Part One: Administrative Development
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Chapter 1: Origins of the Chemical Warfare Service
The Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) came into being during an era of unprecedented change in the technology of war.1 The introduction of gas warfare by Germany in April 1915 presented new problems of military techniques with which none of the Allied Powers was then prepared to cope. In the United States the War Department by the fall of 1915 began to show an interest in providing troops with protection against gas and assigned responsibility for the design and development of respirators to the Medical Department. In carrying out his responsibilities, The Surgeon General detailed certain Medical officers to the British and French Armies as observers, and these officers sent back periodic reports which included information on gas defense.2 The Army took no steps to supply the troops with masks or to prepare for offensive gas warfare until the first part of 1917.
It was not the War Department but a civilian branch of the government that took the first step in preparation for the employment of toxic agents. Early in 1917 the Secretary of the Interior surveyed his department to determine how it might contribute to the national defense and decided that the Bureau of Mines, which, since its establishment in 1910, had been investigating poisonous gases in mines, might be utilized in assisting the Army and Navy in developing a gas war program. On 8 February, Van H. Manning, the director of the Bureau of Mines wrote to the chairman of the Military Committee of the National Research Council (NRC) offering the bureau’s
services.3 Formal action on the recommendation was taken on 3 April 1917, when the Military Committee of NRC appointed a subcommittee on noxious gases, to “carry on investigations into noxious gases, generation, and antidote for same, for war purposes.”4 Under the chairmanship of the director of the Bureau of Mines, the subcommittee included Ordnance and Medical officers from both Army and Navy as well as two members of the Chemical Committee of the National Research Council. The work of this group provided the genesis of the chemical warfare research effort of the United States in World War I.
The War Department’s early lack of serious concern about the new type of warfare might be attributed to the fact that the effectiveness of a gas attack with the agents then in use was waning by 1917 because of the efficiency of antigas protection. It was not until the German Army in July 1917 began the use of dichloroethyl sulfide, the so-called mustard gas, as a liquid toxic filler for projectiles that the War Department began to give serious consideration to preparations for gas warfare. Mustard gas was persistent, it proved to be a high casualty producer, and it considerably widened the scope of chemical warfare.5
As the gas warfare needs of U.S. troops in France became known in Washington they were referred to the War Department bureau to which each seemed to relate. The basic requirement was a gas mask; this item, because of its prophylactic nature, was assigned to the Medical Department for procurement and distribution. Training of individuals in use of the mask then became a Medical responsibility.6 The War Department assigned the responsibility for the manufacture and filling of gas shells to the Ordnance Department, which erected a new arsenal for this purpose at Edgewood, Maryland.7 Engineer troops were selected for the projection of chemical
agents, and a regiment of gas and flame troops, to be known as the 30th Engineers, was authorized.8 Supplying gas alarms became a function of Signal Corps.9 An agency for solving technical problems was at hand in the subcommittee on noxious gases mentioned above. In September 1917 this committee established a research and experiment station, financed by the War and Navy Departments and operated by the Bureau of Mines, at American University on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.10 The Bureau of Mines also supervised research activities on war gases at many universities and industrial laboratories throughout the country as well as at laboratories of other government agencies.
Gas Warfare Organization, American Expeditionary Forces
The problems of gas warfare administration were in the meantime receiving serious consideration in the theater of operations under the urgency of an active gas warfare situation. A board of officers was appointed to plan a gas warfare organization for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on 18 June 1917, a few days after General John J. Pershing’s arrival in France.11 The board analyzed the gas warfare establishments of the British, French, and German Armies and considered the recommendations of Dr. George A. Hulett of Princeton University, who had spent some time in England and France studying the use of gas in war. Following the board’s recommendation, General Pershing decided to centralize the handling of all gas warfare matters under an independent agency. He reported his scheme of organization to Washington on 4 August 1917, recommending that a similar consolidation be adopted by the War Department.12
Two weeks later General Pershing assigned Lt. Col. Amos A. Fries, an Engineer officer who had served under him in the Philippines in 1905, as
Engineer in Charge of Gas.13 As such Fries became the chief of the Gas Service, AEF, when it was officially established on 3 September 1917.14 The following day Fries was raised to the rank of colonel and placed in command of the 30th Engineers, the gas and flame regiment.15 He at once set up headquarters at Chaumont, where he would be in close touch with the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the American Expeditionary Forces.
The AEF order which established the Gas Service specified that the chief of the service would be “charged with the organization of the personnel, the supply of material and the conduct of the entire Gas Service, both Offensive and Defensive, including instruction.” The first task confronting Fries was that of securing suitable officer personnel. Even before the Gas Service was officially established he had obtained the services of two Medical Department officers, Col. James R. Church, who had been observing the effects of gas on French troops, and Capt. Walter M. Boothby, who had been given a similar assignment with the British. Colonel Church headed the Medical Section of the Gas Service until December 1917 when he was succeeded by Col. Harry L. Gilchrist.16 The Medical Section was responsible for training and instructing Medical officers and other personnel in the treatment of gas casualties, as well as for the inspection of methods and facilities for the care of gassed cases.17
From the other branches of the Army, including Engineers, Ordnance, Cavalry, and Infantry, Fries obtained some two hundred officers who, although they were assigned to the Gas Service, continued to hold commissions in their respective branches. These officers, as well as the enlisted men who were transferred to the Gas Service, were given a course of instruction in gas defense at the I Corps Gas School, which was activated on 15 October 1917.18 The same month an Army Gas School, with courses in both defensive
Stokes trench mortar, used by special gas troops of AEF, World War I. Picture taken in CWS training area, Chaumont, France, 1918
and offensive gas warfare, was started at Langres.19 Later three other training schools were established.
The most serious problem which faced Fries when he became chief of the Gas Service, aside from the task of obtaining personnel, was that of providing for a supply of gas masks and other protective equipment for American troops. Just prior to Fries’s appointment the British, upon request of Captain Boothby, had tested twenty thousand gas masks received from the United States and had found them entirely unsuitable for use on the battlefield.20 Fries knew that he would have to look for other sources of supply and took immediate steps to purchase British masks, or box respirators, as they were called, and French M2 masks.21 Second in importance to supplying the Army with masks was the task of equipping special gas troops with such weapons as cylinders, mortars, and projectors for the dispersion
of agents. Fries also made arrangements to purchase these items from the British, and it was well that he did, for none were received from the United States until just before the close of the war.22
Colonel Fries was fortunate in securing the services of a very competent officer, Maj. Robert W. Crawford, whom he put in charge of procurement and supply activities in the Gas Service early in September 1917. The Procurement and Supply Division, as Crawford’s unit came to be known, not only handled the purchase of matériel but also drew up plans for and supervised the construction of three separate gas depots in the First Army Area and four in the Second Army Area. These depots were placed in operation in October 1918 under depot officers who were on the staffs of the respective army gas officers.23 Crawford also drew up plans for construction of phosgene-manufacturing plants, shell-filling plants, and a gas-mask repair plant. The proposed construction of phosgene and shell-filling plants in France was given up after Colonel Fries had studied the matter in detail and made a recommendation to that effect to General Pershing. The chief reason for abandoning those projects was the inability to obtain sufficient chlorine in France.24 But the plan for building the mask repair plant was carried to completion, and in November 1917 four officers and no enlisted men of the Medical Department arrived from the United States to operate this plant.25
In addition to personnel, training, and procurement and supply responsibilities, the Gas Service, AEF, had definite technical responsibilities. In carrying out the latter responsibilities, General Fries’ headquarters worked closely with the War Department.
Centralizing Chemical Warfare Activities
The start of centralizing chemical warfare activities within the War Department dates from October 1917, when an Office of Gas Service was set up, with Col. Charles L. Potter, an Engineer officer, as director. This move was an attempt to satisfy the need for an agency in Washington which would know everything that was going on with regard to chemical warfare both at home and abroad. The Gas Service was to be the
“coordinating agent” between the various bureaus and laboratories engaged in gas warfare activities, and all communications from abroad dealing with gas warfare were to be routed to that office. Provision was made for three assistants to the director of the new service, one from the Ordnance Department, another from the Medical Department, and a third from a newly created Chemical Service Section of the National Army, established under the same directive that established the Gas Service.26 The Chemical Service Section was to consist of forty-seven commissioned and ninety-five enlisted personnel.
The Chemical Service Section, National Army, was created to fill a request of General Pershing, repeated five times between 26 September and 9 December 1917, for a chemical laboratory, complete with equipment and personnel, to investigate gases and powders.27 Professor William H. Walker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was commissioned a lieutenant colonel and made chief of the Chemical Service Section. Walker set out to recruit qualified personnel for a laboratory unit for overseas duty. In January 1918 the first members of this unit, consisting of about twenty-five officers and ten men, under the command of Col. Raymond F. Bacon, arrived in Puteaux, near Paris, where Colonel Fries had set up a laboratory. Here the scientists in uniform conducted experiments on gases until the close of the war. To satisfy the need for testing gas shells and fuzes and conducting other gas warfare experimentation, a test field was set up near Chaumont. This field was named Hanlon Field in September 1918 in honor of 2nd Lt. Joseph T. Hanlon, the first Chemical Warfare officer to be killed in action.28
A development in connection with gas research in the theater was the inter-Allied gas conferences for the exchange of scientific information. Three such conferences were held during the war—in September 1917, March 1918, and October 1918. From the point of view of the American scientists the last was the most satisfactory, because by that time the Americans felt they had come to know as much about gas as their European co-workers. At this conference for the first time sat representatives from the
laboratories in the United States, including Professors Elmer P. Kohler and Warren K. Lewis.29
Inter-Allied cooperation in the theater was not confined to research but extended to supply as well. At the suggestion of Winston S. Churchill, the Inter-Allied Commission for Chemical Warfare Supply was set up in May 1918.30 Between May and November this commission, on which sat representatives of Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, held six meetings. By the time of the armistice the commission was said to be “gradually assuming the position of a board of directors, regulating production and distribution in accordance with existing needs.”31
While the Chemical Service Section, National Army, was assisting the theater on the research program, Colonel Walker’s headquarters was also taking steps to coordinate gas research activities in the United States. By January 1918 the number of troops doing research under the guidance of the Bureau of Mines at the American University Experiment Station and various other laboratories had risen to over two hundred officers and more than five hundred enlisted men. These were under the jurisdiction of various elements of the Army—Ordnance, Engineers, Signal, Sanitary Corps of the Medical Department, and the Chemical Service Section, National Army. Efficient administration demanded that these troops be placed under one Army agency. On 10 January Colonel Potter, chief of the Gas Service, recommended to the Chief of Staff that they be included in the Chemical Service Section. This request was favorably considered and on 15 February the authorized strength of the Chemical Service Section was raised to 227 officers and 525 enlisted men.32
In addition to its research activities, the Chemical Service Section, from early 1918 until the end of the war, was called on more and more by the Ordnance Department for recommendations on the manufacture of gases at Edgewood Arsenal. Thus, while the purpose behind the Chemical Service Section was to coordinate without integrating and without disturbing functions of the statutory bureaus of the War Department, it was becoming evident that the system was developing serious defects. What was needed was
a greater degree of administrative centralization. Two additional factors were working toward this end. The large and growing number of scientists engaged in research in gas warfare was insisting on recognition. And there was increasing pressure by various officials for a responsible gas warfare organization within the zone of interior to parallel the one in the theater of operations.
The Chemical Warfare Service, National Army
In the spring of 1918 separate proposals were made both in the United States and in France to establish a gas corps. On 17 April Lt. Col. Marston T. Bogert, who had succeeded Colonel Walker as chief of the Chemical Service Section, recommended to the Chief of Staff that the section be replaced by a “chemical corps” which would be on a “basis more nearly like that occupied by the Engineering and Medical branches of the Army.”33 In this way, Bogert contended, chemists in the Army would be under the guidance and control of chemists. This suggestion was not favorably considered.34 On 1 May Colonel Fries recommended to General Pershing that a gas corps be established in the AEF. Fries gave as his chief reason the very compelling fact that for the past year the enemy had been using gas as an essential part of every offensive and that the Gas Service, AEF, simply did not have the necessary administrative power to prosecute an effective gas program.35 Pershing was favorably impressed by Fries’s argument and on 3 June he cabled to the Chief of Staff in the United States requesting that a gas corps be activated.36 This request, like Bogert’s was not favorably considered. While it took no action on setting up a separate chemical or gas corps, the War Department did take definite steps in the spring of 1918 to establish a more strongly centralized organization for gas warfare. What was especially needed at that time was a “name” officer of rank and personality who could overcome obstacles and break log jams. This proved to be Maj. Gen. William L. Sibert, one of the builders of the Panama Canal
Maj. Gen. William L. Sibert, first Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, June 1918–February 1920
and lately commander of the 1st Division in France. Appointment of Sibert as director of the Gas Service on 11 May 1918 was quickly followed by a number of administrative changes in line with the trend toward integration of chemical warfare functions which had been evident for some time.37 On 25 June 1918 the President transferred the control experimental station at American University from the Bureau of Mines to the War Department.38 Three days later the War Department formally established the Chemical Warfare Service, National Army, and sweepingly specified the transfer to the new organization of all facilities and functions applying to toxic chemicals.39
In World War I the United States had to rely on its allies, particularly the British, for chemical munitions. This situation was rapidly being corrected late in 1918. Manufacturing facilities in the Astoria section of New York City were by then capable of meeting all the requirements for protective equipment, and the production of toxic agents at the Edgewood Arsenal plants was totaling 675 tons per week.40 Responsibility for the production of defensive items was put in the Gas Defense Production Division, CWS, headed by Col. Bradley Dewey, while supervision of toxics was placed in the Gas Offense Production Division, of which Col. William H. Walker was chief. Technical activities were divided between two divisions, a Research Division, headed by Col. George A. Burrell, and a Development Division,
Chemical Plants, Edgewood Arsenal. By 1918, toxic agents totaling 675 tons per week were being manufactured here.
headed by Col. Frank M. Dorsey. To test gas munitions the War Department established a proving ground at Lakehurst, New Jersey, and adjoining this proving ground activated a training camp for gas troops, Camp Kendrick, under the Training Division. All activities connected with the medical aspects of gas warfare were placed in a Medical Division, headed by Col. William J. L. Lyster.41
The very day that the CWS was formally established, the War Department cabled Pershing informing him of the creation of the CWS and requesting him to cable back the names of the officers to be transferred to the new service as well as the numbers and grades of officers and men required in France.42 The transfer of troops to the new service in the theater was made official on 16 July when an authorized strength of 916 officers and 7,264 enlisted men was approved for the Overseas Divsion, CWS, which was to be headed by a brigadier general.43 Colonel Fries was thereupon raised to that rank. Later, the War Department, anticipating an
increase in the use of gas, authorized two additional gas regiments. This action raised the authorized strength of the Overseas Division to 1,315 officers and 17,205 enlisted men.44 Because of the sudden collapse of the enemy nothing approximating that strength was ever attained, and as of II November 1918 the actual number of officers and men in the Overseas Division totaled 630 and 2,800 respectively. This compared with actual strength of the entire CWS on that date of 1,680 officers and 18,838 enlisted men.45
General Fries’s headquarters, like the office of General Sibert, was organized along functional lines. Since the theater naturally placed greater emphasis on actual employment of gas on the battlefield, two divisions were set up for that purpose, an Offense Division and a Defense Division. Other divisions of the CWS, AEF, were: Procurement and Supply, Technical, Medical, and Intelligence.
With the establishment of the CWS the gas and flame regiment (the 30th Engineers) became the 1st Gas Regiment. The regiment had been activated in August 1917 under Maj. Earl J. Atkisson at Camp American University, Washington. In January 1918 the first two companies, A and B, arrived in France, where, through an arrangement between Fries and Maj. Gen. C. H. Foulkes of the British Army, they were given intensive training by the British Special Brigade, a gas brigade. Following this training they accompanied the British on actual gas operations on the field of battle. When two other companies arrived in France in March the officers and men of Companies A and B assisted in training the new arrivals. The facilities of the five gas schools in France were also utilized in training these and subsequent gas troops arriving from the United States.46
Troops of the 1st Gas Regiment were employed in operations on the Western Front during the summer and fall of 1918. Their biggest engagement was in the Meuse-Argonne offensive in which six companies of the regiment saw action. In this campaign gas troops expended some 489 Stokes mortar gas shells, 130 Livens projector gas drums, 206 Livens projector drums filled with high explosives, and over 2,800 smoke and thermite bombs.47
After the close of hostilities the War Department made a rapid start in demobilizing CWS troops and facilities. By June 1919 the troop strength of
the CWS had been reduced to 328 officers and 261 enlisted men, the government gas-mask factory in New York had been demobilized, 670 contracts had been adjusted, over a million dollars’ worth of surplus property had been disposed of, and the plants at Edgewood and Lakehurst were being put on a peacetime basis.48 The majority of government-owned chemical plants throughout the country were yet to be sold or transferred to other government bureaus; that was a task which would run well into the following year.49
The War Department general order establishing the Chemical Warfare Service had provided that it would continue until six months after the termination of hostilities or until the general order itself was amended, modified, or rescinded. An act of Congress of II July 1919 extended the life of the CWS until 30 June 1920.50 On 28 November 1919 the War Department defined the CWS peacetime mission as follows:
(a) The maintenance of a competent body of chemical warfare specialists with facilities for continuous research and experimentation.
(b) The maintenance of records.
(c) Provision for keeping in touch with civilian agencies for chemical research and chemical industries capable of being converted for the production of wartime material.
(d) The maintenance of such existing Government plants as may be decided necessary.
(e) The continuous training of the Army in chemical warfare.
(f) The maintenance of a supply of chemical warfare material sufficient to meet the initial requirements of the Army in time of war.51
Congress meanwhile began to study changes needed in military organization in the light of recent war experiences. Since the establishment of the Signal Corps in 1860 there had been no additions to the War Department technical services.52 One of the questions now to be decided was, what should be done about Chemical Warfare? This matter was examined carefully by the military affairs committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The recommendations of the officials of the War Department varied. Some suggested that the wartime CWS be abolished and its work
apportioned among the older established services. Others felt that the CWS should be retained. Newton D. Baker, the Secretary of War, believed that peacetime activities in this field would be principally in research and development, duties which the Corps of Engineers could handle.53 The Chief of Staff, General Peyton C. March, who abhorred gas warfare, also felt that the Corps of Engineers should be given responsibility for preparations for gas warfare, which in peacetime should be restricted to its defensive aspects.54 General Pershing, like most older line officers, disliked the idea of using toxic gas but he was not adamant on the subject; in fact, he was rather inclined toward retaining the Chemical Warfare Service as a separate department.55
The first powerful voice raised in support of an independent chemical service in the Army was that of Benedict Crowell, the Assistant Secretary of War and the man principally responsible for the success of the munitions program of 1917-18. Crowell, who had been educated as a chemist and believed that future warfare would depend largely on the work of men of science, strongly urged that the wartime CWS organization be made permanent.56 This view of course was echoed by the two officers most closely identified with gas warfare in World War I, Sibert and Fries. Fries was particularly active. Less than two weeks after the close of hostilities he had obtained General Pershing’s approval for his return to the United States in order to work for a permanent CWS.57 He was a personal friend of both the chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, Senator George E. Chamberlain of Oregon, and the chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs, Representative Julius Kahn of California. Fries lost no opportunity in conveying to those gentlemen his strong conviction of the need for a permanent chemical bureau in the Army.58
Establishment of a chemical service as a permanent bureau of the War Department was also strongly advocated by leading chemical scientists and industrialists, who had come to regard the existence of such a service as a recognition of the growing importance of chemistry in the national economy.59 The desire to assist these groups doubtless helped influence the decision of Congress in 1920 to write into its revision of the National Defense Act of 1916 a new section starting with the words: “There is hereby created a Chemical Warfare Service.”60
The purpose of the wartime Chemical Warfare Service had been to handle all matters relating to toxic agents and ammunition together with gas defense material. Incendiaries and smokes had not been mentioned in the wartime charter of the Chemical Warfare Service although before the end of the war it had actually done considerable work on both these items. This fact is reflected in the wording of the revised National Defense Act, which accordingly enlarged the CWS field. Thus was completed the shift in emphasis from the “gas” service of 1917 to the “chemical” service of 1920.
The function of the new branch included the development, procurement, and supply of “all smoke and incendiary materials, all toxic gases, and all gas defense appliances.” These duties were further extended to include “the supervision of the training of the Army in chemical warfare, both offensive and defensive ... ; the organization, equipment, training, and operation of special gas troops, and such other duties as the President may from time to time prescribe.” 61 The Chemical Warfare Service therefore took on service-wide training functions, together with responsibility for combatant troops, in addition to technical supply duties. For this work the National Defense Act authorized a chief of the service with the rank of brigadier general, one hundred officers, and twelve hundred enlisted men.
The Chemical Warfare Service was a product of the changing technology of war. Only reluctantly did the War Department provide for its activation. Many years would elapse before the new organization would be fully accepted in the military family. In fact, it would require the experience of a second world war to convince the War Department of the real need for a separate chemical service.