Hello I'm James Rogers and this is the history hit World Wars podcast in this episode first recorded for Dan Snow's history here

Dan explores the birth and development of chemical warfare during the first world war at points Dan even draws in his own family history to describe

those terrifying scenes when the mists of gas first rose across the bloody, muddy

trenches of the First World War. The use of chemical weapons started with the French

throwing grenades of tear gas and quickly progressed to the Germans using chlorine gas.

Now one of the biggest of these attacks began on the 22nd of April

1915 and it included 160 tons being deployed against the German foe. By the end of

the war over 130,000 tons of chemical weapons have been deployed by both

sides and since then the use of chemical weapons has not disappeared the precedent

was set and even today with all our laws and the use of force in

war and our weapons conventions we still see chemical weapons like saring gas deployed on

innocent civilians in places like the Syrian Civil War.

As such, Dan provides us with a personal reminder of the continuing and indiscriminate horrors

of war. Gas, quick boys, an ecstasy of thumbling, fitting the clumsy helmet just in time.

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

and floundering like a man in fire or lime.

Dimmed 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.

These are memorable lines written by the First World Warper Wilfred Owen

about a gas attack here on the Western Front.

And it's not certain that Wilfren Owen actually ever witnessed one for himself,

...