article_snippet.sent: Commanders were bent on breaking the stalemate of trench warfare and all options were open.
article_snippet.sent: German soldiers were bent on breaking the stalemate of trench warfare and all options were open .
article_snippet.sent: Some soldiers, pictured in German soldiers office in Tielt, argued deploying more troops would achieve a bigger breakthrough than using gas .
article_snippet.sent: Some argued that deploying more troops would achieve a bigger breakthrough.
article_snippet.sent: Had they been able to peer a bit further across no-man's land they would have seen how German troops had dug in, under cover of night, more than 5,000 gas cylinders with tubes pointing they way.
article_snippet.sent: The next morning, German trenches were filled with soldiers ready to pounce once the gas had cleared.
article_snippet.sent: Once the gas cleared, soldiers jumped out and made more progress than soldiers had in months.
article_snippet.sent: Even the German troops and certainly the German generals were completely astonished.'
article_snippet.sent: The pacifist Quaker had an immediate grasp of what the Germans' use of the gas horror meant. '
article_snippet.sent: It seems pretty certain we shall retaliate,' he wrote to he parents one week after the initial German attack. '