The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field
Chapter 1: Research and Supply in World War I
Although armies have used crude chemical devices since ancient times, chemical warfare, as an applied science, is comparatively modern.1 Chemical warfare came along as a companion of modern chemistry, which itself dates from the late 1700s, when natural philosophers brought about a revolution in this science. As a result of this pioneer work, chemists uncovered a multitude of facts and conceived laws to hold these facts together. By the middle of the 19th century it was a simple matter for men with a knowledge of chemistry to visualize the application of toxic chemicals to warfare, and to suggest specific methods of using them.
During the Crimean War the British chemist Lyon Playfair proposed that a naval shell containing cacodyl cyanide, a toxic organic arsenic compound, be fired into Russian ships.2 In the same war Admiral Thomas Cochrane urged that an attempt be made to drive the Russians out of Sevastopol by burning huge quantities of sulphur in front of the fortress and letting the wind carry sulphur dioxide gas into enemy positions.3 In the American Civil War, John W. Doughty of New York sent plans for a chlorine filled shell to the War Department, and Forrest Shepherd of New Haven recommended to President Lincoln that a cloud of hydrogen
chloride be used to drive the Confederates out of Petersburg.4 During the century several other men proposed the use of toxic chemicals in munitions.5
Despite arguments that the use of chemicals in warfare was practical and that chemicals would cause less suffering than conventional weapons, national governments refused to test the ideas. Finally in 1915 Fritz Haber convinced the German Army that chlorine could force the Allies out of the trenches and he was given the responsibility of emplacing cylinders of gas in the front lines near Ypres. The first gas cloud attack, launched on a favorable breeze in the afternoon of 22 April, was a success.6 Allied troops were driven from their positions and only the failure of the German Army to exploit this advantage saved the Allies from a more serious setback.
Once the practicality of chemical warfare had been demonstrated the belligerents organized special units to employ military chemicals, and to conduct chemical and medical research. In the United States the War Department gave responsibility for designing protective equipment to the Medical Department in late 1915, but the Army did not set up combat chemical units or begin scientific investigations until mid-1917.7
The Committee on Noxious Gases, National Research Council
The first American chemical warfare research was not carried out by the Army, but by the Bureau of Mines. Early in 1917, as the strained relations between the United States and Germany approached the breaking point, the Secretary of the Interior requested the bureaus in his Department to determine how they could assist the government if the country were drawn into the war. On 7 February Van H. Manning, Director of the Bureau of Mines, called together his division chiefs to discuss the question. During the meeting George S. Rice suggested that the bureau might turn its experience in mine gases and rescue apparatus toward the
investigation of war gases and masks.8 The following day Manning notified the Military Committee of the National Research Council that the bureau stood ready to assist the Army and Navy on any problems that might arise in the development of masks.9 Through the months of February and March the NRC considered the matter. The bureau, in the meantime, did not remain inactive but laid plans for research. On 3 April, with the declaration of war imminent, the council accepted the bureau’s offer of cooperation, and appended to the Military Committee a Subcommittee on Noxious Gases composed of Army and Navy officers, members of the NRC’s Chemistry Committee, and the Director of the Bureau of Mines (chairman), “to carry on investigations into noxious gases, generation, and antidote for same, for war purposes; also investigations into gas masks.”10
During the early days of its existence, the Subcommittee on Noxious Gases was extremely important in initiating and coordinating chemical warfare research. It met frequently to discuss information received from abroad, and upon request it gave advice to the Army and Navy on questions regarding chemical warfare. Its most important act, however, was to approve a plan of research for the Bureau of Mines. It is clear from the records that the directing force here was Manning and a small but extremely enthusiastic group of men whom he brought together to act as the nucleus of a chemical warfare research organization. Manning and his staff drew up a detailed plan for research, based on reports of the state of chemical warfare in Europe, and then laid the plan before the subcommittee. After some discussion the group approved the plan, thus enabling Manning to proceed.11 It was from this action by the NRC Subcommittee on Noxious Gases that the Bureau of Mines derived the authority, which it exercised for more than a year, to carry on chemical warfare research and development projects for the Army and Navy. The Subcommittee on
Noxious Gases became less important as the war progressed and in August 1918 it was dissolved.12
Chemical Warfare Research in the Bureau of Mines
In expanding the activities of the Bureau of Mines into the field of chemical warfare, Manning’s first step was to assemble a group of men to carry on the work. The leader of his staff was George A. Burrell, a consulting chemist who had formerly been with the bureau. Upon Burrell fell the responsibility of directing the building of the new research structure. Associated with Burrell were Arno G. Fieldner and J. W. Paul of the Bureau of Mines; Bradley Dewey, director of the research laboratory of American Sheet and Tin Plate Co.; Warren K. Lewis, professor of chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Yandell Henderson, professor of physiology at Yale University.13
As a first move these men marked out various lines of research based on reports from Europe to the Army and Navy. The most urgent task was the design of a gas mask for the Army. Other projects included study of the physiological effect of toxic compounds and the proper medical treatment for casualties, work on the preparation and properties of gases already in use on the battlefield, and the discovery of new toxic agents.
The bureau had neither the space nor the men to handle all the projects. As an emergency measure Manning obtained from the Subcommittee on Noxious Gases authority to accept offers of assistance from the Johns Hopkins University, the Mellon Institute, and other institutions. Manning then sent Dewey to seek cooperation from industrial and university laboratories in the West, and Lewis to laboratories in the East.14 In addition Manning enlisted the aid of E. Emmet Reid, professor of organic chemistry at Johns Hopkins, who requested organic chemists throughout the nation to synthesize compounds that might be useful as agents.15 By
the end of May 1917 the bureau had obtained the aid of laboratories in twenty-one universities, three industrial companies, and three government agencies, with a total of 118 chemists.16 In time additional universities and firms volunteered for research projects. These civilian laboratories were extremely helpful, for they enabled the bureau to begin chemical warfare research immediately instead of waiting several months for a government laboratory to be equipped and staffed with chemists.
Up to 30 June 1917 the Bureau of Mines paid the cost of chemical warfare research from its own appropriations.17 It engaged 16 men for physiological investigations on gases and masks, 20 to develop masks, 5 to work on munitions, 4 to prepare toxic agents and smoke, and several as supervisors and clerks.18 After June the Army and Navy provided funds.
As chemical warfare research expanded the volume of work became so great that the bureau needed a large central laboratory for coordinating university and industrial research, and for undertaking secret Army and Navy projects. After examining several sites in the District of Columbia, in Delaware, and at Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, N.J., Burrell and his assistants finally chose American University, which the trustees had offered to President Wilson for government use on 30 April.19 The university was then on the outskirts of Washington, and sufficiently isolated to be used as a training center for chemical troops and to permit field testing on a small scale. Two large buildings and several hundred acres of ground were available.
The War and Navy Departments in June allotted the Subcommittee on Noxious Gases $175,000 to convert American University classrooms into laboratories and to hire more chemists.20 Several weeks later, on 21 July the trustees granted the government free use of the university.
Throughout the summer of 1917 contractors worked at the university, converting rooms into offices and laboratories. Temporary buildings, large and small, were erected to serve as workshops and as houses for workers and as shelters for animals. The War Department converted a section of the grounds into Camp Leach, where officers and enlisted men could learn the technique of chemical warfare.
Bureau of Mines experiment station for chemical warfare, American University, Washington, D.C., 1917. McKinley building (with dome) was then known as the Ohio building.
In September the first chemists arrived. The laboratories were not finished, there was no heat, and there was insufficient equipment. Yet, there were so many problems awaiting solution that chemists set up their apparatus on improvised benches while carpenters installed hoods and desks, plumbers laid gas and water lines, and electricians wired sockets.21
Shortly after the research center at American University opened, Manning organized it into eight sections: Chemical Research, Physiological Research, Pyrotechnic Research, Chemical Manufacture, Mechanical Research, Submarine Gases, Dirigible and Balloon Gas, and Gas Mask Examination.22
Liaison was maintained among the Army, Navy, and Bureau of Mines through frequent committee meetings and by personal contact between officers and members of the research staff. Twice a week, conferences were held between officers and scientists. One conference considered chemical warfare offense, the other, problems in defense. Twice each month a report was sent to the War Department, the Navy Department, the
New chemical building at American University under construction for chemical warfare research. Note the class in bayonet drill, foreground.
American Expeditionary Forces in France, and to British and French chemical warfare investigators.
By the fall of 1917 the bureau had the benefit of an increased flow of information from Europe. In the opening months of the war it had depended upon reports from special observers in Europe, such as Professor George A. Hulett of Princeton University, or upon information acquired by Army and Navy officers. Then in October, Maj. Samuel J. M. Auld, chemical adviser of the Third British Army, and a group of officers and NCO’s came to the United States as part of the British Military Mission. Auld and his men gave information on toxics, chemical munitions, and protective equipment, and helped to lay out a chemical proving ground.23 Also in October, the Army assigned an officer in London to the task of obtaining and sending home information on chemical warfare.24 By these means the bureau learned of research being done by the Allies, and of new developments in enemy chemical warfare.
By the end of 1917 the chemical warfare staff of the bureau had increased to 277 civilians, 34 commissioned officers, and 200 enlisted men. The funds allotted by the Army had jumped to $612,000 and by the Navy to $150,000.25 Throughout the first half of 1918 the staff continued to grow, and on 25 June numbered 1,682 persons, civilian and military, 1,034 of whom were classified as technicians.26
Medical Research
The Bureau of Mines was not alone in conducting chemical warfare research and development for the Army and Navy. The Medical Department, U.S. Army, also participated for a short time, taking over certain projects from the bureau, continuing them for awhile, and then surrendering them to the new Chemical Warfare Service.
The plans for medical research were drawn up by Professor Henderson of Yale University. Because there was no laboratory space available in Washington, Yale allowed Henderson to remodel the Athletic Club House into a laboratory and to use the athletic field.27 Yale also built a laboratory beneath the bleachers, as the University of Chicago was to do some twenty-five years later at Stagg Field for research on the atom bomb. Faculty members of the university, medical students, and employees of the Bureau of Mines formed the staff. The men were divided into sections working on toxicology, therapeutics, pharmacology, pathology, and physiology. After space became available at American University, the bureau transferred much of the work to Washington.
By December 1917 medical research had become so diversified that Henderson and the section leaders began to hold monthly conferences in Washington. Known as the Medical Advisory Board, the group served as a clearinghouse for problems, ideas, and discoveries in the medical phase of chemical warfare.
Other university groups in addition to the one at Yale were drawn into medical research. In September 1917 professors and students at the University of Wisconsin began research on ways to protect the employees of poison gas factories.28 At the University of Michigan, men studied the
physiology and pathology of mustard gas poisoning.29 At Western Reserve University, the University of Chicago, and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., scientists took up projects. In the spring of 1918 the Gas Defense Service of the Medical Department absorbed the majority of the laboratories.
Research in the AEF
The Bureau of Mines was too far from the battle zone to carry on research for the AEF, and General Pershing in the fall of 1917 requested the War Department on several occasions to furnish him with a laboratory service to investigate war gases and powders. On 1 November 1917 the War Department created a Chemical Service Section to comply with Pershing’s request.30 Col. William H. Walker, chief of the new section, took immediate steps to provide a laboratory for the AEF. Turning to Mellon Institute, Pittsburgh, Walker enlisted the cooperation of its director, Raymond F. Bacon, and its assistant director, William A. Hamor. Hamor, who was commissioned a major, had as his first important assignment the drawing up of plans for a laboratory for the AEF.31
To obtain chemicals and equipment for the new laboratory, Bacon and Hamor turned to the president of the Fisher Scientific Company of Pittsburgh, Chester G. Fisher. Before World War I Germany was the world’s chief source of chemicals and laboratory equipment and the Fisher Scientific Company depended on producers in Bavaria for its supply of these materials. After the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 and the subsequent dislocation of shipping on the high seas, the Bavarian suppliers became very wary of making further shipments, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that Fisher Scientific got material through to Pittsburgh. But by an unusual stroke of fortune a considerable quantity of laboratory equipment arrived shortly before the entrance of the United States into the war. Fisher had this equipment on hand when Bacon and Hamor approached him late in 1917.32
Battery of Livens Projectors at Hanlon experimental tailing field near Chaumont, France, 1918.
The government made immediate arrangements for the Fisher Scientific Company to equip a laboratory for the AEF. All the apparatus which had recently arrived from Bavaria was put in wooden crates and shipped, along with chemicals, books, a glassworking shop, and another for instruments—seven full freight cars in all—to the Hoboken Port of Embarkation for shipment to France. Fisher obtained a written statement from the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, that the shipment should be given a high priority. To accompany the laboratory overseas the Fisher Scientific Company furnished a glass blower, an instrument maker, a chief clerk, and a stock clerk.33
Meanwhile in France, Col. Amos A. Fries, head of the AEF Gas Service,34 had obtained permission from the French Government to convert a former research laboratory for tuberculosis at Puteaux, near Paris, into a chemical warfare laboratory. In January 1918 Colonel Bacon, accompanied by a small group of chemists, arrived from the United States to head the laboratory. Since it would take several months for the equipment
from the United States to reach France, Colonel Bacon managed to obtain some laboratory supplies from French sources. Eventually other scientists arrived from the United States, so that the staff was to average between 60 and 70 chemists, approximately 12 of whom were commissioned officers. In this group were several men who were or later became famous in the field of chemistry—Gilbert N. Lewis, of the University of California, one of the world’s outstanding physical chemists; Joel H. Hildebrand, a future president of the American Chemical Society; and Frederick G. Keyes, who became director of the research laboratory of physical chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Paris Laboratory investigated a variety of chemical and physical problems having to do with toxic agents and protective devices, and also acted as a consulting laboratory for other nonchemical branches of the AEF.35 For convenience the laboratory was divided into five divisions—Organic, Physicochemical, Mechanical, Control, and Miscellaneous. The organic chemists developed a systematic procedure for analyzing the contents of dud enemy chemical shells and of determining the agents present in contaminated water or earth. They synthesized possible war gases and searched for camouflage gases to simulate or conceal the characteristic odor of standard agents. For example, they learned that by adding butyl sulfide to it mustard gas gave out a strong skunklike odor; since much of the French countryside was infested by skunks the enemy was misled on the presence of gas. The physical chemists determined such important physical constants as density, vapor pressure, and rate of hydrolysis. The Control Section tested old and new gas mask canisters. The need for protection against mustard was so urgent that the sections collaborated in developing antimustard salves, a field detector for mustard, and protective fabrics. The Miscellaneous Section worked on problems submitted by other branches of the AEF, such as the development of a special airplane propeller glue for the Air Service and the production of a gasproof pigeon container for the Signal Corps.
Coupled to the Paris Laboratory was a field for experimental work and for training officers in gas warfare. Colonel Fries had asked for such an experimental field in December 1917. Receiving permission, he chose an area
covering twenty square miles near Chaumont, headquarters of the AEF. He then sent officers to Porton, England, to learn how the British had laid out their experimental field and were conducting tests. The AEF started construction in April 1918, and the first tests were made in June. In August the installation was christened Hanlon Field in honor of 2nd Lt. Joseph T. Hanlon of the First Gas Regiment, the first CWS officer killed in action.
Hanlon Field ultimately had two projector ranges, an artillery range complete with trenches, and fifty-five buildings, including chemistry, pathology, and physiology laboratories, a shell opening plant, and a shell filling plant.36 Among the projects carried out were the testing of American equipment under battlefield conditions, examination of captured equipment, analysis of the chemical fillings in dud enemy shells, and physiological research.37 From the viewpoint of organization, the Paris Laboratory and Hanlon Field were considered as the Technical Division of the AEF, Gas Service.38
The Centralization of Activities in the Chemical Warfare Service
A year after American entrance into the war, the Bureau of Mines, Medical Department, Ordnance Department, Signal Corps, Corps of Engineers, and AEF were sharing the responsibility for chemical warfare. The War Department had made an attempt in October 1917 to coordinate the activity by creating a Gas Service of the Army, headed by an Engineer colonel, Charles C. Potter, and composed of Medical, Ordnance, and Chemical Service Section officers. The Gas Service could offer advice, but it had no authority to control research, policy, or production. The service could therefore not bring about the high degree of teamwork that the War Department wanted.
Finally on 11 May 1918 the War Department placed Maj. Gen. William L. Sibert at the head of the Gas Service, and instructed him to
draw up a plan for better coordination of chemical warfare. Sibert was certain that this could be done only by coalescing all men and facilities into one organization. He asked the War Department to transfer chemical warfare personnel from the Medical Department, Ordnance Department, Corps of Engineers, and Signal Corps to the Gas Service. There was no problem here. But Sibert also wanted the research organization of the Bureau of Mines, a request that was difficult for the War Department to fill. Sibert nevertheless persuaded Secretary of War Newton D. Baker that the move was necessary. Baker then attempted to convince President Wilson. Manning and his associates opposed the transfer vigorously.39 President Wilson was reluctant, but finally agreed that the exigencies of war necessitated the move; and on 25 June 1918, under authority of the Overman Act, he placed the research organization of the bureau under the War Department “for operation under the Director of Gas Service of the Army.”40 The War Department commissioned Burrell as a colonel, and gave other research leaders corresponding rank. The militarization of the research organization did not affect the assignments of the scientists. They continued their work at American University and other laboratories.
On 28 June 1918 President Wilson approved Sibert’s conception of a unified chemical warfare organization by directing the War Department to establish a Chemical Warfare Service in the National Army.41 The new CWS included the Chemical Service Section of the Army, the research organization from the Bureau of Mines, and portions of the Ordnance Department, Corps of Engineers, Signal Corps, and Medical Department. Sibert organized the service into nine divisions: European, Medical, Training, Research, Administration, Gas Offense Production, Gas Defense Production, Development, and Proving.42 Of the nine divisions in the new CWS, six sprang wholly or in part from the chemical warfare research organization started by the Bureau of Mines.
Chemical Munitions43
Before the establishment of the CWS, responsibility for procuring and issuing chemical warfare items was divided between the Medical and Ordnance Departments of the Army. The Medical Department was assigned responsibility for defensive items and the Ordnance Department for offensive material. The Ordnance mission included the procuring, filling, and testing of toxic gases. The Army, of course, had never had occasion to purchase or produce poison gas. Its first step; therefore, was to choose the agents that would be used by the AEF. After evaluating the chemicals that had been used by armies in Europe, the Bureau of Mines recommended chloropicrin, hydrogen cyanide, phosgene, and xylyl bromide to the Ordnance Department in July 1917.44 A few months later Colonel Fries sent recommendations from France that chlorine, phosgene, chloropicrin, bromoacetone, and mustard gas be procured.45
It was the intention of the War Department at the start of the war to arrange for the manufacture of toxic gases by commercial chemical companies under Ordnance Department supervision and to confine direct government activity to the filling of shells with toxic materials.46 In the fall of 1917 the Ordnance Department set out to interest private industry in the manufacture of war gases and began to plan the erection of a shell filling plant near Edgewood, Md.47
Immediate responsibility for drawing up the plans was assigned to Capt. Edwin M. Chance, of the Trench Warfare Section, Gun Division of the Office of the Chief of Ordnance, then headed by
Brig. Gen. Amos A. Fries, head of the AEF Gas Service. (Photo taken after July 1920)
Capt. E. J. W. Ragsdale.48 Captain Chance had the advice and assistance of Lt. Raoul E. Hankar of the French High Commission who supplied the plans of the French filling plant at Aubervilliers together with details on the properties of the gases to be filled. After careful examination of the data furnished by Lieutenant Hankar, Captain Chance concluded that the French methods were totally unsuited to American conditions, that the French production units were too small for production of good quality, and that their methods of handling the gases led to an unduly high casualty rate in French plants. Chance then decided to study the possibility of applying the methods
of the commercial bottling industry to a gas filling plant and he visited a number of works where milk, beer, and carbonated liquids were bottled. Convinced that commercial methods could be adapted to gas filling plants, he drew up plans accordingly.49
Erection of the first shell filling plant at Edgewood, Md., was begun in September 1917 and practically completed by the close of the year. It consisted of four filling buildings radiating from a central powerhouse at 90-degree angles to each other. Each building was a complete unit in itself, with individual gas handling rooms, mixing rooms, washing towers, and ventilating equipment. If one building would have to be shut down because of an accident or for other reasons, it would be possible to keep the remaining units in production. The units were so constructed that the fan discharges were separated by a distance of over 400 feet, a precaution which prevented the accumulation of a dangerous concentration of gases during plant operation. This shell filling plant, known as Filling Plant No. 1, was completed by January 1918 and put into immediate operation. In the spring of 1918 construction got underway on two similar plants, both of which were approximately 80 percent complete by November. In
Plant at Edgewood Arsenal where filled shells were classified, tested for leaks, painted, and boxed for shipment. Livens drums, foreground, were painted with two white stripes to indicate they were filled with phosgene.
addition, two grenade filling plants and an incendiary-drop-bomb plant were either completed or were nearing completion when the war ended.
By the close of 1917 the War Department had come to the conclusion that the government would also have to erect its own manufacturing plants at Edgewood. The efforts of the Ordnance Department to interest the chemical industry in the manufacture of war gases had not proved successful because of the danger inherent in the manufacture of toxic materials, because industry lacked experience in the production of such materials, and because the toxic plants would serve no useful purpose after the war. During the unseasonably cold winter of 1917-18 a chloropicrin plant and a phosgene plant were built. In April 1918 construction was begun on a large-scale mustard plant and in the next month on a chlorine plant. The chlorine plant, which when completed had two 50-ton units with a total capacity of 100 tons of liquid chlorine a day, was the largest plant of its kind in the United States at that time. These plants collectively were on 4 May 1918 designated “Edgewood Arsenal,” an installation of the Army Ordnance Department.50
Table 1: Plants and Projects of Edgewood Arsenal During World War I
| Plant location | Project | Operator |
| Edgewood, Md | Manufacture of chloropicrin | Edgewood Arsenal. |
| Edgewood, Md | Manufacture of phosgene | Edgewood Arsenal. |
| Edgewood, Md | Manufacture of mustard gas | Edgewood Arsenal. |
| Edgewood, Md | Manufacture of chlorine | Edgewood Arsenal. |
| Edgewood, Md | Manufacture of sulphur monochloride. | Edgewood Arsenal. |
| Stamford, Conn | Manufacture of chloropicrin | Edgewood Arsenal. |
| Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y | Manufacture of mustard gas | Edgewood Arsenal. |
| Kingsport, Tenn | Manufacture of bromobenzyl-cyanide. | Edgewood Arsenal. |
| Croyland, Pa | Manufacture of diphenylchloroarsine. | Edgewood Arsenal. |
| Willoughby, Ohio | Manufacture of lewisite | Edgewood Arsenal. |
| Niagara Falls, N.Y | Manufacture of phosgene | Oldbury Electro-Chemical Co. |
| Midland, Mich | 17 brine wells for bromine supplies. | Dow Chemical Co. |
| Bound Brook, N.J | Manufacture of phosgene | Frank Hemingway, Inc. |
| Charleston, W. Va | Manufacture of sulphur monochloride. | Charleston Chemical Co. |
| Buffalo, N.Y | Manufacture of mustard gas | National Aniline & Chemical Co. |
In the construction and operation of the plants at Edgewood the Ordnance Department received valuable assistance from the Bureau of Mines and from representatives of the British and French Governments.51 While this plant construction was going on at Edgewood, Ordnance continued to solicit the interest of private industry in the manufacture of toxic agents. The government decided to construct chemical plants at various points throughout the country and to urge the chemical companies to operate these plants. During the war a number of plants, including those operated by the government and those operated by contractors, were erected. (Table 1)
When the Chemical Warfare Service was activated in June 1918, a Gas Offense Production Division, with headquarters in Baltimore, Md., was
set up. This division, headed by Col. William H. Walker, former commanding officer of Edgewood Arsenal, took over from Ordnance the function of supervising the “production of toxic gases and other substances used offensively in gas warfare.”52 Edgewood Arsenal and its subsidiary plants were included in Colonel Walker’s command.
By November 1918, the United States was manufacturing almost as much gas as England and France combined and nearly four times as much as Germany, which at the start of the war had led all other nations in the field of chemistry.53 The manufacture and filling of gas at Edgewood Arsenal was carried out by the military because others lacked experience with that type of operation. A peak employment of over 7,000 officers and enlisted men was reached at Edgewood during the war. Government representatives were stationed at the various plants operated by the contractors, but civilians with some experience in the chemical industry were employed in the actual operation of those plants.
The plans for filling gas shells and shipping them across the ocean did not work out as expected. The chief difficulty was the extreme shortage of shell boosters.54 At no time during the war did the supply of boosters come near meeting the demand. Consequently, the United States resorted to ocean shipment of bulk toxics, with more than 3,500 tons going to Europe. In England and France this gas was put into Allied shells and was eventually used against the enemy.
The implements which the U.S. Army employed to release gas on the enemy were obtained in great part from the Allies, particularly the British. These munitions included cylinders from which gas was dispersed and Livens projectors. Not until shortly before the armistice were these items received in the theater from the United States.55 The delay was due in large part to the time required to get noncommercial items of this type into satisfactory production.
Gas Defense Equipment56
As early as the fall of 1915 the War Department delegated the task of designing, developing, and procuring gas masks to the Medical
Department. Early in 1917 the Bureau of Mines offered its assistance in research and development, an offer which the Medical Department gratefully accepted. The bureau designed and tested masks in its own laboratories and cooperated with the following universities in experiments on absorbents for gas mask canisters: The Johns Hopkins University, the University of California, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In conjunction with the Bureau of Chemistry of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Carbon Co., the National Lamp Works of the General Electric Co., as well as the University of Chicago, the bureau tested charcoal obtained from different woods, nuts, and seeds, and began to develop large-scale processes for carbonizing raw materials and activating chemicals. In the summer of 1917 much of this research and development work was transferred to the Medical Department. Bradley Dewey, who was then working with the Bureau of Mines, was commissioned in the Medical Department and put in Charge of the gas mask program. Colonel Dewey became chief of the Gas Defense Production Division of the CWS upon its activation in June 1918.
The Medical Department received its first procurement directive for gas masks in May 1917. Twenty-five thousand were needed at once, the War Department stated, to equip General Pershing’s First Division, then about to sail overseas. At the same time the Medical Department was directed to supply the armed forces with 1,100,000 masks by 30 June 1918.
Maj. L. P. Williamson of The Surgeon General’s Office turned to the Bureau of Mines for assistance in filling the order for the first 25,000 masks. The bureau sought out and obtained the services of various manufacturers. The facepieces, for example, were manufactured by the B. F. Goodrich Co. of Akron and the canisters by the American Can Co. of Brooklyn. American Can also had the contract for assembling the masks. By June 1917 over 20,000 of the masks were at sea, bound for France, and some 5,000 followed shortly thereafter. The masks proved unsatisfactory, primarily because they did not protect the wearer against chloropicrin, which was beginning to be widely used. Since the British and French had more than enough masks, they readily
supplied the American First Division with all it needed.57 Although the 25,000 American masks were not used the experience resulted in improvement in the design of the mask.
The policy of obtaining masks exclusively through contract with private industry was continued throughout 1917. Contracts for procuring components of the mask were awarded to various manufacturers throughout the country, while a contract for assembling the parts into complete masks went to the Hero Manufacturing Co. of Philadelphia in the fall of 1917. From then until the end of the war Hero was the sole private contractor assembling masks. During the last months of 1917 transportation difficulties were aggravated by excessive snowfalls and the company experienced great delay in getting components from such points as Boston and Akron to Philadelphia. this was doubtless an important factor in the Hero’s failure to attain scheduled production.
As early as mid-November 1917 the War Department had concluded that in order to meet the gas mask requirements for American troops being sent to France, as well as to insure the rigid standards demanded in this item of equipment, the government would have to construct its own gas mask factory. The site for the government factory was Long Island City, New York, where during the early months of 1918 the government took over a group of five large buildings and converted them into a factory.58 A dollar-a-year man, Ralph R. Richardson of Chicago, was named plant manager with a lieutenant colonel as his assistant. The various departments in the plant were headed by either military or civilian personnel. Some 12,000 workers, of whom 8,500 were women, were at one time employed in the plant.
The government did not alter its plans of procuring masks from private industry after establishing the Long Island City plant, but on the contrary made every effort to step up production from private sources. The extent of private production during the war is indicated by the fact that the Gas Defense Division of the CWS at one time supervised contracts in approximately 600 factories extending from Boston to San Francisco.59
Women workers in gas mask factory, Long Island City, New York.
Since the Army had no previous experience with gas masks, the contractors, as well as government officials supervising the contracts, had to learn largely through trial and error. One of the most baffling procurement problems in connection with the manufacture of the gas mask was that of obtaining sufficient charcoal for the canisters of the masks. Early in the war the War Department undertook a concerted drive to speed the shipment of coconut shells, from which the charcoal was made, from Ceylon, India, and other oriental countries to the Philippine Islands. There a government charcoal plant was erected which during 1917–18 produced 1,300 tons of coconut shell charcoal; 300 tons of this had been shipped to the United States by November 1918, but that amount was by no means sufficient to meet the demand. In the effort to find other sources of supply, the Gas Defense Division of the CWS sent agents to Mexico and to Central and South America to investigate ways of expediting the importation of coconuts into the United States. At the same time possible substitutes for the coconut shell were investigated. It was found that the corozo nut, the fruit of the Manaca palm tree, was the most suitable substitute and thousands of tons of these nuts were shipped into this country.
A colorful touch was lent to the search for carbon materials for the gas
mask in September 1918 when a nut gathering campaign was undertaken throughout the United States. The Red Cross, the Department of Agriculture, the Food Administration, and the Boy Scouts were among the groups sponsoring this venture. Two motion picture reels depicting the urgent need for charcoal were made and given wide circulation. By the close of the war on 11 November an estimated 4,000 tons of nut shells were en route to the great carbon plant at Astoria on Long Island.
This carbon plant was established in 1917 to activate charcoal, an even more difficult problem than the making of the charcoal itself.60 The activation had to be done in facilities permitting fine control of temperature, and the government spent over $1,000,000 in constructing the Astoria plant. This facility was erected adjacent to the large gas works of the Astoria Light, Heat, and Power Co., at the junction of the East River and Long Island Sound, the point known as Hell Gate.
The first gas masks of export standard were sent overseas in January 1918, although not until May were they shipped in large numbers.61 By November some 4 million masks had been shipped, together with considerable quantities of other gas defense items. (Table 2) Among these were bleaching powder, used to decontaminate gassed areas; extra antidimming, used to prevent moisture from condensing on gas mask eyepieces; sag paste, a protective ointment; dugout blankets, which were hung at the doors of dugouts as a protective device; dugout-blanket oil, a special heavy oil used to impregnate cotton blankets; warning devices, such as Klaxon horns and watchmen’s rattles; and trench fans, to draw gases out of dugouts and trenches.
Field Testing of Chemical Munitions
While drawing up plans for a shell filling plant in the fall of 1917, the Ordnance Department began to consider the establishment of a proving ground where gas shells could be tested under simulated battle conditions. The Bureau of Mines cooperated by providing a competent scientist, William S. Bacon of the Yale section, to take charge of the program.62
Table 2: Gas-Defense items shipped overseas from June 1917 to November 1918
| Item | Unit | Quantity |
| Respirators (Gas Masks) | each | 3,938,808 |
| Extra Canisters | each | 1,805, 076 |
| Horse Masks | each | 351,270 |
| Bleaching Powder | tons | 1,867 |
| Extra Antidimming | tubes | 2,855, 776 |
| Sag Paste | tons | 915 |
| Dugout Blankets | each | 36, 221 |
| Dugout-Blanket Oil | gallons | 5,000 |
| Warning Devices | each | 19,620 |
| Trench Fans | each | 27,690 |
Source: This table appears in Annual Report of the Director, CWS 1919, p. 51, and in Crowell, America’s Munitions, p. 431.
The British, who maintained a chemical proving ground at Porton, England, contributed the services of Maj. H. R. LeSueur, who helped lay out the grounds and organize the tests.63
The Ordnance Department started construction of a proving ground at Edgewood near the shell filling plant in January 1918. A month later the department stopped work at Edgewood because it was felt that the location was not sufficiently isolated and started anew in the pine forests near Lakehurst, N.J.
At Lakehurst, Ordnance constructed ranges, impact areas, laboratories, magazines, gun emplacements, observation towers, animal houses, barracks, and other buildings necessary for successful operation of a proving ground. To determine the quantity of gas present after explosion of a shell, Ordnance laid out two lines of trenches with dugouts and designed an automatic sampling apparatus to collect gas laden air in glass bottles located within the area.
The proving ground was manned by Medical, Ordnance, and Quartermaster officers and men. Tests were carried out jointly by chemists, physiologists, and meteorologists. The first gas shells fired in the United States were discharged at Lakehurst on 25 April 1918. Thereafter firing trials were made to determine the extent of decomposition of toxic agents during the explosion of shells, to ascertain the relative effectiveness and
persistency of mustard, to find the number of shells necessary to build up a concentration of gas in a given area, to test experimental shells, and to test representative samples from the production line.
Demobilization
With the coming of peace in November 1918, the industrial and collegiate laboratories assisting the CWS dropped war projects and returned to their normal scientific research. At American University the volume of research subsided as the staff of more than twelve hundred technical men, among whom were many of the finest chemists in the United States, dwindled away until only a handful were left. The dismemberment of the service proceeded so rapidly that by 30 June 1919, 97 percent of its military personnel had been demobilized.64 In a short time the CWS would have disappeared completely had not Congress on 11 July 1919 ordered the War Department to retain the service as an independent branch of the Army for another year.65 Under the National Defense Act of 1920 the CWS became a permanent branch of the Army.66
For several months after the war the CWS retained the wide authority granted by the War Department in 1918 to carry on “all investigation and research work in connection with gas warfare.”67 In reality this meant little because the small staff could not cope with all projects relevant to chemical warfare. The only projects carried on were the development of boosters for gas and smoke shells, and the determination of bursting charges.68 Shortly after Congress extended the life of the CWS in July 1919, the War Department issued the first peacetime instructions concerning research and development. The Department did not insist that the Chief keep up the wartime level of research and development, but it did require him to maintain a “competent body of chemical warfare specialists with facilities for continuous research and experimentation,” and to keep “in touch with civilian agencies for chemical research and chemical industries capable of being converted for the production of wartime material.”69
There was little else that the CWS could have done at this time even had it desired. The government had returned American University to the trustees, and the Research Division of the CWS was busy preparing new laboratories at Edgewood Arsenal and transferring equipment and records. CWS scientists, uncertain of their future, were not disposed to remain, so that between 1 July and 1 November 1919 there was only an average of eighteen technical men to keep the work alive.70
The central gas mask factory at Long Island City was demobilized after the war. This was done on a gradual basis, each employee being discharged only after he had been placed in other civilian employment.71 A second demobilization project was the termination of over twelve hundred formal contracts and over fifty informal contracts. By 1 July 1920 all CWS formal contracts and over 98 percent of the informal contracts had been settled.72
More time consuming was the sale of the surplus chemical plants and surplus items of chemical warfare equipment and materiel. By 1 July 1920 the plants had either been sold or transferred to other government bureaus, and by that time also great quantities of surplus materiel had been sold.73 But disposition of some World War I surplus property continued into 1925.74
Certain materiel that might prove useful in peacetime was not declared surplus, notably the gas mask. Planners realized that a number of masks would be needed for training purposes in peacetime as well as for war reserve. Not only would World War I masks have to be reconditioned, but it would also be necessary to manufacture improved masks during the peacetime years. Thus within a year after the signing of the armistice it was decided that a government-owned, government-operated gas mask factory would be built at Edgewood Arsenal, to be equipped with machinery used in the Long Island City plant.75
Much of this machinery had been sold as surplus after the war and the remainder shipped for storage to the government plant at Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. In late 1919 and early 1920 this machinery was transferred to Edgewood, where it was installed in the new gas mask factory.
A more difficult problem was that of securing operators to run the machinery, for although a number of the supervisors from the Long Island plant came to Edgewood very few of the operators did. Consequently, it was necessary to train new operators, a process which required a period of about six months.76 The gas mask factory at Edgewood reconditioned approximately one half million World War I masks and produced 120,000 new masks in the years 1920–21.77
With the armistice the staff of the proving ground was quickly demobilized. In November 1919 the CWS established an officers’ training school at Lakehurst, where shortly afterwards the First Gas Regiment was stationed. In the spring of 1920 the service resumed testing operations.78
During the twenty months in which the United States was involved in World War I, the Bureau of Mines and the Army built up the largest organization of scientists ever assembled in this country, perhaps in the world. The volume of research carried on by these scientists was tremendous and their contributions notable.79 One group, headed by Capt. Win-ford Lee Lewis, of Northwestern University, discovered lewisite and another group under Maj. Roger Adams, of the University of Illinois, produced adamsite. Some scientists carried on extensive research on protective equipment and chemical warfare weapons. In medical research, physiologists studied the reaction of chemical agents upon the body, so that methods of treatment could be devised.
When the War Department launched the program to produce gas warfare munitions, neither the military establishment nor American industry had had any experience in manufacturing gas warfare items. Under these conditions it is surprising that so much gas warfare equipment was manufactured and that such a large portion of it was delivered to the theater by the close of the war.
Yet the amount of such equipment reaching France was only a fraction of what the troops needed and the U.S. Army therefore had to rely on the French and the British to fill the bulk of its needs. This situation was not confined to gas warfare items by any means; throughout 1917 and 1918, the AEF depended upon the French and British for almost every
Ordnance item except rifles and small arms ammunition.80 The implications of this experience were not lost on the War Department or on the Congress, and in the 1920 revision of the National Defense Act provision was made against future emergencies through the inauguration of a system of industrial mobilization planning.