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Tactics and Strategy
The German army, desperate to make advances on the Western Front, decided
to launch a chlorine gas attack against the Allies gathered at the Ypres salient.
They did this despite having signed the Hague Convention that forbade the use
of "asphyxiating gases." Although gas had been used by the Central
Powers before on the Eastern Front at the Battle of Bolimov, this was a more
wholesale use of the dreadful weapon. Not much was known about the true battlefield
impact of gas and even the Germans were unprepared for the devastation it would
cause to the Allied Algerians against whom it was directed.
In the afternoon of April 22, the Germans started a pulverizing bombardment that
went on for an hour. Then a green-yellow cloud slid from the enemy lines, clung
to the ground and seeped into the trenches of the 45th Algerian and 87th French
Territorial divisions that were hunkered down to the left of the Canadian Division.
Thousands of Allied soldiers died horrible deaths (some in neighbouring |
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trenches of the 13th Battalion Royal
Highlanders of Montreal), fled the battle or were incapacitated by the gas that
burned the moist tissues of their lungs, eyes and sinuses.
The gas attack temporarily burned a 6.4 kilometre gap in the Allied line. Had
the Central Powers been confident of the gas's |
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The
Second Battle of Ypres
Canadians and Algerians were the first victims of chlorine gas on the Western
Front. Despite the gas attacks, the Canadians resisted German advances.
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