Think about the following questions as you watch the video

1. 01:00 Why didn’t the British expect Germany to use gas weapons?
2. 01:20 How was the gas hood supposed to protect soldiers?

00:21: NICK: So we have a variety of objects here, could you just take us through them and
00:26: explain what they are? ANDREW: Well I mean, we might as well start with the most
00:30: dramatic one, which is this object here. People say it's a gas mask - it's not, it's
00:37: a gas hood. When Germany decided to use mustard gas, chlorine gas, just, a most
00:45: dreadful weapon to use against the opposition. The problem with mustard gas
00:51: is, it's entirely wind dependent. So the British High Command were convinced
00:55: Germany wouldn't use gas because it's so unpredictable.
00:59: You can lob gas shells over, but if the wind changes, that's coming straight back
01:04: at you. They came up with these, and people look at this and think, oh, well
01:09: they breathed in through there - you didn't, you actually breathed in through
01:13: the cloth. This was saturated with chemicals, ostensibly to neutralize the
01:19: effect of the mustard gas - it didn't - and this was just chucked inside your blouse, your
01:25: battle dress jacket. Um, glass eyepieces. It's very rare to
01:29: find one of these in such good condition because all the cloth was impregnated
01:34: with chemicals. They would rot around the eyepieces and around the mouthpieces and
01:39: eventually just disintegrate. But this was stabilized quite soon after the
01:43: Great War, which is how we have it in the collection today. But imagine being in a