"The term chemical weapon is applied to any toxic chemical or its precursor that can cause death, injury, temporary incapacitation or sensory irritation through its chemical action."
-Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
"As this great cloud of green-grey gas was forming in front of us, we suddenly heard the French yelling...but in a half mile, the bodies of French soldiers were everywhere. It was unbelievable. Then we saw there were some English... The hail of bullets going over our heads was unbelievable, but it was not stopping the gas. The wind kept moving the gas towards the French lines. We heard the cows bawling, and the horses screaming. The French kept on shooting....You could see where men had clawed at their faces, and throats, trying to get a breath. Some had shot themselves. The horses, still in the stables, cows, chickens, everything, all were dead. Everything, even the insects were dead."
-Willi Siebert, a German soldier who took part in the first chlorine gas attack during World War I, 1919
"Then passive curiosity turned to active torment – a burning sensation in the head, red-hot needles in the lungs, the throat seized by a strangler. Many fell and died on the spot. The others, gasping, stumbling with faces contorted, hands wildly gesticulating, and uttering hoarse cries of pain, fled madly through the villages and farms and through Ypres itself, carrying panic to the remnants of the civilian population and filling the roads with fugitives of both sexes and all ages.” |
"What we saw was total death. Nothing was alive."
-Willi Siebert, 1919
"...British campaign against communist guerrillas in Malaya, formally known as the Malayan Emergency. The Emergency lasted from about 1948 to about 1960, but the role of herbicides was important only after 1952-primarily in 1953 and 1954. During this period, the British used helicopters and, occasionally, fixed-wing aircraft to spray food crops in isolated gardens tended by the insurgents. However, the aerial spray effort was only one part of a much larger program designed to restrict supplies of food which could be used to support the communist insurgents. Because of the effectiveness of the British food control program, the insurgents, by late 1952, had been forced to withdraw from populated areas into deep jungle to cultivate their own food. Food production became the determining factor affecting their ability to survive."
-Excerpt from Operation Ranch Hand: The Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia 1961-1971