First gas attack

On April 22, 1915, 150 tons of chlorine gas escaped from gas cylinders buried in the front trenches between Steenstrate and Schreiboom at Langemark-Poelkapelle. A thick white-yellow cloud drifted slowly across the front, suffocating everything and everyone in its path. To put it in military terms, poison gas was 'efficient', because it cleared the entire front in a relatively short time. But it was difficult to manipulate, because depending on the right wind direction and speed. Because chlorine gas was a completely new weapon of war, the army command in Tielt, the decision center for what happened on the German side on the front in Flanders, did not know what to expect. The weapon proved deadly effective. It punched a 7 km gap in the Allied front north of Ypres. Without much opposition, the German infantry followed in the wake of the gas cloud.

Dromos