3 - The First “Chemical Subjects”: Soldier Encounters with the Gas Mask in World War I

Summary

The third chapter utilizes soldiers’ writings to indicate that, contrary to the developers’ view of the gas mask as a life-saving device, combatants were more frequently frightened of both the appearance of the gas mask on others and the physical feeling of the mask against their own skin. While German tacticians hoped to craft chemically resistant soldiers through gas mask training, these newly envisioned “chemical subjects” continued to ruminate on the many ways in which masks could malfunction. Sitting in the trenches, soldiers largely feared both the uncoordinated and creeping nature of gas and the smothering feeling of their affixed gas mask. By examining the sensorial and metaphorical language in a wide array of soldier diaries, trench journals, and troop reports, this chapter seeks to construct the emotive experience of German World War I soldiers as they came to recognize their precarious role in a modern world now seemingly steeped in gas.