100 Kiwi Stories from WWI: Gas victim died 4 days after peace

New Zealand soldiers wear gas masks during a gas alert at Ypres Salient in 1917.

Alfred Speedy was gassed just before Armistice; masks offered protection ‘in name only’

13 Peacetime casualty

Alfred Lloyd Speedy's name was drawn in the conscription ballot on January 13, 1917. He boarded the Tofua in April, served as a rifleman for 18 months, and was gassed in France on November 2, 1918. The Great War ended just nine days later.

Sixteen million soldiers and civilians had been killed. When Private Speedy died on November 15, he left behind brothers Tristram, Bob and Frank, all of whom served, plus family in New Zealand. He had survived for just four days of peace, and was buried at Etaples Military Cemetery in Pas-de-Calais.

Chemical warfare has continued in the years since, from Shanghai to Yemen to Kurdistan. New Zealand had no problem using gas against its enemies in Turkey and Belgium. Nor did the other allies.

"It will surprise many that it was the French who first deployed gas in World War I," says Papakura Museum historian Kara Oosterman.

She says gas masks handed out to the troops offered protection in name only. Cotton pads dipped in bicarbonate of soda were the first masks handed out when the French unleashed chlorine gas. Soldiers had to hold them over their faces. Later, balaclavas with celluloid eye pieces merely absorbed the gas, clinging to the skin, dissolving into sweat and burning it.

In an emergency, soldiers were advised that holding a urine-soaked cloth against their face would do.

Owen Wilkes of the Centre for Peace Studies at the University of Auckland studied New Zealand's position on chemicals. It began in 1845 when imperial forces attacked Hone Heke, lobbing "stench balls" at Ohaeawai Pa. These were empty shell cases holding an unidentified poison.

By the time of the Battle of the Somme in September 1916, New Zealand was facing tear gas attacks as well as phosgene, which killed within hours. New Zealand used phosgene itself, in shells, instead of spraying canisters. Allied propaganda about the barbarity of German gas use was played down when the Allies realised gas' effectiveness.

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