“One of the dugouts is full of corpses with blue faces and black lips. In one of the craters, the recruits took off their gas masks too early; they did not know that gas lasts a particularly long time near the ground; when they saw people upstairs without gas masks, they also took off their masks and managed to swallow enough gas to burn their lungs. " Erich Maria Remarque "All Quiet on the Western Front."
New weapon
The world's first gas attack was launched by German forces on Ypres (Belgium) on April 22, 1915. To fight the enemy, the Kaiser's troops initially used chlorine. After waiting for a favorable wind, a specially created chemical squad opened several hundred gas cylinders secretly delivered to the front - and a heavy, suffocating cloud slowly flowed towards the enemy trenches. Two French divisions were forced to retreat in front of new weapons. Their allies, the Canadians and the British, also suffered from suffocating gases, but by some miracle they managed to hold the front. During this attack, more than 15 thousand people were poisoned, of which five thousand died on the spot.
A month and a half later, near Warsaw, on the Ravka River, near the town of Volya Szydlovska, the Germans conducted a chemical attack against the Second Russian Army. The Russian command mistook the approaching cloud for the enemy's smoke screen preceding the offensive, in connection with which the reserves were urgently pulled up and the forward line was strengthened. On that day, about eight thousand Russian soldiers were poisoned, of whom about two thousand died in terrible agony the next day.
Further attempts at gas attacks using cylinders turned against the Germans. The direction of the wind is changeable and unpredictable, and therefore the next gas attack literally bogged down: a suddenly changed wind carried the poisonous fog back to the German trenches, and hundreds of Kaiser's soldiers were forced to experience what they had prepared for their enemies.
Shooting Sheep
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Such uncontrollability of the weapon, terrible in its effectiveness, in no way suited the German command. An order was given: in parallel with the development of new poisonous components, make them work exclusively against the enemies of the Kaiser.
Very little time passed, and preparations for testing another miracle weapon designed to save Germany began at a huge artillery range. When everything was ready, Kaiser Wilhelm himself came to the bride, along with his entire staff.
Obeying a symbol, the soldiers rolled out the 77mm field gun and the heavy naval gun. The enemy was represented by a flock of sheep grazing on a hilly slope, just over one kilometer from the guns.
The field cannon fired first. The shell flew to the hill and exploded with an almost inaudible, dull pop. Then it was the turn of the naval gun. Neither shell hit the grazing herd, but after each shot, a cloud of yellow-green smoke rose from the top of the hill, and it was blown by the wind directly onto the sheep. “They were covered, like a veil, and when the cloud scattered, in the place where the herd was, nothing was left alive,” one of the eyewitnesses described what was happening.
In July 1917, echelons carried thousands of gas-filled shells to the Western Front. And their first test in a combat situation again took place on the Ypres River, from where the deadly filling of the shells got its name - mustard gas.
Dire consequences
The effectiveness of mustard gas was so great that it was called the "king of gases". The contact of mustard gas on the skin causes the formation of terrible blisters, which burst, turning into purulent ulcers that do not heal for several months. But the eyes are most sensitive to mustard gas. Even a small fraction of this poison causes inflammation and ulceration with consequent loss of vision. It is mustard gas that is to blame for those many thousands of columns of blind soldiers who wandered the roads of Europe for many years after the end of the First World War. However, the most terrible property of mustard gas - its ability to influence heredity - was discovered only in the early 1950s. Feeling the power of new weapons and trying to keep up with Germany, the Entente countries began the chemical arms race. France, England and Russia began to urgently prepare stocks of terrible poisons. The Americans did not lag behind, but by the time their development was completed, this war had already ended.
Geneva Protocol
“Infirmary for poisoned by gases. Blue, waxy, green faces, dead, acid-eaten eyes, wheezing, panting, agonizing people,”wrote Remarque bitterly, who himself had gas in the First World War. Soberly assessing the consequences of the use of poisonous substances, counting a million and a quarter of the dead, seeing tens of thousands of blind people coughing up their lungs piece by piece, Europe was horrified. In 1925, the so-called Geneva Protocol was signed on the prohibition of asphyxiant, poisonous or other similar gases and bacteriological agents in war. The USSR ratified the Geneva Protocol in 1928, making two reservations upon signing it: firstly, the protocol obliges the government of the USSR only in relation to the states that signed it, and secondly, the protocol will cease to be binding for the USSR in relation to any enemy state,whose armed forces will begin to use chemical weapons. And since the enemy was always at the gate, the production of chemical weapons on the territory of the USSR did not stop. The civilian population was constantly trained in case of a gas attack. Surely everyone remembers how unlucky Ostap Bender was, who lost his “golden calf” as a result of such exercises: “At that moment, a group of people in the same gas masks came running, and Koreiko could no longer be found among a dozen of identical rubber mugs. … A good voice said: “Comrade! You are poisoned! Who is poisoned? " - shouted Ostap, breaking free. “Let me go! Comrade, you are gassed! the orderly repeated joyfully. - You are in a poisoned area. You see, the gas bomb. "the manufacture of chemical weapons on the territory of the USSR did not stop. The civilian population was constantly trained in case of a gas attack. Surely everyone remembers how unlucky Ostap Bender was, who lost his “golden calf” as a result of such exercises: “At that moment, a group of people in the same gas masks came running, and Koreiko could no longer be found among a dozen of identical rubber mugs. … A good voice said: “Comrade! You are poisoned! Who is poisoned? " - shouted Ostap, breaking free. “Let me go! Comrade, you are gassed! the orderly repeated joyfully. - You are in a poisoned area. You see, the gas bomb. "the manufacture of chemical weapons on the territory of the USSR did not stop. The civilian population was constantly trained in case of a gas attack. Surely everyone remembers how unlucky Ostap Bender was, who lost his “golden calf” as a result of such exercises: “At that moment, a group of people in the same gas masks came running, and Koreiko could no longer be found among a dozen of identical rubber mugs. … A good voice said: “Comrade! You are poisoned! Who is poisoned? " - shouted Ostap, breaking free. “Let me go! Comrade, you are gassed! the orderly repeated joyfully. - You are in a poisoned area. You see, the gas bomb. "who lost his “golden calf” as a result of such exercises: “At that moment, a group of people in the same gas masks came running, and Koreiko could no longer be found among a dozen identical rubber mugs. … A good voice said: “Comrade! You are poisoned! Who is poisoned? " - shouted Ostap, breaking free. “Let me go! Comrade, you are gassed! the orderly repeated joyfully. - You are in a poisoned area. You see, the gas bomb. "who lost his “golden calf” as a result of such exercises: “At that moment, a group of people in the same gas masks came running, and Koreiko could no longer be found among a dozen identical rubber mugs. … A good voice said: “Comrade! You are poisoned! Who is poisoned? " - shouted Ostap, breaking free. “Let me go! Comrade, you are gassed! the orderly repeated joyfully. - You are in a poisoned area. You see, the gas bomb."
Death is near
The rest of the countries participating in the protocol, if they did not make such reservations, in any case had them in mind. The chemical race continued. 11 years after the meeting in Geneva, fascist Italy used more than 400 tons of blistering gases (including mustard gas) and 250 tons of phosgene in the war with Abyssinia. As a result, more than 15 thousand Abyssinians died. Chemical weapons were used in full swing in World War II, used by Japan against China, America against Vietnam and Korea …
Only in January 1993, a Convention was concluded in Paris, which not only prohibited the development, production and use of toxic substances, but also required the destruction of already accumulated reserves. The countries that accepted it had to inform the world community of all information about the available stocks of chemical weapons and begin to eliminate them.
From that moment on, mass media sources were filled with a series of scandals. For example, residents of the most elite district of the capital of the United States found out that their homes, located near the White House, literally stand on mustard gas. It turned out that once upon a time there were warehouses for chemical weapons manufactured during the First World War. In total, according to official documents, there are 215 zones in America where chemical warfare agents were previously stored (or are still being stored), produced or tested.
Of course, Russia did not stand aside. In it and in other CIS countries, according to archival data, there are more than 400 such "dead" zones.
Despite such a long shelf life, chemical warfare agents do not lose their properties - they are still deadly poisonous for any living creature.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №49. Author: Konstantin Karelov