Of apes and men

The chimpanzee had come from a Belgian zoo. An iron collar was bolted round its neck. Two chains bolted to the collar led right and left to iron stakes hammered deep into the grass. It could move a few feet in any direction but no further. It sat eating an apple, occasionally tugging one chain or the other to test the limits of its freedom. A late winter breeze. One of the watching soldiers threw a stone which hit its shoulder. It leapt up and shrieked. The soldiers laughed.

“Nein!” the Hauptmann said. It wasn’t an order, just a request to have pity on the poor animal.

Other stakes had been hammered into the field with streamers attached to indicate the wind direction.

“Further back!” The officer waved an arm and the large group of men shuffled further from the chimp so they were 20 yards away. He beckoned to a truck parked at the edge of the field. It drove up to about five yards from the ape and two men wearing heavy lether aprons and canvas capes lowered a large cylinder to the ground. One man climbed back onto the tray, banged on the cabin roof, and the truck drove off. The man left behind strapped on an awkward-looking gas mask.

“He looks like a man from outer space,” one of the soldiers said. A few laughed.

“Silence,” the officer said abruptly. “Watch.”

The man adjusted the cylinder’s position and attached a long pole to the top. He stepped back, holding the pole so the cylinder was more than a yard away from him. He looked to the officer who glanced around at the streamers which all fluttered away from the soldiers and in the direction of the chimpanzee. He nodded.

The man twisted the rod which turned a valve on the cylinder. A cloud of green gas hissed out and expanded, blowing towards the chained animal. It bared its teeth at the gas, then tried to leap away but the chains jerked it back. The gas blew over it and there was a momentary pause, then the shrieking started.

After a few moments the officer called: “Halt!” The caped man turned off the gas. The remnants of the small cloud dissipated and blew away into the distant trees.

The chimp had been shrouded within the cloud. Even though there was now no sign of the gas, it choked for breath, clawed at its throat, vomited bile, and thrashed against the chains. It collapsed to the dirt, retched and gasped desperately; its eyes bulged and streamed tears and blood. It coughed foam, blood and bile, tried to scream but managed just an awful noise, its mouth and face distorted in pain. It jerked a chain, ripped one of the stakes from the ground, and leapt towards the caped man. He recoiled, but the ape stumbled and collapsed, thrashing in its chains, then stopped suddenly; its head jerked to the side and stared at the soldiers, crazed, foam oozing from its lips. It seized violently, every limb thrashing, making awful gagging noises, then it died.

The soldiers stared in silence.

“As you know, the gas is poisonous. It also combines with water in the lungs to create hydrochloric acid,” the officer said. “The acid quickly dissolves the lining of the lungs and the throat.”

“This is what will happen to you if you make foolish mistakes,” the officer said. “This is what will happen to our enemies if you act correctly. Now – back to training!”

……

François Bellot lay in the damp bunk, a hand behind his head, the other holding a book he was reading by the light of a candle. Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert. He sighed and put it down. Too much character exposition. He preferred things to happen. De Maupassant, Jules Verne, Dumas.

A rat poked its nose from behind the sack pinned across the dugout opening. He threw his tin cup and it scurried away.

“What are you doing?” Antoine Dubonnet, his dugout companion and fellow lieutenant moaned from beneath his coarse blankets in the other bunk.

“Rat.”

Antoine grunted. Of course it was a rat.

François threw the blanket off his legs, stood up on the dirty wooden floor and pulled on his boots.

“Time to check the lookouts.”

“Try not to wake me up again.”

“I’m sorry. The rat took me by surprise.”

“Since when have rats been a surprise?”

“I know. I know. At least I didn’t try to shoot it.”

Antoine grunted and lay back, shutting his eyes.

François pulled on his greatcoat and helmet, ducked through the dugout opening and into the deep trench. The dim first light of day. A guard stood nearby on a plank two feet above the mud, looking into a wooden box periscope. He turned and nodded at the lieutenant.

“Bonjour Éric. Ça va?” François said.

The soldier shook his head. Nothing was happening. He looked back into the periscope and scanned the shattered field of mud, shell holes, barbed wire, dead horses and rotting bodies.

“Rien.” Nothing.

Francois splashed along the trench, cracking ice on the surface of the sloppy mud. The sun was just starting to ease light into the sky.

A sniper’s shot cracked through the cold. He stopped and listened. No noise from ahead or behind to suggest anyone had been hit. Sometimes they just sent a bullet over to ensure the other side knew they were still there.

The Krauts had been quiet lately. It made him nervous, and he had twice sent notes to the rear asking if there was any build-up on the other side to suggest a new offensive. He had made sure his men used the quiet time to dig deeper defences and better hidden lookouts, and ensure their ladders were in good shape for the next time they were asked to go over the top. He hoped that day would never come, but he knew it had to, one day. At least the generals had sent more men to support his reduced troop so now they had enough strength to hold off an attack.

Like all the men, he dreamed of the next time they would be relieved and given a few days in the rear where there were cafés and girls and the sky didn’t explode in the night.

One of the men he knew well, Caporal Bertrand Collet – they came from the same village – was walking towards him.

“Bonjour Bertrand.”

“Bonjour monsieur. I am hoping to be the first one to the latrine this morning. Maybe it will still be frozen!”

“Good luck with that. Have you heard from your family?”

“My mother is worried. She thinks my sister might have tuberculosis. She is having nightmares that we both die and she is left alone.”

“Your sister is Angeline?”

“That’s right.”

“She was a pretty little thing when I last saw her.”

“Of course, and now she’s a pretty grown-up thing. Too pretty for her own good really.”

“Too pretty? Surely there isn’t such a thing?”

“Well, you know what men are like. I’m not there to protect her. Maman worries that she is too free and easy with the boys in Étoges.”

“I hope your maman is wrong about the tuberculosis.”

“Thank you Monsieur Lieutenant. I might keep going now, so I can be first.”

“Of course, of course. Bon chance!”

…

Markus Gietze stood by his first chlorine gas cylinder, one gloved hand holding the rod connected to the cylinder valve, the other held inside his woollen jacket. A cold evening breeze blew from the east. Perfect for blowing the gas across the French trenches.

His friend in the Pionier corps, Heinrich Glick, was twenty metres to his left. They each had five cylinders. He waved and smiled nervously. To Markus’s right, Gefreiter Gunther Schmidt stared sternly ahead. ‘He’s such a Prussian,’ Markus thought and also looked ahead.

Low grey clouds moved slowly above. The earth around them was slimy and smelt of rotting flesh. Every bombardment they suffered just added to the filth, throwing body parts everywhere - food for rats, tears for families back home.

“You get used to death and stench,” a medical orderly had said when he complained about the conditions on his first day in the terenches. “The lucky ones who are alive have lived with it for months. There’s not many of them of course. Death is an angry master here.”

They had trained for this for weeks. On the ground behind each man was a gas mask and protective canvas cape in case the wind changed unexpectedly. They were nervous, expectant, knowing the dangers, and the threat they posed to the French across No Man’s Land. The men they were fighting weren’t what they had been taught to expect when their generals had assured them the invasion would be over in a few months. They didn’t run at the first bombardment.

Markus found it hard to push out of his mind the shocking death of the gassed monkey. His main aim was to ensure the gas didn’t come near him, and he had practised over and over putting the mask on so he could do it as quickly as possible. He didn’t think about how it would affect the enemy. They were the enemy and if he didn’t kill them, they would do their best to come over and kill him.

He thought about the letter he had received the day before from his girlfriend at home in Mainz. She had reminded him of their walk along the banks of the Main before he left to join the army. She had let him put a hand inside her jumper and hold her breast, but nothing more. It had been a delightful moment but very frustrating. Often since then he had wished she hadn’t done that. It drove him mad thinking of it and of what he might have done and what he wanted to do the first chance he had when he got some leave.

‘She really has no idea,’ he thought, ‘what goes on in a man’s head. Still, I do enjoy her company…’

“Soldaten!” the commanding officer called out in the rear. “When the whistle blows!”

He grimaced and looked briefly at Heinrich who now stared ahead just like Gefreiter Schmidt.

The whistle blew.

…

François was walking back to his dugout after a briefing with the other junior officers. The generals had told them nothing. Maybe giving them no information was to make them feel better, and at least there was no plan to go over the top. Another day in the trenches, waiting for the next rain, the next barrage.

A soldier in a distant trench was playing Le Madelon on an accordion. A popular song about flirting with a waitress. It was a harmless dream and lord knows they needed happier dreams than those that drifted through the Ypres trenches.

The first explosion seemed a mile or so north, but the barrage slowly moved towards them. The men knew what was coming and crouched low in the trenches. Soon the shells were exploding around them. The game of chance. Live or die, depending on how German artillery engineers were directing fire, the trajectories of death or deliverance. Men screamed. Shells exploded, medical orderlies rushed about, stretcher bearers ducked by. The men huddled and hoped, most holding their hands over their ears to avoid not so much the noise as the bursting of eardrums if shells exploded too close. If the shrapnel was going to hit them, well, there was nothing they could do about that.

After about 20 minutes the barrage stopped. Officers bawled at the soldiers to man to the parapets, rifles and machine guns pointing towards the anticipated attack.

François heard whistles blow all along the German lines. Here it comes. He looked at his watch – 5pm. The French soldiers along more than a mile of trenches leant up on their barricades, waiting for the rush of bullets, of grey-coated men coming for their lives, the screeching sounds of war that would echo in their minds for the rest of their lives.

No sounds came from the German lines though. Nothing.

“Beysonnier,” François called to the soldier with the periscope. “What is happening?”

“Nothing. Just … smoke.”

“Smoke?” François stepped up onto the observation plank and Beysonnier handed him the periscope box. Green smoke billowed up from behind the German trenches, blowing towards them. Nothing else.

“What is it?” Beysonnier asked, spreading his hands wide.

Bellot frowned, handed back the periscope and stepped down into his dugout. Antoine had left his bed in a mess as usual. He had a manual somewhere about how to manage chemical attacks.

Somewhere nearby in the trenches a man screamed, then more, and more. Then awful noises – choking, gasping, gurgling. Francois pulled the sack aside and saw the green gas floating down over the edge of the trench. Beysonnier looked at him with a surprised expression, then dropped to his knees, choking, gagging.

Francois threw the sack back down, grabbed his water bottle, poured it on his blanket and wrapped the blanket round his head, pouring the rest of the water onto the blanket over his face as the gas seeped in through the dugout opening - a floating ghost reaching for victims.

A soldier collapsed through the sack door and hammered on the plank floor as he thrashed in his death throes. Other noises from outside haunted François’ sleep for the rest of his life – men dying in agony, killed by an unknown monstrosity.

He didn’t dare take the cloth off. What had the Germans unleashed?

He learnt only later that in the first line of hundreds of yards of trenches, only he and a man in the latrines had survived un-scathed. The other man had pissed on his scarf and held it over his mouth and nose. For both men it was an instinctive response. Neither actually knew that chlorine gas dissolved in water.

…

François only dared take the blanket off his head when he heard German voices in the distance and occasional gunfire.

He pulled aside the dead soldier and looked out of the dugout. All he could see was the bodies of French soldiers and rats. Some men had collapsed and not died, but these were desperate for breath, moaning, crying, begging for help with rasping voices. The green smoke was gone. He staggered along the frontline trench towards the communications trench which led to the rear, pushing aside the grasping hands of men desperate for escape from their pain. He couldn’t avoid slipping and stumbling on the bodies and limbs of the dead. He turned right into the communication trench, heading for the rear as fast as he could.

He tripped on a helmet and staggered, fell. German voices. He didn’t move. They would assume he was dead. Two men came out of a side trench, crossed the communications trench and continued to his left along the second row of trenches. He listened. Occasional shots, presumably they were killing men still alive. The voices faded. He started to rise but another German soldier came out of the side trench, holding a rifle. Markus Gietze.

François held up his hands to surrender. Markus blinked and stared. Death. All this death. Even the rats. And the staring bloody eyes, the distorted faces, the blood, bile, vomit, settling into the mud and filth, lives that now meant nothing, never to be seen again by their lovers, their children.

“F-français?” Markus stuttered. You are French?

“Yes, certainly.” Why did he not shoot, or take me prisoner? Is he stupid? Then a tear dribbled down the German’s cheek.

“Je suis désolé,” Markus said in his best German-accented French waving his arms and his rifle to indicate ‘all this’. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes, it’s terrible,” François nodded, looking nervously about.

“I’m sorry.” Markus sat down on a stoop, pointed his rifle at the ground.

“I am going…” François said and indicated his planned way down the communications trench.

“Yes, yes, go,” Markus said. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“We are just men, you know.” Apologising.

“We were,” François said. Somewhere in the past we were men. Before this.

“Yes…”

“They were men too…” François waved his arm. All the dead.

“Yes, they were…”

“Yes.”

“I have a girl…” Markus said.

“Yes.” François felt unable to move, as if Markus had a hold of him, as if his words would somehow be important.

“How can I tell her that I did this…?”

François struggled to think of words. Markus looked up, his eyes pleading for forgiveness.

“You did ­— this?” François asked. ‘This’ was surely unforgiveable.

“I did what I was trained to do. I opened the valves, the gas escaped. But this is not war, this is murder. Mass murder.”

François nodded. “We obey orders. This is what soldiers do. We are just guns and other people pull the trigger.”

“This is what soldiers do,” Markus repeated mechanically.

A noise in the side trench. They turned. A German soldier stumbled out, rifle first. He jerked to a stop, yelled, pointed his weapon at the French uniform. François screwed his eyes shut, expecting death. The shot was so loud in the silence.

He felt nothing, opened his eyes. The soldier was sprawled against the trench wall, his gun flung aside. Blood spurted from his chest then dribbled and stopped. Smoke drifted from the barrel of Markus’s rifle.

Markus looked up at François.

“Go!” he said quietly. “Run!”

…

At 5pm on April 22 1915 German engineering (Pionier) corps troops carried out the first large-scale chlorine gas attack of WW1 against French and Algerian troops during the Second Battle of Ypres. This was the first time poison gas was effectively used on the Western Front, causing the Allied line to collapse and creating a gap in the defences.