The battlefield of the First World War with the prepared positions of multiple trench lines, barbed wire and massed artillery became not only a killing ground for the troops in the standard "Shot and Shell", but as the belligerent powers bent all of their scientific means to bear new terrifying weapons of poison gas and flame projectors, came to the fore to break the stalemate. This covers all of the fearsome, death-dealing weapons then conceived, from mustard and chlorine gases to the flammenwerfer. Major Auld was a veteran of the British Army sent to the Military Mission to the United States to prepare their leaders and their troops of what awaited them on the battlefields of France.