas defence: gas masks.

The extent and implications of allied unpreparedness in the face of the first German poison gas attacks were dealt with in the existing historiography. ⁶³ The French and British armies hastily improvised anti-gas responses including, at least to begin with, crudely produced gas masks. With the larger number of front-line soldiers, the French were in the more perilous position as far as material anti-gas protection was concerned. As soon as their initial supply problems stabilized, the British were unhesitant in supporting their ally. General Haig offered to send 50,000 gas masks to the French army in early June 1915. ⁶⁴ The British also responded to wider French calls for assistance, supplying them with samples of anti-gas protective material and anti-gas chemical agents. ⁶⁵ But even the spirit of helping out a friend in need in the early days of the gas war was occasionally compromised by matters of self-interest. One such case occurred following the request from French army HQ on 24 July 1915 for a supply of gas mask fabric. ⁶⁶ A stalling British response came from Lieutenant-General John Maxwell who insisted that it was Britain’s prerogative to achieve self-sufficiency in the production of the material first, after which they would be able to supply their ally. ⁶⁷ This did not however appear to affect the willingness of the British to supply finished masks to the French while the problem of gas mask fabric availability was short-lived anyway. ⁶⁸ What both the French and British historical sources confirm is that while the British supplied, or offered to supply, masks to the French army periodically throughout the gas war, there is little if any evidence of British and Commonwealth front-line troops using French respirators. ⁶⁹

Although the French experienced more pronounced supply problems in the early stages of the chemical war, the evidence in their archives suggests that they had successfully overcome these shortages by September 1915. ⁷⁰ Even so, often substantial quantities of British masks continued to be sent to the French after that period. Moreover, Colonel Thomas C. Watson of British GHQ had agreed in December 1915 to train the French Tenth Army in the use of British respirators. ⁷¹ It is worth noting that even within a month of the Armistice in 1918, the British were still offering to supply gas masks to their French ally. ⁷²

The French authorities were not only concerned with the vulnerability of their civilians to gas contamination, they were determined through their Gas Service to equip these civilians with masks. ⁷³ It should not be assumed, however, that they were all supplied with French respirators. In fact, some of the civilians who resided in the British fighting zone of the Western Front were not only given British masks but received anti-gas instruction from British officers as well. The British army arranged meetings with local medical practitioners and officials to instruct them in the rudiments of effective anti-gas discipline while local British Expeditionary Force (BEF) depots were stocked with gas masks ear-marked for the local French and (where appropriate) Belgian civilians. ⁷⁴ According to the surviving French evidence, the British took their additional responsibilities very seriously. A continuous surveillance of civilians was put in place and particularly vulnerable sections of the local population were singled out for additional concern, support, and even control. By supporting and protecting French civilians, the two allies’ gas soldiers, arguably, came the closest they ever did in fulfilling an integrated role in the gas war.

The two nation’s gas services and the leaders of the British Special Brigade and the French ‘Z’ companies maintained close liaison throughout the gas war. Both armies’ models of anti-gas discipline benefitted from this open, co-operative relationship. ⁷⁵ But however close the collaboration was, the two allies never reached the point of integrating common equipment throughout their armies. This applied to gas masks in particular. Although French troops were supplied at times with British masks, neither side formally adopted their ally’s equipment as standard kit. Nor was there ever agreement over a common design and specification of mask that could be manufactured by both countries and adopted by their armies.

The shortcomings of early models of allied masks were exposed at jointly attended demonstrations such as those held at Cannock, Staffordshire, in December 1915, but both armies pressed on with improving their own ranges of anti-gas equipment. ⁷⁶ During 1916, the British introduced the Small Box Respirator (SBR) which became the British and Commonwealth armies’ standard service gas mask for the remainder of the war, while the French continued to develop ever more sophisticated respirators and associated equipment. ⁷⁷ But behind the spirit of co-operation, there clearly lingered strong partisan loyalties. The leading British gas soldiers, Foulkes and Thuillier, regarded the SBR as the outstanding respirator of the Western Front because of its effective protection and simplicity of use. At the same time, Thuillier did not conceal his criticism of French respirators. ⁷⁸ For their part, the French, who had evaluated the British masks in great detail, were convinced that by progressive research and development, they had created the finest and most efficient allied gas masks. In an exchange of correspondence between the French Armaments Minister and Marshal Foch in October 1918, the minister pointed out that while the British (SBR) mask was efficient and possessed few defects, its maximum duration of use did not compare with the French A.R.S. respirator which could be worn continuously for 28 hours (Figures 1 and 2). ⁷⁹

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

A profile photograph of a British Army Lance Corporal being fitted with a small box respirator (c. 1917, location is unknown).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Appareil Respiratoire Spécial (ARS).

When that same month General Sir J. P. du Cane, Chief of the British Military Mission, had offered the French army more British respirators, Foch, though grateful for the offer, pointed out that his own army had more effective French gas masks and would be sending them to the British instead. ⁸¹

On a side note, although levels of British and French co-operation in the field of anti-gas warfare appear to have been under-estimated in existing studies, it is not clear how regularly or extensively the allies shared their gas casualty statistics. That the exchange of information was probably patchy is, arguably, inferred from British efforts to obtain further data immediately after the war. The British Gas Service was clearly concerned to know how their army’s anti-gas discipline, as measured by the casualty statistics, compared with their allies. ⁸² While no exhaustive or even comprehensive comparative surveys appear to have been undertaken, a report from the Director of Gas Services dated 3 February 1919 contained detailed statistical comparisons with French gas casualty experience via their armies’ exposure to two major types of enemy chemical attack: cylinder and projector assaults. Even making allowance for the more limited scope of this report, the results are nevertheless revealing. ⁸³

Explaining the apparent concurrence of the French and British armies’ levels of anti-gas discipline as indicated by the casualty statistics is complicated by many factors, not least because the two allies prosecuted their respective gas wars in what appeared to be a wholly self-contained fashion. Was the similarity in their overall gas casualty rates largely a co-incidence or was there a hidden dimension to this convergence of experience? One possible line of explanation concerns the contribution of an evolving programme of bi-lateral anti-gas co-operation initiatives which began at the start of the chemical war and which informed both armies’ defensive gas warfare efforts.

IV. Franco-British offensive gas warfare co-operation

In the introduction to this examination, reference was made to Lepick as one of the few historians to comment on Franco-British co-operation during the gas war. He appears to state a self-evident truth when he maintains that at the operational level, there was no co-operation between the two major Western Front allies. ⁸⁴ If by co-operation, Lepick means integrated participation by British Special Brigade and French ‘Z’ Company gas soldiers on the battlefield, then he is clearly correct. As was stressed earlier, the two allied armies fought their own, largely geographically delineated, Western Front war with their own troops and their gas offensives were no exception to this pattern.

Indeed, it is possible to develop Lepick’s point further and suggest that there was, in fact, negative operational co-operation – at least for a time. This can be defined in this context as the impact of the control or intervention of one ally being counter-productive to, or even destructive of, the other ally’s efforts. But how could one reach such a conclusion? To do so, it is necessary to explain the broader military relationship between the two allies that existed at the start of the gas war and in particular the implications of the operational imperatives that the French High Command imposed upon the BEF. Recent assessments of Franco-British Western Front military relations have drawn attention to the central problems. William Philpott, for example, has argued that had the French been less authoritarian and more conciliatory, allied strategic co-ordination could have been strengthened and military effectiveness improved. ⁸⁵ For the French, however, there was ultimately the wider strategic picture in which they saw themselves in overall control of the Western Front with all of the related responsibilities for civilians and service personnel alike. ⁸⁶ This had problematic tactical battlefield implications however, especially when the first allied gas cloud attacks were being planned. The French C-in-C reminded the British commanders that as the gas attacks were on French territory, they reserved the right to fix not only the dates but even the precise timing of attacks. ⁸⁷ The damaging consequences of such rigidity were painfully experienced by the British Special Brigades in their first gas attack at Loos in September 1915 where last-minute changes in weather conditions should have resulted in the operation being aborted. Instead, the British commander obediently and mechanically followed the binding, jointly agreed timetable. ⁸⁸ Inflexible co-ordination imposed by French Headquarters from above was no substitute for adaptive co-operation on the ground. Indeed, the tragic episode at Loos could qualify as an example of negative offensive co-operation between the allies. So too, perhaps, could one aspect of the aftermath of the battle.

Almost as a quid pro quo to the French High Command’s ultimate responsibility for the consequences at Loos was the disingenuousness of the British in their subsequent reports of the attack to their ally. What the French command were told about the effectiveness of the Loos gas attack was clearly at odds with the facts. In a report issued on 7 October 1915 by British HQ titled ‘A Preliminary Note for the French Mission on the Gas Attacks by the First Army’, it was claimed – contrary to the evidence – that the physical effect of the British gas at Loos was telling while the combined impact of the gas and smoke on the German infantry during the main thrust was considerable. ⁸⁹ But a British infantry witness to the attack confided in his diary that the battlefield was a shambles, adding, ‘There appeared to be [British] bodies everywhere’. ⁹⁰ Few historians today would disagree with Donald Richter’s assessment that the first British gas attack at Loos was a costly failure with over 50,000 casualties of whom 2,639 were gas victims, seven of them fatal, during the first three days of the offensive. ⁹¹

However, it would perhaps be premature to conclude from the experience at Loos that Franco-British offensive gas co-operation had been seriously compromised. Despite the misleading battle assessment information in the report sent to the French command, the British account in other respects was accurate, informative, wide-ranging, and detailed. The report explained the work of the special gas companies, British methods of gas cylinder storage, the role of the army’s meteorological section, and an explanation of how smoke discharges were to be incorporated in the attack. ⁹² It is important to stress, moreover, that blatantly inaccurate and misleading reports exchanged between the allies during the gas war were very much the exception rather than the rule.

At the wider level, the efforts of the British in support of the French army’s gas operations in 1915 (and beyond) do not seem to be in doubt. Contact had been established between Foulkes, the head of the newly created British Special Brigade, and Colonel Ozil his French opposite number. ⁹³ Even at the time of the earliest allied gas assaults on the German army, the interchange of research, development, and operational information; the exchange of new tactical ideas; and the mutual evaluation of weaponry characterized Franco-British offensive gas war co-operation.

And at the highest level of the allied command, there were propitious developments in December 1915 which affected allied troops in general and their dedicated gas soldiers in particular. On the 2nd of the month, Joffre became C-in-C of all French armies and de facto leader of the allied coalition while Haig was appointed C-in-C of British forces in France on the 10th. ⁹⁴ In between the dates of these two key appointments, the Chantilly conference addressed the problems associated with the lack of allied unity – which, arguably, in part contributed to the Loos fiasco – while focusing on the groundwork for a closer co-ordinated allied offensive. ⁹⁵

Co-operation at all levels, other than integrated battlefield participation, underpinned the allied gas offensive as both armies attempted to maximize the impact of poison gas on the battlefield. ⁹⁶ Quite apart from the extensive exchange of poison gas, there was also the limited but significant use by both armies of each other’s gas weaponry and munitions. And after each major gas attack, there were the often detailed evaluative battlefield reports that were then exchanged. But to return to a point raised in the introduction to this article: as has been argued, allied offensive co-operation in the gas war took many indirect, if nevertheless important, forms other than the immediately obvious one to which Lepick refers in his book. ⁹⁷

V. Conclusion

This study has explored a largely neglected but revealing area of Western Front gas warfare: Franco-British co-operation. At the beginning of the discussion, three major areas, representing the core of this investigation, were identified for critical examination. To interrogate the empirical evidence, three broad questions were posed concerning the openness, the comprehensiveness, and the effectiveness of this bi-lateral co-operation.

Examining co-operation in the wider war, Elizabeth Greenhalgh in her (2007) article has concluded that when France and Britain did co-operate conspicuously, it was in ‘less vital’ areas such as finance and coal imports. ⁹⁸ The present investigation has emphasized the significance of the French and British efforts as constituent parts of a co-ordinated, substantially resourced, allied undertaking. What emerges from this examination is that, following the German introduction and continued use of poison gas, a largely common pattern of response and adaptation characterized the two allies at the organizational, operational, and resource provisioning levels.

What has been argued in this examination is that the two armies exchanged personnel on a number of levels while jointly conducted experiments and field demonstrations took place regularly in both countries. A revealing manifestation of the liaison between the two gas services can even be seen at the level of institutional nomenclature with the mutual adoption of organizational terms. ⁹⁹ Perhaps the most comprehensive and successful element of allied co-operation concerned the production and distribution of poison gasses. Just how far France and Britain had progressed towards adopting a much more integrated framework and attempting to formalize their gas war liaison has been discussed with reference to the 1918 proposals to create a supra-national organization which would have had coordinating and even directional powers. ¹⁰⁰

A complicating dimension of the gas war for both France and Britain in their ‘joint’ management of the new chemical menace, but more geographically challenging for the French, was the threat to civilians. For the French authorities, the danger to civilians posed by the coming of the chemical war created additional responsibilities and anxieties, the implications of which may have restricted their freedom and weakened their resolve to exploit offensive initiatives. When in 1915 the French and British agreed, for ‘humanitarian reasons’, ¹⁰¹ to ban the use of phosgene and what was then considered to be the most dangerous chemical substance of all – prussic acid gas – it is likely that the safety of French and Belgian civilians was one of the considerations. While such a prohibition would appear to strengthen French ambivalence in the gas war, it should, nevertheless, be pointed out that in the face of the critical military situation the following year at Verdun and at the Somme, the French (and British) bans were overturned. Indeed, both gases were used against the Germans in 1916. ¹⁰² But evidence of French uneasiness can be found even during the final year of the conflict. The willingness of French representatives at a Red Cross conference early in 1918 to respond favourably to a German government offer to abandon the use of chemical weapons provoked an angry response from the British. ¹⁰³ After what may have been some internal misunderstanding or disagreement among officials, the French retracted their offer. Their government eventually decided that there would be no formal response to the German offer while judgement on the matter was to be left, as the Foreign Ministry explained, ‘to the public conscience’.

An important purpose of the investigation was also to explore and qualify the limits of Franco-British gas war co-operation. Direct battlefield integration was clearly a major limitation although this needs to be qualified in view of the importance of related indirect sources of co-operation. Allied co-operation was adversely affected by residual rivalry which manifested itself in both specific and general terms. The general reluctance of the French and British to integrate equipment common to both armies has been assessed at both the defensive and offensive levels, although exceptions to this pattern have been commented upon. Greenhalgh in an earlier (2000) related study examined the limitations of Franco-British co-operation with specific reference to the tank. She points out that although the French were interested to complement their lighter tanks with heavier British models, the British were reluctant to expedite co-operation, the war ending before any significant progress had been achieved. ¹⁰⁴

Although vestiges of earlier rivalry and chauvinism persisted, this study has concluded that in the allied gas war, France and Britain were more than ‘allies of a kind’. ¹⁰⁵ Despite minimal, limited, or indirect co-operation in the phases of friction, greater opportunities were created or as the French say ‘un mal pour un bien’. For example, in conducting their own/separate research for national interest reasons or otherwise, French chemists Lebeau and Urbain had stumbled across phosgene. ¹⁰⁶ Similarly, although the French started their sustained research into mustard gas later than the Germans, when it came to the production of the gas, they excelled themselves because they succeeded in creating a production method which was no less than 30 times faster than that used by the Germans. ¹⁰⁷ This expertise was shared with their British and American allies as argued above.

This discussion has attempted to complement what has been a very fragmentarily assessed aspect of the Great Gas War. While acknowledging the many limitations within the process and the tensions and problems that occasionally arose, it has drawn attention to how wide-ranging and mutually beneficial Franco-British gas war co-operation in fact was, even though much of that mutual support was of an indirect nature.

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