The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - World War I

Gas Course Notebook May / June 1917

Cover



Frontispiece



An inside page



Another inside page

In May / June 1917 DW attended an anti gas course at Wendover, and the notes he took survive in the Imperial War Museum.

Looking beyond the schoolboy copying, they give a stark reminder of the realities of war - that war is about killing people or being killed.

As the notebook shows, one of the Germans tactics was to send over shells with harmless gas in them so as to lull people into a false sense of security and get them to think they need not put their cumbersome masks on - only to send over the real thing later and catch the soldiers off guard and disable them or kill them in the most unpleasant way.

DW himself was to be affected by gas - and when he was evacuated home in May 1918 it was thought he only had a few days to live.