The men who undertook this work carried out their unfamiliar duties
during a heavy bombardment with conspicuous gallantry and coolness;
and I feel confident in their ability to more than hold their own
should the enemy again resort to this method of warfare."

There is evidence, however, that this early attack, inefficient as it
appeared to be to participants, met with considerable success.
Schwarte's book tells us: "The English succeeded in releasing gas
clouds on a large scale. Their success on this occasion was due
to the fact that they took us by surprise. Our troops refused
to believe in the danger and were not sufficiently adept in the use
of defensive measures as prescribed by G.H.Q."

On the occasion of a cloud attack a few weeks later, at the
storming of the Hohenzollern redoubt, Sergeant-Major Dawson,
in charge of a sector of gas emplacements in the front
line trench, won the Victoria Cross. The German reply
to our bombardment was very severe and under stress of it
a battery of our cylinders, either through a direct hit or
faulty connections, began to pour gas into our own trenches.
In order to prevent panic and casualties among our own troops
at this critical time, a few minutes before zero, the moment
of assault, Sergeant-Major Dawson climbed on to the parapet under
a hail of shell, rifle, and machine-gun fire, and, hauling up
the cylinders in question, carried them to a safe distance
into the poisoned atmosphere of No Man's Land and ensured
their complete discharge by boring them with a rifle bullet.
In addition to the Hohenzollern attack cloud gas was used
in December, 1915, in the region of Givenchy.