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Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Very good essay. I’ve always found the poem stunning. Owens was killed several days before the armistice. His parents were notified on November 11.
Wilfred Owen’s poems were used by Benjamin Britten in his 1962 War Requiem. Although the passage above was not used, here is an example of Britten weaving Owen’s text within the traditional Latin Requiem:
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The only deterrent to the NBC threat is to say, “Yeah? Our schmegma is way worse than your schmegma. I would add a Trumpian “Sad.” But we’re dealing with the real world, here. It’s not sad if it prevents a single US troop or civilian giving up his last coughing up blood and sputum; worse, a civilian watching his kids go first via this vile tactic.
I’d…do a lot to keep that from happening.
Just a comment with respect to the precise nature of the first German gas attack at Ypres Belgium in April 2915. The gas wasn’t fired from artillery projectiles or bombs, but was rather released from hundreds of gas cylinders near the front of the German line. The wind conditions were such that that the gas (it was chlorine gas) would drift over to the Allied front line which it did. The primary recipients of the attack were in fact French Senegalese colonial troops and parts of the British expeditionary force. The Germans had already used tear gas against the Russians on the eastern front before this, but this was the first use of a truly deadly agent.
Yes, the attack experienced by Owen happened later.
Back in 1985 as a second lieutenant in the final weeks of our 6 month Basic School class, we conducted an attack using full MOPP gear (carbon impregnated outer garments, gas mask, hood, etc.). We were pretty well trained at that point and highly motivated to do the attack well.
I learned that an attack in a chemical environment is a really bad idea. Defense isn’t so bad, but an attack is a disaster in the making. You can hardly see or hear anything. We had an advantage over our Warsaw Pact counterparts who could not drink water while suited up and masked, and their suits didn’t breathe at all. Most of their infantry in an attack would die of heat stroke, to be sure.
I also didn’t like how they trained us to unmask. It’s not well publicized, but if your unit is not in contact with someone with chemical detection gear, and you need to unmask, there was actually a published procedure to adhere to. Step one, identify your least valuable Marine. Step two, take away his weapons. You can imagine the rest.
There’s no way in hell I could ever do that — not because I can’t stomach it, frankly I could because I’d never try it if I weren’t 100% sure it was safe. The problem is that there is no way your men would ever trust you again. The remaining step was to transfer that Marine to another unit (I hope).
Chemical warfare is a nightmare, even if you’re properly equipped. It’s hellish if you’re not.
Drinking out of a canteen while masked and in full MOPP gear was especially fun. As I recall, the story was that Soviet suits were designed to stand up to the nastiest stuff longer, where we planned on moving out of the slime and getting decontaminated before the chemicals wore through our more bearable but less durable suits.
“Nightmare, even if properly equipped,” absolutely! I will always remember signing into my unit in Korea, at Camp Casey in 1990. I asked the supply sergeant why there was not blue dot, designating a training set, on the un-packaged MOPP suit he issued me. “Sir, we don’t have practice suits here.” I slept every night in Korea with my mask next to my bed. If the siren went off and changed from “alert” to “gas” signal, stumbling around in the dark would have been a poor choice.
My first platoon sergeant had a theory that the inventors of particularly lousy military equipment were all on a tropical beach, sipping Mai Tais and laughing at us. The head of the crew was universally agreed to be the man who invented the chemical protective overboots:
These caught on everything and picked up mud like no other footwear. They were designed to be single use. Useless was more accurate.
I am still stunned that at the height of the Cold War the filters were internal to the mask! That is, they could not be changed without taking off the mask.
Only after the Soviet Union collapsed did we get serious masks with external filters that spun on/off.
As I recall, the drill was:
Take several deep breaths. Hold it. Spin off the old filter canister. Break seal off new canister. Spin on. Exhale strongly to clear the seal. Go back to your business.
Looking this up, it appears the Defense Department moved on to yet another, better mask system, which I did not get to try out before my retirement in 2016. Imagine my disappointment.
My fathers uncle served in France during WWI with the 318 th Engineers. He was gassed, the story being he shared his mask with a wounded buddy. My father said that he was never “right” after that. In the old man’s draft for WWII he was noted as disabled.
So, whatchyew doin’ after the chem attack?