Poison Gas Incident, World War Two

As a follow-up to the "Chemical Warfare 1919-1945" article,* I want to add this important information about an incident in late 1943.

The Allies invaded Italy in September 1943. By a pre-arranged agreement with the Allies, the Italian government surrendered.** After a bitter struggle, the Allies were able to advance inland as the Germans withdrew. Bari is a port city in southeastern Italy that was captured and then used by the Allies to bring in supplies. In early December 1943 the German Luftwaffe (airforce) launched a surprise raid on the port, destroying several ships, including one American ship carrying poison mustard gas. The information about the ship's poison cargo was a strict military secret, and within days of the raid hundreds of Italian civilians and Allied servicemen were treated for various conditions by doctors unaware their patients were suffering the effects of poison gas. How many people died as result of the poison gas is in dispute, as the German air raid was so successful, there were many other casualties from the bombing attack itself, and, as mentioned above, doctors were unaware they were treating people exposed to poison gas, which undoubtedly caused more deaths due to improper treatment, but the number of deaths range from a low of about 70 to a high in the many hundreds.

Allied leaders, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, had all information about the poison gas part of the incident suppressed, as it was feared Germany would assume the Allies had the poison gas brought in to launch a gas attack against German forces, or against Germany itself, thus prompting a German retaliatory attack. Near the end of the war the American military did admit to the presence of poison gas during the incident, but they also made clear the gas had been brought into only to give the Allies access to it in case of the need to retaliate against a German gas attack. To my knowledge, Winston Churchill never made such an admission, and it was only in the mid 1980s that the British government admitted to the poison gas being present. Documents about the matter were kept classified and it wasn't until nearly a couple of decades later that the records were declassified and then information was reported by historians.

* The link to that article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2012/03/chemical-warfare-1919-1945.html

** This Italian government had replaced the former Fascist government of dictator Benito Mussolini in late July 1943, and while it insisted Italy would continue as an ally of Germany, the government immediately entered into secret negotiations with the Allies for an armistice.

WORD HISTORY:
Lorn/Forlorn-"Lorn" goes back to Indo European "leu/lu," with the notion of "undo, loosen, separate." This gave Old Germanic the verb "leusanan," with the meaning "to lose." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "leosan," with the same meaning. Its participle form was "loren" (no Sophia or Ralph jokes, please!), and the notion of "lost" then began to convey the idea of "abandoned, left alone; thus lonely." The verb "leosan" (to lose) began to be overtaken in usage by its close relative, the ancestor of "lose," which I will cover soon. "Loren," which then became just "lorn," continued on, with the idea of "abandonment, being lonely." "Lorn" is now archaic, if not obsolete. The closely related compound "forlorn" and its Germanic relatives trace back to Old Germanic "fraleusanan," which also meant "to lose." This gave Old English "forleosan," which meant "to lose, to ruin, to abandon," and its participle was "forloren," which later became "forlorn." By the 1500s, the idea of "abandonment, loss" transferred the meaning to the result of these things; thus developed the meaning, "extreme sadness, miserable," a meaning exclusive to English, as its Germanic relatives all still retain the meaning(s) "loss, lost." West Frisian has "ferlies" ("loss"), German has "Verloren" (lost), some Low German dialect has "Feluss" (no "r," and note the second part's closeness to English "loss," which is its meaning), Dutch has "verloren" (lost) and "verlies" (loss), Swedish has "förlust" (loss) and "förlorad" (lost), Danish has "forlis" (loss; often used in compounds to specify "loss of a particular thing") and "forlise" (lost, wrecked), Icelandic has "villast" (lost), and Norwegian has "forlis" (loss).