In August 1918, while waiting to advance east of Amiens, Sergeant Sawyer Spence lay in a shell hole contaminated with mustard gas. Feeling no ill effects he only reluctantly agreed to be evacuated; only after 24 hours did medics realise that his uniform had been saturated by the oily liquid. By the time he reached a hospital twelve days later, in the converted pavilion of Nottingham’s Trent Bridge Cricket Ground, the whole of one side of his back and legs was septic and discharging pus, the result of massive blistering. He was the worst mustard gas case that the hospital had ever seen.
Sawyer Spence suffering extensive mustard gas blisters, Trent Bridge Hospital, Nottingham, 1918. © Jon Spence, used with permission.
Sawyer Spence was one of an estimated half a million chemical warfare victims of the First World War. The first were on 22nd April 1915 when the Germans released 150…
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