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Remembered Today:

Was gas used in Salonika?


gatenby

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My grandad was in the ASC and was in Salonika for one year and 212 days. I know he was discharged in 1918 as "No longer fit for service" and he had gas poisoning. I have a photo of him in 1917 in Malta (posted in the soldiers forum.) I am trying to work out when and where he got gassed. He was in ASC T4 as a mule driver. He enlisted in the TA (RAMC) before the war started in 1914 but I am uncertain of his movements. I thought he went to France with the 5th division BEF but after that I have been unable to trace anything.

Can anyone tell me if gas was used in Salonika? I have read a couple of war diaries that suggest it was. Thanks for any help.

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Yes it was. The Gardeners of Salonika says that the Bulgarians first used gas in the Spring of 1917, when a heavy barrage was laid against British lines, but doesn't give the impression it was ever in common use by either side.

The Bulgarians could be very accurate with their shelling. No 1 position of 97th Anti-Aircraft Section at The Commandant - near Gokcelli - was shelled on several occasions on 18th and 19th September, 1918, and the men were forced to wear their masks for several hours at a time. This is the only record I've found of gas being used for counter-battery work on AA guns but the Diary records that any move by them to fire resulted in a new fall of shells. Strange, then, that this counter-offensive should occur only just before the collapse of Bulgarian resistance.

Keith

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I wonder whether you could tell whose gas you were trying not to breathe? I don't suppose the contents were identical so it's conceivable that the smell was different for each country's products.

Keith

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This may help

quote;

In mid-March 1917, a month before the EEF’s gunners subjected the Gaza defenders to poison gas, the Germans conducted a chemical bombardment on British trenches at the Salonica front. Macedonia, where British and French armies fought alongside Serbian troops against the Bulgarian army and against German and Ottoman formations, is not ordinarily incorporated within the boundaries of the classical Middle East. However, during the First World War the British considered it part of their eastern Mediterranean theatre, treating it conceptually and practically as their fifth front there (along with Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and Persia, Egypt and Palestine, and Aden). In the course of three nights the Germans fired about 15 000 asphyxiating shells on a small sector of British trenches, inflicting about 113 casualties, of whom only one died. Apparently, the advanced gas masks that replaced an older model only a month earlier had done their job. German and Bulgarian chemical harassment fire, with deadly poison and tear gas, directed mainly against artillery batteries, continued to the end of the war, causing their temporary neutralization. Like General Murray in Palestine, General George Milne, commander of the British Salonica Army, also considered chemical weapons a force multiplier to be employed for destruction during the decisive battle. Therefore, he refrained from using such means beforehand, instead building up his chemical stocks. This time arrived on 14 September 1918, with the decisive Anglo-French offensive (several days prior to the final EEF offensive in Palestine). On that night British artillery fired no fewer than 37 000 chemical shells, most of them of a deadly asphyxiating kind. This was an impressive amount, even by Western Front standards, and it achieved significant results by silencing Bulgarian artillery and neutralizing enemy troops in their trenches (the hundreds of prisoners taken suffering from chemical symptoms testified to the bombardment’s efficiency). The offensive, much assisted by the poison gases, ended successfully with a truce after two weeks, followed by Bulgaria’s retirement from the war. Salonica was, therefore, the first and the last front in the eastern Mediterranean where chemical weapons were used during the First World War. It took only some months for the issue of British employment of such weapons to surface again, this time against the Bolsheviks in Russia and against tribes and groups that rebelled in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the north-western front in India. But these events deserve an entirely separate article.

© 2005 SAGE Publications. From 'The Chemical Dimension of the Gallipoli Campaign: Introducing Chemical Warfare to the Middle East' by Dr.Yigal Sheffy in War In History 2005; 12; 278

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Thanks for this. I need to digest it all and see where I can go from here. Dispelling some of the family myths and assumptions can be difficult. I myself has made an assumption that is incorrect, from the medal card, so it is not surprising that family stories get "embroidered" down the line. Thanks for all the info.

Caroline

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  • 7 years later...
  • 11 months later...

My Grandfather was gassed in Salonika, he was in Royal Engineers, a driver according to his MIC.

He landed in France but was transferred to Salonika at some point.

From what I've read, it is possible it was British gas that got him, due to miscalculation of wind direction when gas was released?

Don't know where this occurred or unit and division at present.

He survived the war, but suffered ill health for remainder of his life.

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Hi Charlie,

If you post your Grandfathers details, name and number, in the Soldiers sub forum, you may attract the attention of a forum pal who specialises in the RE. The RE numbers were allocated in blocks often to a single unit so it should be possible to find out which unit he was in. From that you can probably work out where and when the gassing incident took place. 

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  • 1 year later...

"On the breakthrough of Thessaloniki Front, on September 5, 1918, the attack on the mountain range Veternik in Macedonia began. In this difficult battle a large number of soldiers from Serbia became blind as a result of gas poisoning .After the battle, all blind war invalids were gathered at the Institute in Belgrade for rehabilitation and vocational training for their life. In the period 1923-1925, 37 blind war veterans with their families temporarily settled the Novi Majur hermitage..."   Part from Serbian newspapers..so gas was there definitely,German or Allied friendly fire dont know..

 

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