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From: "Daryl Crabtree" <>
Subject: [AUS-VIC-West] WEST WIMMERA MAIL
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 09:54:43 +1100


May 14, 1915

The following report by a newspaper correspondent on the effects of the
inhuman German device of using poisonous gases in trench and artillery
warfare, gives some idea of what the men suffer--- He found the patients
propped up in bed with their faces, arms, and hands turned to a shiny grey
or black colour. Their mouths were open, and their eyes were as if they
had been glazed with lead. They were all swaying backwards and forwards,
struggling for breath. It was an appalling sight, and yet practically
nothing could be done for the men beyond giving them emetics. The gas fills
the lungs with a watery frothy matter which gradually increases and fills
the lungs, and the men die of suffocation in a day or two. Hundreds died in
the trenches, and half of those who reach the hospitals succumb. "Without
doubt" the correspondent declares, "the gas is the most awful form of
scientific torture".

Daryl Crabtree
Gladstone
Qld
www.ballaratgenealogy.org.au/goroke/
.


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