American Small Box Respirator WW 1 with bag, check card and rubber valve

The American Small Box Respirator (ASBR), as that gasmask was called, after being unmercifully “hammered” by the British, was nothing short of an abject failure. With the U.S. Army’s newly minted Gas Service off to a shaky start, GHQ, AEF was forced to adopt the British Small Box Respirator as its primary gasmask, and the French M2 Gasmask as an “emergency protective device”. On August 22, 1918, an initial order for 600,000 British SBRs and 100,000 French M2s was placed by the AEF. Additional orders would follow. Those two respirators would be carried and worn along with various other gasmasks of British, French, American, and even German manufacture by the men and boys of the AEF to protect them from the adverse effect of the poisonous gasses employed on the Western Front.