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By Root 1841 0

silk, but in an enticing range of fashionable colours, and plain well-cut blouses in fine crêpe-de-chine – and in all the tasteful window displays there was hardly a frill or a furbelow to be seen. As a further inducement to bring customers into the store the whole event was to have a patriotic theme. In the restaurant the Royal Welsh Ladies Choir would give afternoon concerts, conducted by Madame Clara Novello-Davies, accompanied by her son Ivor Novello at the piano, and weary shoppers enjoying afternoon tea would be encouraged to purchase programmes and copies of the songs in aid of Queen Alexandra’s Field Force Fund. There would also be collections for the Red Cross and, as usual, demonstrations of bandage-making and a cutting-out service for flannel bed jackets suitable for wounded soldiers and expert staff would be on hand to give advice on the selection of knitting-wool and patterns for garments for the troops. It was all nicely judged to appeal to the frivolous and the dutiful alike.

When the call came for gas-masks Harrods had several samples made up within the hour and lost no time in replacing spring fashions in a window near the Knightsbridge entrance with a display of home-made gas-masks, showing step-by-step stages of production. Inside the store a special counter was hastily rigged up to sell the gauze, the cotton wool, and tape required to make them up according to War Office instructions and members of staff gave non-stop demonstrations to show the willing public how to go about it.

A face piece (to cover mouth and nostrils), formed of an oblong pad of bleached absorbent cotton-wool about 51/4in. × 3in. × 3/4in., covered with three layers of bleached cotton gauze and fitted with a band, to fit round the head and keep the pad in position, consisting of a piece of 1/2in. cotton elastic 16in. long, attached to the narrow end of the face pad, so as to form a loop with the pad.

These respirators should be sent in packages of not less than 100 to Chief Ordnance Office, Royal Army Clothing Department, Pimlico.

The War Office appeal for half a million gas-masks had been published in the national press and all over the country there was a run on gauze and cotton wool as Red Cross working-parties, schools, and tens of thousands of indignant individuals applied themselves eagerly to the task of making rudimentary gas masks for ‘the boys at the front’. The government hoped to be able to send a hundred thousand home-made masks to France within a week. Until they got there the boys at the front would have to manage as best they could.

Emergency measures had been quickly drawn up by the Director of Medical Services and sent out in priority signals to all units. Pending the arrival of gas-masks the troops were instructed to dampen any available piece of material – a handkerchief, a sock, a flannel body-belt – and tie it across mouth and nose until the gas passed over. They believed that a solution of bicarbonate of soda would be the most effective liquid to combat the fumes and Commanding Officers were instructed to obtain supplies locally and to have the solution made up and placed at intervals in buckets or biscuit tins along the trenches. In quiet sectors of the line this instruction was faithfully carried out. At Ypres, where the battle still raged and the ‘trenches’ were no more than scrapes in the wavering line, it was clearly impossible. Conceding this, the Director of Medical Services advised that, in an emergency, any liquid that was to hand would give some protection against gas fumes. The men in the line, correctly interpreting this suggestion in the personal terms it implied, felt that ‘to hand’ was a somewhat inappropriate choice of words. But whatever method they used to combat the gas the troops were told to hang on for dear life until the gas cloud passed over, to stand fast and meet the enemy as he came on. It could be done – and the Canadians had proved it.

Although it thinned and dissipated as it went, the gas had left its mark as it travelled. Grass turned yellow. Leaves shrivelled and died. Hens