The Soldier at the Western Front – The Use of Poisonous Gas
Source 3: Diary of Otto Borggräfe
“Recently the French are longing for the Mont even more. At every time of the day they cover the whole area with shrapnels and the villages we hold are getting bombarded with grenades that are filled with sulfur and other chemicals and they produce poisonous gases.”
“So it happened yesterday and the day before yesterday in the evening. The day before yesterday my comrade Alfred Borstelmann and I went to Varneville and had washed ourselves. Afterwards we went to the church and visited the graves of the three causalities from our battery. In the moment when we stood on the churchyard a grenade hit the house on the other side of the street opposite to the church and died. The impact was devastating. A large gable wall partially crumbled. All walls inside were torn down. Half the roof came down. Stones and tiles flew everywhere and dropped even on the roof of the church. Alfred Borstelmann and I flew behind the church, when we heard the shell, and stayed unharmed.
When we latter got over to have a look at the house we could see that all the walls the whole inside and outside of the roof were covered all over with sulfur. Immediately after the explosion the whole village was filled with a disgusting sharp stench. It tasted intensely like sulfur and you could recognize that other gases had been mixed. But nothing happened due to this shot.
Something similar happened yesterday evening. Again we have been in tows at the well in Varneville when suddenly a sulfur grenade flew above us and dropped in the second house behind the well. To protect ourselves from flying slinters and stones we ran around the next corner and got away unharmed again.”
