What does gas mask mean?

Answer 1

A gas mask is a mask designed to be worn over the face, covering the eyes, nose and mouth, and held on the head by straps. They were developed in WWI, when the armies began using poison gas to try to kill of disable the troops of the enemy. Gas at first was released from cylinders, when the wind seemed right to carry it to the enemy trenches, but this was unreliable and the wind could shift and blow the gas back over your own men. Very soon artillery shells containing gas were developed. When these began to land the "gas alarm" was sounded, and this was the signal to immediately put on your mask. It was difficult to breathe with one on, or to see out because the goggle part over the eyes usually swiftly fogged up from breath condensation, and the wearer often produced much snot and slobber. Exceedingly uncomfortable and claustrophobic, but better than getting gassed. You needed to be able to see well enough to fire your weapon, because frequently the gas was used as a prelude to an infantry attack. Between the world wars many nations built up stocks of poison gas, "chemical weapons", of just the type recently used in Syria by the government against the rebels, and used in the 1990s in Iraq by Saddam against rebels. So when WWII started everybody expected gas to be used, but nobody wanted to start it. Soldiers of most nations were issued gas masks because of the expectation they would encounter gas, and were trained to fight wearing one. There were several different models. None was comfortable. Many men in training were forced to run some distance gasping for breath through their masks, a genuinely unpleasant experience, and many were also exposed to a brief taste of some types of gas in a gas chamber, also memorable for bad reasons. In the UK civilians were issued gas masks at the time of the blitz. I know an old lady who was a school girl at the time, and a few years later she married an American GI and moved to the states. She still has her gas mask in its case, hanging on the coat rack in her living room. You wore the mask in its case over a shoulder by a strap, everywhere you went. As it turned out in WWII nobody used gas in combat, so at least that Horror of the first war was not repeated.