Somewhere down the line, a dog starts barking ferociously.
You don't need any more warning than that, as you and the four men you were playing chess
with immediately rip at the canvas bag at your sides holding your gas masks.
In the fury to tear your gas mask over your head and secure it in place, you knock over
the worn and beaten chess board, sending the pieces to the muddy floor.
In a few moments, the dog's barking is muffled- its owner must have finally fitted a mask
to it after putting his own on in a hurry.
That dog's lucky, a few months ago the few dogs on the frontlines would be killed by
incoming gas attacks.
Thanks to their incredibly sensitive noses, these war dogs are capable of sniffing out
gas attacks a minute or two before the fog-like haze settles over the front lines.
Typically, the Germans blast the front with artillery shells modified to release dangerous
gases rather than explode on contact.
On days like today though, when the wind is blowing from east to west and is strong enough,
they can release the gas from directly outside their own trenches and have it blow across
no man's land.
The type of gas that might be delivered varied.
Sometimes it’s largely harmless tear gas, an irritant that served to suppress the enemy's
ability to fight back effectively.
This is typically followed by a massive assault across no man's land though, and the effectiveness
of gas masks in filtering the gas, as well as its non-lethal properties, made it less
and less appealing as the Great War ground on.
Germany would later claim that it began using chemical weapons in a bid to secure quick
victory, and therefore grant the world the mercy of a short war with few casualties.
Man's best intentions quickly went awry.
Tear gas quickly made way for three deadlier gases: mustard gas, phosgene, and chlorine
gas.
Chlorine gas could be easily spotted, if lookouts were actually paying attention, as it moves
across the battlefield like a sickly yellowish-greenish cloud.
During day attacks it gives plenty of warning, and allows men to quickly don their protective
gas masks.
For that reason, the Germans- and the Allies- quickly take to using the gas at night, where
it can't be as easily spotted.
Phosgene gas is chlorine gas's deadlier older brother.
It lacks the distinctive colorization of chlorine gas, making it harder to spot, and even worse:
symptoms would only set in a day or two after being poisoned.
All the warning you would get was the sudden smell of wet, musty hay, and then a day or
two later you'd be drowning in your own fluids.
Ironically enough though, the gas you fear the most is mustard gas- the most widely used
chemical agent of the war.
While Chlorine and Phosgene gas are deadly, and could cause havoc on the body internally,
there is a peace about knowing that if you were exposed to them, you'd likely soon die.
Mustard gas though doesn't come with such a guarantee, and is perfectly survivable.
Yet breathing it in would scar your lungs for life, leaving you permanently short of
breath.
The giant blisters it produces on exposed skin are not only plentiful and extremely
painful, but could also disfigure men.
And in the poor hygiene conditions of Europe's trench war, these blisters could burst and
become infected, leading to a protracted, terribly slow death to infection- or amputations.
Better to die relatively quickly then linger on in agony.
You don't know what kind of gas the germans are launching today, but you do your best
to protect as much of your skin as you can anyways.
You scramble, rifle in hand, to a pre-prepared fighting position along the massive trench
that has been your home for months.
Each man has their own slit in the trench, consisting of a slightly elevated position,
from where they could comfortably stand and fire at incoming soldiers.
As you do your best to sight down the barrel of your rifle, you scan the banks of gas clouds
for human figures- gas attacks of this sort are typically preludes to a massive attack.
It's summer, and the gas mask is stiflingly hot.
Your eye holes fog up constantly, and you have to try to breathe shallow to limit the
fogging so you can actually see out of your mask.
The gas washing over you terrifies you, and you're afraid to breathe at all now.
The smallest compromise in your mask will have you sucking in deadly air.
You hope that your charcoal filter will continue to filter properly, the constant humidity
of the muddy trenches can seriously compromise the effectiveness of filters.
You yearn to rip the hot, muggy, uncomfortable mask off your face, but you know that to do
so would be to invite certain death.
Instead, you'll sit and bear it for hours on end, until at last the all-clear is called.
That's of course if the Germans don't attack.
And that's when you hear it, the tell tale sound of hundreds of boots pounding the ground
in front of you.
There's no battlecry, no shouts from officers rallying their men forward.
The gas masks both sides are wearing make such feats impossible.
There's only the sudden roaring of hundreds of rifles on both sides- mostly yours- like
a freak thunderstorm sprung to life from out of clear blue sky.
Typically attacks are preempted by massive artillery barrages that can last for a day
or longer, and more than once you've had to hunker down for days on end as metal death
rained down all around you.
This time though, the Germans have aimed for a surprise attack, closely following the deadly
banks of fogs they silently released into the strong wind to cover their attack.
You fire your rifle at the incoming horde of enemy soldiers.
The Germans are too busy crossing no man's land to bother firing back.
Everyone knows that the only hope for victory is to cross no-man's land and dive into the
enemy's trench, and once there victory becomes a brutal hand-to-hand battle for survival.
Prisoners are rarely taken, retreat is impossible.
Tally too long in no-man's land or try to retreat across it, and the machine guns will
find you.
A fact the Germans are currently discovering.
You thank your lucky stars that the machine gunners along your section of trench were
quick to don their gas masks and are unaffected by the deadly vapors.
Of all the weapons of World War I, the machine gun is most responsible for the deadly stalemate
that runs the length of the European continent.
Spitting out hundreds of rounds a minute, the only way to silence it is to charge headlong
into its withering fire.
And yet just as effective as it is on the defense, it is all but useless on the offense-
the guns being far too bulky and difficult to carry across no-man's land.
Thus the Great War has devolved to suicidal rush after suicidal rush, the machine gun's
body count rising by the day.
Now withering machine gun fire from several positions strafes across the German advance.
Men fall under its fire by the dozens, and yet incredibly the charge continues.
The constant barrage of rifle fire is shockingly inaccurate, no surprise given the difficulty
in accurately firing a rifle while wearing a bulky gas mask, and in the rush across no-man's
land it's machine guns that claim most victims.
It's absolute lunacy, you think to yourself, to continue charging forward, into the teeth
of the big guns, even as you see dozens of your fellow soldiers fall before them.
Then again, what choice does a charging soldier have?
Retreating across no-man's land will leave them just as vulnerable as charging across
it.
Once you're up and over the top, there's only one way to live, and it's forward.
The first Germans are coming over the trenches, numbers too great even for the machine guns
to overcome.
Neither side needs much accuracy now in such close quarters, and the hot, fetid and poisoned
air in the trenches is now filled with acrid gunpowder as well as deadly gas.
The mixture creates a grayish fog that permeates the scene, adding a surrealness to the brutal
and often hand-to-hand combat that breaks out all across the front.
Men stab with bayonets or knives, their rifles largely forgotten and too cumbersome for the
close-in fighting.
You can't tell time in the thick of the melee, but your lungs are bursting with the exertion
of frantic breathing through your gas mask.
Fighting in such conditions, both sides can barely manage more than a few minutes of intense
combat before falling nearly completely exhausted.
Entire sections of trench will unofficially fall under enemy control briefly, both sides
simply too tired to keep fighting and desperate for a brief rest.
The machine guns took too great a toll on the incoming assault though, and the German's
numbers are low.
You spend the afternoon doing the grim work of killing in close quarters, and in the narrow,
tight confines of the stretches it is all too often the work of a butcher killing men
too exhausted to defend themselves anymore.
Some will be taken prisoner after surrendering, most simply won't.
You push away the consequences of your actions for now; those are for a living man to deal
with, and right now there's no guarantee on your life.
The battle over, the grim work of removing corpses must be attended to and quickly, the
trenches must be prepared for a fresh attack coming at any minute.
For now, German and Allied corpses alike are simply stashed in small cutaways along the
trenches, as defensive fortifications are fixed and manned, you and the rest of the
exhausted survivors preparing for a possible second wave.
As the hours pass and night comes though, it becomes clear that there's no stomach in
the Germans for another attack.
You're grateful, you've also no stomach for more bloodshed today.
At last the all clear signal is given for the gas, and after half a day struggling to
breathe through a mask caked with sweat and blood, you rip the thing off.
You thought you'd be careful before taking that first breath, the fear of lingering gas
still fresh in your mind- but you're so exhausted that you greedily gulp down the fresh air,
and despite the stench of gunpowder, the sickly-sweet smell of the dead, and the slightly nauseating
tinge of gas, that breath of air is sweeter than any you've ever tasted in your life.
The Germans might attack again at night, so you can never truly afford to let your guard
down, but whether they do or not, there are basic housekeeping duties to be done that
are necessary in the trenches.
Disease is already rampant in the muddy, unsanitary conditions of the trenches, there's little
need to aid it along so you and a detail of soldiers work to move the dead through the
network of trenches connecting yours to those at the rear.
Somewhere back there a graves detail service will separate the German soldiers from the
Allied soldiers, and give as best a burial as possible.
By the time you're done, you're too exhausted to even eat- but your work isn't done yet.
Your life depends on two key pieces of equipment: your mask and your rifle, and thus before
you can even think of getting a few hours of much-needed sleep, you set to the task
of maintaining both.
Your gas mask is relatively easy to maintain, and you check it thoroughly for tears.
You dry off the charcoal filter and do your best to keep it free of mud and excess moisture.
Your rifle though is a different affair, and requires a complex breakdown of its components
along with a thorough cleaning.
Until you arrived at the front you had no idea just how much of war is spent simply
cleaning one's weapon.
They certainly left that detail out of the heroic war stories you grew up listening to.
It's also important to tend to your feet though, not an easy feat.
As the war has dragged on, one of the greatest sources of casualties is the dreaded 'trench
foot'.
The trenches of Europe are routinely filled with water from runoff or rain, and your feet
are constantly submerged in muddy, fetid water.
The water rots away at the flesh, and if you don't take enough care of them, you'll find
yourself shipped back to the rear for a double amputation of your feet.
It's not easy, but you do your best to dry them as often as possible.
Exhausted by your post-battle maintenance though, it's finally time to retire for a
few hours of sleep.
You head into a small slit cut into the back of the trench, not much more than a hole in
the earth that is your personal sleeping place.
It's slightly elevated above the floor of the trench, so at least most of the water
runs out and down into the trench floor, but while the French and Germans enjoy entire
rooms cut into the earth, you don't get much more than this- a simple hole.
For you though, it is the height of luxury, and as your heavy eyes close, it's not long
before you're fast asleep.
If you're still curious about what went down in world wars, why not check out our other
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