White Cross (Weisskreuz) is a World War I chemical warfare agent consisting of one or more lachrymatory agents: bromoacetone (BA), bromobenzyl cyanide (Camite), bromomethyl ethyl ketone (homomartonite, Bn-stoff), chloroacetone (Tonite, A-stoff), ethyl bromoacetate, and/or xylyl bromide.
During World war I, White Cross was also a generic code name used by the German Army for artillery shells with an irritant chemical payload affecting the eyes and mucous membranes.
Famous quotes containing the words white and/or cross:
“Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death ... others through sheer inability to cross the street.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)