ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the extraordinary process whereby young children were trained in the importance, carriage, care and use of a piece of technologically advanced military equipment. It examines the history and development of gas protection, as well as the wider social and cultural significances of gas masks. The chapter explores the relationship between British children and their gas masks in the Second World War. It demonstrates that the peculiarity of the gas mask is its ability to evoke powerful aesthetic responses of both types: from the outsider’s view as an artefact, art object or thing observed, and from the insider’s perspective as a near-complete synaesthetic environment. The chapter discusses the second category: the inside-out sensory experience of gas masks. It argues that the gas mask as symbol of identity was in practice often eclipsed by the more diverse, customizable and immediately visible containers in which the masks were transported.
