Gas Hysteria

A new psychological disorder emerged in WW1, which was known as ‘gas hysteria’. Gas was seen by soldiers as a ‘horror’ weapon. It created a psychological trauma which outlasted and outnumbered the physical casualties. The war poet Wilfred Owen, who suffered from shell shock, captured the terror of a gas attack in his 1921 poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’.

Early British gas mask with a hood that covers the whole head.

One of the first anti-gas masks to be produced by the British in 1915-1916.

Brown leather gas mask with metal filterat front

German gas mask from WWI.

British Lewis Light Machine Gun team wearing gas masks in 1915-1916.

Dulce et Decorum Est – Wilfred Owen (1921)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

 

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

 

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Black and white photograph of Wilfred Owen wearing military uniform.

Notes:
Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”