I'm not quite certain where my fear of gasmasks came from, but it almost certainly stems from the The Wall movie and and the Wilfred Owen poem, "Dulce Et Decorum Est". It's pretty surprising how deep of an influence both of these had on me, and both around the same time.The first time I saw The Wall I was in 5th grade and more or less walked in on my siblings watching it excitedly. I remember thinking I was probably too young to be watching it, but the only things that really disturbed me were the animated scenes of fascists in gas masks beating people with sticks and the scene where young Pink finds himself on a World War II battlefield and encounters some sort of sanitarium escapee*. Both of these scenes terrified me, and years later it was the first VHS tape I ever bought.
The Owen poem was one that I memorized and recited in front of my 6th grade English class. It was part of my requirements that I had to do this with 2 poems (the other being the old standby "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening"). I think it first it was just the imagery that drew me to the poem, first stark and bleak, followed by this frantic burst of activity, and finally this dreamlike terror. It still sort of freaks me out. It wasn't hard to discern that the voice was one opposed to war and its tactics, but upon learning the translation of the title**, as well as the fact that Wilfred Owen died just one week before the Armistice, never seeing an end to the war he was so mired in.
Anyway, yeah, I'm terrified of gas masks. This was only exacerbated later with movies like E.T. and (oh, man) Outbreak. So you can imagine when I saw the Oobject topic for the day. Yikes.
I was thinking that the one above would be the gas mask that scared me the most, but that honor, obviously, goes to the British mask from 1915. I honestly shuddered when I saw it.
*I can't seem to find any sort of reference to this anywhere. Di d I make this up? h, God I hope not.
** "How sweet and fitting it is to die for your native land"
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