Mustard Gas at Coxyde, 22nd July 1917

At the very northernmost reach of the Western Front, the trenches were dug into sand dunes and beaches on the Belgian coast at, and near, Nieuwpoort, or as it was in 1917, known as Nieuport. A short distance west of Nieuwpoort lies the small town of Koksijde, which during the Great War was known by its French spelling, Coxyde.

Portrait of Alfred George Chambers from the de Ruvigny Memorial Roll of Honour

During the last weeks of July 1917, when much of the attention on the British Army in Belgium focusses on the preparations for the coming Third Battle of Ypres, the 1/8^th Leeds Rifles were occupying trenches close to the coast. The 49^th (West Riding) Division had been in the area only since 12^th July, after it had handed over responsibility for the Fauquissart sector to the Portuguese. The trenches at Koksijde formed a support trench network, and while occupying these trenches, the Leeds men were being used to provide working parties to support and re-supply the battalions holding the front-line trenches nearer Nieuwpoort.

Nieuwpoort was the place where many inland waterways and drainage dykes converged at the ‘Goosefoot’ sluice. The sluice was incredibly important to the entire Flemish region as, during peacetime, it had helped to regulate the water level across wide expanses of the Flanders hinterland and made the ground suitable for farming. When war came, it held an equally important role in the defence of this region of Belgium, when in order to arrest the advance of the invading German Army across Belgium, it was decided in October 1914 to open the sluice and allow the land to become inundated, denying the flooded area to the Germans.

Inundations in Flanders after the opening the Goosefoot Sluice at Nieuwpoort IWM Q37680

Almost three years later, the land was still flooded. The ground was difficult to defend, and it would be difficult to attack from, which explains why, though coastal territory was tactically very important, there had been no major offensive actions in this area during the war thus far. That said, there was planning underway for a major advance along the coast, combining a land offensive, supported by an amphibious landing at Middelkerke, which would then clear the Germans from the Belgian coast to a point beyond Zeebrugge. If successful, this advance would prevent the Germans from operating their submarine force from Belgian ports, and as the Netherlands was neutral, it would be forced to withdraw to their own North Sea naval bases of Wilhelmshaven, and Cuxhaven. This would mean that every time a submarine left port to hunt the open seas, it would have to pass through the Royal Navy cordon off Heligoland.

In the event, the operation to wrest the coast from German control did not materialise because of the failure, in this respect, of the campaign in the summer and autumn of 1917 in Flanders, the Third Battle of Ypres. Though the campaign began with promise, it quickly deteriorated under a conspiracy of terrible weather which put excessive pressure on troops and equipment that were already fatigued from the spring offensives around Arras and at Messines.

A ruined church at Nieuwpoort, 31st July 1917 IWM Q 3107

Around Nieuwpoort, the Germans had begun bombarding British positions on 6^th July, and gradually over the following days increased the intensity of the bombardment. British breastworks; defensive positions erected partially or wholly above ground level to avoid digging down into wet ground, had collapsed under the bombardment, and the working parties provided by the Leeds Rifles once they arrived in the Koksijde sector would have been partially employed on this work.

A Shell bursts in the Flanders Dunes near Coxyde IWM Q88013

The Germans were probing the rear areas as well with artillery fire, searching for the British Artillery batteries, and taking advantage of the steady coastal wind to carry poison gas into their positions. On the night of 21^st/22nd July, the Germans bombarded the British support lines area using a combination of high explosive and gas shells. The first barrage began at 9:00 pm, and was followed by others at 11:00 pm and 2:00 am, each lasting for half an hour. A higher concentration of high explosive shells in the first bombardment than gas shells led the battalion to believe that the gas shells were dud high explosive shells, and initially no anti-gas measures were taken because the expected smell of known gas types was absent. By midnight, men were beginning to suffer the effects of being gassed and the mistake was realised, but by that time it was too late as more and more men began to succumb to the effects. The first symptoms were pain in the eyes which soon turned into a conjunctivitis-like condition, followed by vertigo and nausea with vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhoea. By 7:00 am on 22^nd July, only four officers and forty men remained fit for duty, resulting in eighteen officers and 662 being evacuated to hospital.

One of those most seriously affected by the gas was Lance Corporal Alfred Chambers. While many men were able to return to the battalion within a couple of days after treatment and rest, Alfred Chambers required specialist treatment, and his evacuation would take him all the way back to 2^nd Canadian General Hospital at Le Tréport on the upper Normandy coast. Nothing could be done to save Alfred Chambers, and he died on 26^th July, being buried at Mont Huon Military Cemetery, above the town of Le Tréport. From the time of the gas bombardment, until the end of July, 70 men of the battalion died as a result of it, and they now lie buried in cemeteries mostly used by the large hospital complexes on the French coast, but a handful of the men are buried at Coxyde Military Cemetery, presumably having died before they could be moved to the rear. Thirty-eight men of the 1/8^th (Leeds Rifles) Bn, West Yorkshire Regiment who died in the week following the attack of the 22^nd July now lie buried at Mont Huon Military Cemetery.

Trianon Hotel, Le Tréport, pictured before the war

Alfred George Chambers was 19 years old, the eldest of three children in the family of Alfred George and Annie Chambers. He had a sister, Agness, a year younger than him, and a younger brother, Peter, who was only 9 years old when his big brother died.

The father of the family was employed as a railway wagon and carriage fitter, and initially his older son joined him in the same trade. Young Alfred later moved to Leeds Forge in Armley, where he became a die sinker. During the Great War, the family lived at 17 Lisbon Street, a short walk from the city centre in Leeds.

At the time of his death, Alfred Chambers was a nineteen-year-old Lance Corporal. He had enlisted into the 8^th (Leeds Rifles) Battalion, one of the two Territorial Force infantry battalions supported by the City of Leeds, on 6^th September 1913, exactly three months before his 16^th birthday. When the Battalion embarked for France, he was still only 16 years old.

In June 1915, after he had been in France a little over two months, an extract from a letter written by Alfred Chambers was printed in the Leeds Mercury. In it he tells his mother about a recent experience under fire. “We are having a busy time here. Yesterday the Germans shelled our billet and knocked the things down. We had all our things blown to pieces, and this bit of note paper, as you can see, has been hit by a bit of shell.”

By the middle of 1917, Rifleman Chambers had become Lance Corporal Chambers. He had come through the Phosgene attack of December 1915 and the winter of 1915 in the trenches north of Ypres unscathed when many of his comrades had suffered gas poisoning or cold injuries. He had also emerged from the Somme campaign as a battle-hardened veteran non-commissioned officer in command of a Lewis Gun team at nineteen-years-old. On the night of 21^st/22^nd July 1917, he was not so fortunate.

The battalion had been attacked with mustard gas which, strictly speaking, is not a gas but a viscous liquid blister agent which is disseminated as an aerosol droplet mist. It got its name due to the odour it gives off, which, depending on the formula, either smells of mustard or horseradish. Until the use of mustard gas, most ‘gasses’ used as weapons were asphyxiating agents which attacked the bronchial system of those exposed to them. Protective equipment was rapidly developed to give the troops some protection against inhaling those agents, but these were ineffective against blister agents as they worked in different, but equally horrifying manner. A droplet of blister agent on the skin would form a blister. The blister agents were so concentrated that the liquid which filled the blister was turned into a dilute form of the agent, which would spread if the blister burst, setting up new blisters and burns, in a process that could be repeated many times. A concentration of droplets could cause more serious, deep burns into the flesh. It was slow to disperse and could stay on the ground and on foliage for days in cool weather, waiting to be brushed against by a passing soldier. Mustard gas was designed to be an incapacitant, rather than being universally lethal. An incapacitated soldier required medical help and evacuation, tying up more of a unit’s fighting strength than a man who was killed outright, who could be left until a lull in fighting meant he could be recovered. Around 1% of men exposed to mustard gas eventually died. The existing protective equipment proved to be useless as the droplets could soak through clothing and was even known to penetrate leather soled boots, burning the feet.

Alfred Chambers’ journey of evacuation ended at No 2 Canadian General Hospital, which had been set up in 1915 at the Hotel Trianon built above the town of Le Tréport in 1910. The hospital was later expanded by the addition of tented accommodation in its grounds. The hotel no longer exists, apparently being destroyed by the Germans during the Second World War, but it’s site is now lost to a housing estate, with the only reminders of the hotel’s existence being the Avenue du Trianon, and some partial remains of the Terrasse, overlooking the town from the high cliffs above it.

Google Earth image, all that remains of the Trianon Hotel, Le Tréport

When the existing town cemetery became full, a new site was chosen a little over a mile away from the hospital complex. Situated on a high plateau, the new cemetery plot lies a little way beyond the Mont Huon area of Le Tréport, and is now named Mont Huon Military Cemetery, Le Treport. When Lance Corporal Chambers died due to the damage done to him by the blister agent, he was buried in this new cemetery at Mont Huon. Following the war, the military plot of the town cemetery was one of the first few cemeteries built by the Imperial War Graves Commission, and the experimental features of those early cemeteries are preserved in the cemetery to this day.

Le Tréport Military Cemetery, with Trianon Hotel on the cliffs in the distance.

The Chambers family was a devoutly Roman Catholic one, and this is reflected in the personal inscription his parents chose for inclusion at the foot of his headstone; “Ora Pro Anima Alfredi Georgie Chambers Qui Vitam Dedit 26 Julii 1917 Requiscat In Pace”, which translates from Latin as “Pray for the Soul of Alfred George Chambers who gave his life 26 July 1917 Rest in Peace”.

Alfred Chambers' grave in Mont Huon Military Cemetery, Le Tréport, plot III.M.5a.

Alfred Chambers was a former pupil of Holy Family Roman Catholic School in Armley.

Despite his age, Lance Corporal Chambers had become a valuable member of his battalion, and on his death, his Company Commander wrote to his parents to express his sympathy and his admiration of such an able young soldier. “I am writing first to express my deepest sympathy with you in your great trouble, and to tell you how well your boy had done out here, and what a loss his death will mean to the company. I knew him for a long time, and always admired him for sticking to the work out here. Although he was so young, he proved a very good N.C.O. in charge of his Lewis Gun team, and on that account, too, we are very sorry to lose him”.

Alfred Chambers’ name is listed in the Leeds Roll of Honour, however, as is relatively common with Roman Catholic soldiers, his name is not among those listed on Armley War Memorial at Gott’s Park.

L/Cpl Alfred George Chambers' Medals