Poison Gas at Ypres

A companion to a classic article

Dec 11, 2024

Richard Jack *The Second Battle of Ypres*

In September of 1993, the ink-and-paper incarnation of The Tactical Notebook published an account of the use of chlorine gas on the first day of the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April 1915). As I prepared this piece for a return engagement, I discovered that a version of the article subsequently appeared, in April of 1994, in the pages of Military History Magazine. I also learned that, in 2006, the parent company of the latter publication, had placed the text of this second edition on its website.

The author of the piece, John P. Sinnott, and the publisher of the namesake of this newsletter, John J. Sayen, died some years ago. Thus, I have no easy way to prove my right to republish the article. What I can do, however, is make available those elements of the first edition that are missing from the second. These include maps, a list of sources, and an excerpt from Storm Troop Tactics that answers a question posed in the piece.

Situation on 22 April 1915 before the German attack against Pilkem Ridge

Sources Cited by Colonel Sinnott

Note: The links take you to the most accessible digital copy of the book in question I was able to find. (To download public domain books made available by the Hathi Trust, I use the elegantly elephantine Hathi Download Helper.)

Rudolf G. Binding (Ian F.D. Morrow, translator) A Fatalist at War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929)

Guy Chapman Vain Glory (London: Cassell, 1937)

Charles Howard Foulkes Gas! The Story of the Special Brigade (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1934)

Morris Goran The Story of Fritz Haber (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967)

L.F. Haber The Poisonous Cloud: Chemical Warfare in the First World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)

Max Hoffmann (A.E. Chamot, translator) The War of Lost Opportunities (London: Keegan Paul, 1924)

Erich Ludendorff Ludendorff’s Own Story: August 1914 - November 1918 (New York: Harper Brothers, 1919)

Pilkem Ridge

The following account comes from Chapter 2 of Storm Troop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914-1918 (New York: Praeger, 1989)

The German High Command had conceived of the attack on Pilkem Ridge as an attack "with limited objectives", the twin goals of which were the capture of the high ground itself and the testing of the new weapon. Because of these deliberately modest goals, the troops of the 51st and 52nd Reserve Divisions that had followed the gas cloud into the

French positions stopped as soon as they reached their objective even though there were no enemy combat troops between them and the city of Ypres. As a result of this lack of ambition on the part of the Germans, the Canadians holding positions south of Pilkem Ridge were able to scatter small detachments across the gap left by the routed French. By the next morning, the gap had been completely sealed and the subsequent attacks of the 51st and 52nd Reserve Divisions failed to make any headway against the Canadians.

By the standards of an "attack with limited objectives", the gas cloud attack at Ypres was a resounding success. The villages of Pilkem and Langemark, whose capture had eluded the War Volunteers in November of 1914, were in German hands. Two thousand Frenchmen and fifty-one guns were captured.

And the losses of the two Reserve Divisions which had suffered such casualties the preceding fall were insignificant; in the 239th Reserve Regiment (52nd Division), a few men were killed at the very end of the day by stray French shells, but no one was hurt by direct fire from the French positions.