ORANGE COUNTY AND THE GULF WAR : WWI Echoes in Gulf War : Combat: Veteran, 98, remembers the smell of mustard gas and the suffering it brought to doughboys in the trenches.

For World War I veteran Ben Rosencranz, the television news broadcasts showing Israelis donning gas masks are a grim reminder of his two years on the battlefield, when wearing a gas mask was a part of his everyday survival.

Rosencranz, 98, an Army corporal in World War I, said the news from the Persian Gulf brings back vivid memories of the smell of mustard gas in the trenches, and the pain of the men who fell victim to it.

“It’s a horrible thing, that gas--it was then, in 1917, and still is now,” said Rosencranz, who will turn 99 on Tuesday. “You never even know it (has) hit you until it’s too late.”

Rosencranz watched Thursday as the Israeli government sounded the alarm warning people to put on gas masks after several Iraqi Scud missiles were reported headed for Tel Aviv. The alert later proved false.

“Seeing those babies with the masks on really got to me,” Rosencranz said. “What a horrible thing to put them through.”

After enlisting in the Army in 1917 at age 25, Rosencranz served as a combat engineer with the 37th Division and worked to build roads for use as supply routes in France and Belgium. He said he and his fellow soldiers, who kept their gas masks hanging from their shoulders, were ordered to don their masks almost daily.

“They’d signal us to put the masks on at many times, day in and day out, and sometimes they would be false alarms,” Rosencranz said. “Because they used gas so frequently, you never knew when the alarm would come. And we are talking real crude masks--not anything as complicated as they are today--but it was all we had. It’s just too bad it didn’t help everyone.”

Rosencranz added that he saw many soldiers succumb to the debilitating effects of mustard gas.

“My captain was gassed and developed tuberculosis from it. He spent months in a hospital in Texas after that,” Rosencranz said. “Lots of guys from my group didn’t even know they’d been hit until three or four days later. You’d leave the trenches with them, but wouldn’t see them around any more, and you just sort of knew what happened.”

Iraq still manufactures mustard gas, an oily liquid, despite a ban imposed by international treaty after World War I. Mustard gas can cause burns and blisters, and, if inhaled, can cause death in two days or fewer. If absorbed through the skin, it can damage the the immune system and lead to death in four to six weeks.

Iraq also uses more updated chemical weapons, including nerve gas and blistering agents that can cause convulsions, blindness, malfunctioning of the nervous system, coma and death from paralysis or heart failure. Iraq manufactures the colorless, odorless nerve gases tabun and sarin, both inventions of Nazi Germany.

Rosencranz said his most vivid war memory was that of a medic from his hometown of Toledo, Ohio, leading men who had been exposed to mustard gas down a road in Belgium to a medical facility.

“My friend was walking in front of what seemed like an endless line of men, all with their masks hanging down around their necks, which let you know they’d been gassed,” Rosencranz said. “The line just seemed to go on forever--I am pretty sure most didn’t even make it.”

Rosencranz, who lives in a retirement home with his wife, Goldie, said he is bothered by the Persian Gulf War and its threat of chemical warfare.

“I watch it on the news every night, and it upsets me to no end,” said Rosencranz. “It is such a shame to have to wait for who knows what? (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) is a madman, and there is no telling what he has got and when he will use it.”