The Chemical Warfare Service: Chemicals in Combat
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Chapter 1: Origins of the Chemical Warfare Service
The great paradox of America’s wartime gas experience is that in World War I, when the nation was unprepared for it, gas was used, and in World War II, when the nation was prepared, gas was not used. The gas warfare experience of World War I is important not only as the sole example of large-scale use of toxic chemicals in battle, but also because this experience in large measure dictated the chemical mission, organization, weapons, tactics, and techniques with which the belligerents entered World War II. The Allies and the Central Powers used no fewer than twenty-eight gases and sixteen mixtures of gases during World War I. Although the United States retained or developed nearly a dozen gases, only four, mustard, phosgene, lewisite, and chloracetophenone, in order of importance, were considered as basic at the beginning of World War II. The first two were accorded this priority as the result of actual World War I combat experience; lewisite owed its prominence to its likeness to mustard, while chloracetophenone was similar to, although less expensive and less corrosive than, the World War I tear gases.1 The ground weapons available for gas at the beginning of World War II had for the most part likewise been developed and battle-tested in World War I. These included artillery with toxic shell, the Livens projector, chemical cylinders, and toxic candles. The Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) in the United States had
modified the 4-inch Stokes mortar into the longer range, more accurate 4.2-inch chemical mortar, again on the basis of World War I experience.2 The aerial chemical bomb was a development of the period between the wars, but even this new weapon did not significantly alter gas warfare tactics. The concept of the massive gas attack adopted by most of the major World War I combatants dominated tactical doctrine in the period following the war. Retained too was the practice of using mustard in defensive operations. In offensive chemical operations nonpersistent agents were to be used in terrain over which friendly troops would advance, whereas the persistent mustard would be placed on areas to be neutralized and bypassed.3 In general, the troops who successfully stood up in the face of such gas attacks were those who had training and gas mask discipline.
Two comments about the American use of gas in World War I are in order. First, troops in the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) used a disproportionately large amount of Allied matériel. In time, the United States did send bulk toxics to Europe where they were poured into British and French shells. And although four million American-made masks were eventually shipped to Europe, soldiers of the AEF initially used almost a million British and French masks. The second point concerns the place of gas warfare in the thinking of American battle leaders. These officers had to be won over to the usefulness of gas warfare and this task was not always easy. Brig. Gen. Amos A. Fries tells of the case of the operations officer of an American corps demanding written assurance that gas used in support of an attack in the Argonne would not cause a single friendly casualty. Fries also brings out another point, supported by contemporary documents, which involves the reluctance of American commanders to use gas because of the possibility of retaliatory fire. They held this attitude despite the fact that the Germans had made good use of the chemical weapon regardless of enemy reaction.4
World War I
The First Gas Attack
Late in the afternoon of 22 April 1915 three flares glowed from a German balloon hoisted in the salient near Ypres, Belgium. At this signal plumes of greenish-gray smoke began to pour from the earth in front of the German trenches. The plumes suffused into a yellowish cloud rolling downwind toward the Allied trenches at the juncture of the French and British lines. The first notable gas attack in military history was in progress, The chlorine gas cloud enveloped a French colonial regiment. Some soldiers emerged from the cloud blinded, choking, and coughing, but other soldiers, incapacitated, dying, or dead from the effects of the gas were left in the trenches. German gas breached the Allied lines for four miles, and German soldiers captured fifty French guns.5
The French did not announce their casualties from this first attack, but the Germans estimated them at 15,000, including 5,000 deaths in the attack of 22 April and in that of 24 April in the same sector.6 Although the German estimate may have been high, the casualties were nonetheless extensive. These losses, along with the shock and panic resulting from the surprise introduction of a new weapon, could have been a serious blow to the Allies had the Germans followed up their initial success. They failed to advance more than a few hundred yards, however, and before they could gain ground significantly, the Allies had plugged the hole in their line.7 The failure of the Germans to exploit their initial success and Allied lack of preparation for the introduction of gas can best be understood in the light of the strategic concepts and views of the military art held by the belligerents before World War I.
Background of Gas Warfare
While the nineteenth century industrial and technological revolutions produced a new arsenal of weapons that radically altered the character of warfare, the new technology produced no toxic war gases. Such were envisaged, however, and several suggestions for the use of toxic chemicals in war had been made.8 The prospect of the union of the science of chemistry with the art of war was sufficiently real by the end of the nineteenth century to cause the nations deliberating at The Hague during the International Peace Conference to attempt to ban the use of “projectiles, the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.”9
The attempted ban did not run counter to any area of military opinion. Military leaders, theorists, and innovators were engrossed, and in the early years of the twentieth century became even more engrossed, in the concepts of mass armies, grand strategic offensives, and the undreamed-of firepower of modern weapons.10 The nations of Europe entered World War I dominated by the grand strategic conception of mass offensive through which one set of belligerents or the other would claim victory—probably in as short a time as six weeks.11 No nation envisioned the need for large-scale industrial preparation; the initial stockpile of weapons and ammunition would serve for the brief duration of the war.12 Since gas was expected only to hamper the progress of assaulting forces in mass offensive, each nation reviewed its potential for producing toxics in but cursory fashion.
Only Germany, with the world’s largest and most varied chemical industry, appeared to have the potential for war gas production. Germany set Professor Fritz Haber, director of Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and a small group of chemists to work on war gases in Haber’s own institute in the first month of the war.13 At first there must have
seemed little likelihood that any product of Haber’s laboratory would be used. The German strategy of mass offensive was overwhelmingly successful until the Allies decisively halted the German advance in the famed September 1914 battle of the Marne.14 In October and November 1914 the first battle of Ypres taught the Germans that they could not resume their offensive in the west, at least for the time being. The Germans reacted promptly by digging in. Deadlock, static trench warfare, soon characterized the Western Front while the Germans prepared to press the offensive on the Eastern Front and to undertake large-scale, long-term economic and industrial war mobilization within the homeland. In these preparations Germany began to look for “keys to the deadlock.”15 War gas could be such a key.
A Period of Improvisation
German forces experimented with an eye and nose irritant powder on the Western Front in October but it was so ineffective that little or no notice was taken of it. Gas was then used on the Eastern Front, possibly as early as December 1914, but certainly in January and February 1915.16 British and French disregarded other more definite warnings of the impending German employment of gas. In March 1915 a German officer captured in a raid told a British noncommissioned officer that gas cylinders were in place, ready to use, on the Western Front. On 30 March the French 10th Army bulletin contained a prisoner of war report that indicated where gas cylinders were emplaced, how they were to be used, and what protection German troops had against gas. The 10th Army information was confirmed by another war prisoner on 15 April and again confirmed shortly
thereafter by a captured German document and a Belgian General Staff report on German offensive and defensive measures. The Belgians further advised their allies that the Germans were manufacturing gas respirators in Ghent. Again, British and Canadian air and ground troops actually saw and even counted gas cylinders and shell. And, perhaps as a final indication of intent, the Germans were accusing the Allies of employing gas.17
All warnings went unheeded. The German gas attack on 22 April took the Allied forces by complete surprise, and, what is more astonishing, its success was a surprise to the Germans. The German high command initially had looked upon the scheme with tolerant acquiescence, not bothering to provide the reserves to exploit a possible breakthrough.18 Consequently, instead of achieving a major victory, the Germans had to settle for merely straightening their line. But major victory or no, after Ypres toxic chemical warfare clearly became a force to reckon with.19 The French, the British, and the Germans all began to concentrate on the offensive and defensive aspects of gas warfare.
Within a few days after the Ypres attack, on the appeal of Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, British women had equipped the entire British Expeditionary Forces with gauze pads which could be used as a crude mask to protect against toxics.20 The French provided similar pads, and, like both the British and Germans, furnished chemicals to wet the pads in order to increase their filtering potential.21 The development of an offensive capability in gas warfare naturally took longer. The British designated elements of the War Office to initiate
and supervise work on both protection and weapons and organized a chemical laboratory in France. Sir John French, commander-in-chief in the field, made Lt. Col. Charles H. Foulkes (later promoted to brigadier) his adviser on gas and gave him the responsibility for gas offensive operations in the field.22
The availability of weapons dictated the tactics of gas warfare. The Germans used chlorine cylinders because chlorine was readily available and because the cylinders provided the best method of placing large quantities of an agent on a nearby enemy. Toxic fillings in artillery shells were not immediately effective because of problems of containing a liquid, corrosive toxic under pressure and because use of liquid fillings required ballistic re-engineering. Moreover, an artillery shell contained a relatively small amount of agent. Most of the early German and British attacks thus took the form of the chlorine cloud of Ypres.23
The first British cloud attack took place at Loos, Belgium, on 25 and 27 September 1915 and involved 6,400 chlorine cylinders on a twenty-five mile front.24 Since it was impossible to cover so large a front with the available cylinders, an innovation was introduced—more than 12,000 newly developed smoke candles were deployed to supplement and simulate the gas cloud and to conceal troops moving forward. While natural smoke had been used for battlefield concealment for centuries, this was probably the first use of artificial smoke on a battlefield of a modern war. The tactical employment of artificial smoke gave the new chemical warfare and gas services another mission.25
The use of cylinders to disperse gas had inherent disadvantages. These munitions were difficult to transport, hard to emplace, and quick to expend their filling—they took three to five minutes to empty. Moreover, the success of a cylinder attack depended on the wind direction. The fact that the prevailing winds in France were westerlies might cast
some doubt on the wisdom of the Germans in introducing the cylinder method of gas warfare.26
In December 1915, again near Ypres, the Germans introduced a new war gas, phosgene, a highly toxic commercial gas used in the dye industry. As a matter of fact, the Germans, British, and French had discovered the military effectiveness of phosgene almost simultaneously during the summer of 1915, but the Germans used it first because they were in a much better position to produce it in large quantities.27 While Germany was first to use gas in cloud attacks, the French retaliated with phosgene-filled artillery shells in February 1916. The first employment of a non-explosive artillery shell for gas represented a decided technological breakthrough. The use of explosive shell had resulted in too great a dispersion of gas, but a shell with only enough explosive to rupture the container allowed the toxic contents to form a small cloud at the point of impact. A tremendous bombardment was required to create a large cloud, and the French possessed the means for firing such a bombardment in their astonishingly effective 75-mm. gun. French artillery fire, both the phosgene-filled shells and later Vincennite, a hydrocyanic gas mixture, was significantly more effective than German artillery gas fire at the time. A measure of this greater effectiveness was the statement of a German commander: “In order to reply to the dangerous gas shells of the French I have only shells which are filled with ‘eau de Cologne’.”28
Allied intelligence had predicted the German introduction of phosgene, and the British developed the small box respirator to cope with this new agent. Air was taken into this mask through a canister filled with charcoal and soda lime. The wearer inhaled and exhaled through a rubber tube held in the mouth. The tube was connected to the canister for fresh air and to a “flutter valve” for exhalation. Nose clips were an integral part of the rubberized fabric facepiece as were eye lenses. The mask was uncomfortable and become more so with long wearing, and the heat of the face on the lenses caused condensation which greatly
interfered with vision.29 The British mask was the best protection available despite its defects. It had replaced gas helmets—porous fabric hoods impregnated with chemicals to filter gases—which were much less effective. The French M2 mask which was standard until nearly the end of the war was a modification of the gas hood wherein a face-piece was attached to the head with straps.30
Full-Scale Gas Warfare
The British gas offensive at Loos, the German introduction of phosgene, and the French employment of phosgene-filled artillery shell ended the first phase of gas warfare in World War I. The British at Loos successfully challenged German domination of gas warfare and the French improved upon the German introduction of phosgene. The era of emergency improvisations of weapons and protective equipment and of dependence upon the only readily available commercial toxic, chlorine, was over. The chlorine cloud attack had been effective when used with surprise against unprotected troops, but protection against chlorine had not been difficult to provide and surprise could not be counted upon since an enemy could be on guard when wind conditions favored an attack. The remainder of the war was to be characterized by a fairly equal race between Germans and Allies to discover and employ new methods of protection, new gases, and new methods of conducting attacks. Gas warfare became a series of technical and scientific battles, with sometimes one set of belligerents ahead and sometimes the other. Gas warfare, along with the tank and military aircraft, became part of the World War I revolution in the art of war.
In 1916 the British introduced a new means of projecting gas, the 4-inch Stokes mortar, developed from the 3-inch version of this weapon, which had been the standard mortar in the British Army. Because of their inability to manufacture gas shells, the British first used the mortar to fire improvised smokes and incendiaries. The Stokes gas shell, or bomb, as the British called it, contained six pounds of agent as compared to three pounds for the British 4.5-inch heavy howitzer shell.
Its 1,000-yard range was adequate for situations in which opposing trenches were not far apart, and its accuracy, while not pinpoint, was good. Crews were capable, under combat conditions, of firing fifteen rounds per minute, a rate of fire more rapid than that of the howitzer.31 Still, the Stokes mortar had its limitations.
The British and French had adopted a tactic of gas warfare dependent on overwhelming the enemy with vast quantities of toxics.32 The massive cylinder attacks of the British and the artillery barrages of the French met this requirement. The Stokes mortar also could have met such requirements for targets less than 1,000 yards distant, but the number of mortars, shells, and crews necessary was beyond the capacity of the Allies at this time. The need was for a simple inexpensive projector with a longer range and a larger capacity shell. Such a projector was invented almost by accident.
Capt. William H. Livens, commander of the British Special Brigade flame projector company, sought to extend both the range over which incendiary materials could be dispersed and the quantities of materials which could be employed. He found that a large steel drum buried in the ground almost up to the open end made a makeshift mortar from which could be fired a smaller drum filled with oil and cotton waste. He used black powder as a propellant and guncotton to ignite the oil. The improvised weapon was capricious and dangerous to its crew, but it was effective. What was more pleasing to the British was that it turned out to be equally effective for the projection of toxics. Livens, accordingly, set about making a more reliable version, one which used a boxed propellant charge detonated electrically and which fired a cylindrical bomb equipped with a light bursting charge. This Livens projector could shoot a thin-cased bomb nearly 8 inches in diameter and 20 inches long and filled with 30 pounds of toxic for a distance of nearly a mile. Range could be varied by increasing or decreasing the propellant charges; direction was determined by careful placement at the time the weapon was buried. The weapon was not accurate but it did not have to be:
the simultaneous firing of a 25-projector battery, each projector firing a 6r-pound drum, was ideal for a large area gas barrage.
Emplacing the Livens projector entailed a good deal of work. A trench had to be dug for each battery, the weapons emplaced, and then the trenches filled. Once this task was done the projectors could not be re-aimed. Even considering the amount of work involved, emplacement of the Livens projectors had certain advantages over the emplacement of cylinders. While the Livens projectors could usually be dug in some distance behind the front lines in daylight, cylinder emplacements were usually made at night because there was no practical means of denying enemy observation of the forward trenches. Although enemy observation was denied by nighttime emplacement of cylinders, the sound of digging in positions close to the front provided noisy clues as to the imminence of a gas attack.
An advantage of the Livens projector, as well as of any means of projecting gas, was that the warning period was reduced to the few seconds between the time the projectiles struck and the gas clouds formed. By way of contrast, the cylinder-bred clouds which billowed across no-man’s-land gave much greater forewarning, although this might not prove an unqualified disadvantage to the attacker because the more widespread the alarm the more the enemy might be hampered by protective devices. Use of cylinders continued but the projector proved to be a formidable weapon and became a major means of launching gas attacks.
The first combat use of the Livens projector took place on 4 April 1917, the beginning of the battle of Arras. Three thousand projectors fired nearly 50 tons of phosgene on 31 targets. At the same time 48 Stokes mortars alternately fired phosgene and a new gas, chloropicrin. Chloropicrin, which was also used by the French and the Germans, is a lethal gas and a strong lachrymator, but because of its lightness and instability it was first used primarily as a means for penetrating the German protective mask. The battle of Arras also saw the first employment of a substantial amount of British toxic artillery shell.33 The Arras experience evidently convinced the Germans of the usefulness of the projector for it prompted them to rush into production their own version of the weapon which was to be first used on the Italian front during the following October.34
But the immediate German counter to this successful Allied use of gas was the introduction of two new agents, diphenylchloroarsine35 and dichloroethyl sulfide. The latter, better known as mustard,36 is a liquid in its natural state, not a gas, although it readily vaporizes. It is a vesicant, that is, it inflames and burns those parts of the body with which it comes in contact. This characteristic means that a mask alone is insufficient protection against the agent. Mustard, persistent in its staying power, clings to clothing and equipment, covers vegetation, lies in pools in low places.37 The agent is thus particularly effective in defensive situations or in keeping areas clear of the enemy. Such a saturation as required for interdiction demanded heavy bombardment—the Germans used more than a million shells containing about 2,500 tons of gas in the ten days following the introduction of mustard.38
The implication of Germany’s use of mustard was not lost on the Allies. The American expert, General Fries, termed its introduction “probably the greatest single development of gas warfare.”39 Brigadier Foulkes declared that with it the enemy had achieved “undoubted success in the gas war.”40 While most mustard victims were incapacitated, not killed, the casualty rate was high and most of these victims had to be evacuated for treatment. Evacuation of so many soldiers greatly weakened the Allied line. The Allies immediately wanted to retaliate in kind, but it was more than a year before the gas could be manufactured in sufficient quantity. Mustard had been known before
the German attack, but the Allies had not adopted it because its manufacture presented so many difficulties.41
Gas warfare required not only agents and weapons but also military organizations to handle the myriad technical and tactical problems of its employment. The appointment of Colonel Foulkes as gas adviser for the British Expeditionary Forces and as responsible officer for offensive gas operations, mentioned earlier, initiated attempts to set up an efficient organization in the British Army. Foulkes’ organization, designated the Special Brigade early in 1916, grew from four to twenty-one companies. Sixteen of the companies were organized in four battalions, each battalion having four companies assigned to handle gas cloud attacks; four special companies fired the 4-inch Stokes mortar; and a separate company operated flame projectors.42
The employment of flame projectors as tactical weapons was a concept that appealed to the Western Front belligerents, perhaps not as a key to the deadlock but as a nonetheless valuable device. The Germans had first used a portable apparatus for projecting flaming oil in June 1915. The French soon developed a similar apparatus, and shortly thereafter Germans, French, and British each developed small portable, as well as large, semifixed, projectors. The value of flame at the time was principally psychological—the fiery spurt of burning oil, the roar of the flame, and billowing clouds of black smoke had a terrifying effect on troops in the trenches. But the portable equipment was cumbersome, resupply was difficult, the field of fire was small, and the range rarely exceeded 30 yards. Furthermore, the operator of the portable apparatus was easily distinguished and highly vulnerable to small arms fire. The various semifixed projectors soon developed, with a range of from 40 to 50 yards and a protected position for the operator in a trench, were a little better, but the field of fire was still small and the equipment difficult to install, maintain, and resupply. The flame projector, with all its faults, became a responsibility of the chemical warfare services.43
With the addition of the flame mission, the British chemical warfare elements had their full quota of missions for World War I—gas, smoke, and incendiary. The British still had no central organization to handle
chemical warfare research and development, training, supply, and field employment and remained without one until mid- 1916, when they formed a new combined organization of offensive and defensive chemical elements in the field and appointed a director of gas services, Brig. Gen. Henry Thuillier. Although this reorganization made little significant change in the status of Foulkes’s Special Brigade, it did create a coordinated chemical arm in the field.44 The French, meanwhile, had established a centralized organization, the Service Chimique de Guerre, in September 1915. But the French industrial potential was insufficient to provide the logistic capability for any significant gas warfare offensive until 1916 and the introduction of toxic artillery shells.45
The Gas Service, AEF
The discussion of Allied chemical organizations, particularly that of the British, is of special interest from the American point of view since the overseas chemical warfare contingent of the United States patterned its organization after the British who trained the contingent.
Maj. Gen. John J. Pershing and the advance elements of the AEF landed in France in June 1917. The United States was unprepared for waging chemical warfare even though it had been waged in Europe for over two years. Research on toxics had begun in the United States only a few months earlier. The nation had no gas weapons, no toxics, no military gas organization, and no protective supplies. It did have some information on gas warfare gathered by War Department observers with the Allies, notably by Dr. George A. Hulett of Princeton University. Although the War Department had not viewed gas warfare seriously, Pershing’s staff saw an immediate need for action, even before the first mustard attack, and appointed a board to make recommendations concerning gas warfare.46
The AEF board, which met on 18 June 1917, recommended assigning an officer to “create and handle” an AEF gas organization and providing him with assistants, funds, and authority.47 A week later
Headquarters, AEF, asked the War Department for such an officer and soon thereafter temporarily assigned gas offensive responsibilities to the AEF chief engineer and gas defensive responsibilities to the AEF chief surgeon. Despite advice from the War Department in July that gas responsibilities in the United States were apportioned among the Ordnance and Medical Departments and the Corps of Engineers, Lt. Col. John McA. Palmer and Lt. Col. James R. Church of the AEF staff, in consultation with Dr. Hulett and Capt. Walter M. Boothby, advanced a strong case for the organization of gas services in the United States and France. Church declared that the gas service in the United States should be subordinate to that in France in matters of policy and equipment. Both officers emphasized the necessity of immediate action, especially for protection. The commander of the 1st Division, comprising the first Army troops in France, had called for gas masks—his organization had none at all.48 The timing of the comments by Church and Palmer suggests that the recent employment of mustard could have fostered their sense of urgency.
By the middle of August 19 17 the AEF had received from the United States 20,000 gas masks and the news that a gas and flame regiment had been authorized. No other supplies, officers, or advice were received. About the same time Lt. Col. Amos A. Fries, Corps of Engineers, arrived in France and was about to be named director of roads when his orders were changed to make him engineer in charge of gas as well as Chief of the Gas Service, AEF. Headquarters, AEF, dispatched a cable to the War Department indicating that, since no further delay was possible, the appointment had been made. The AEF staff requested that Fries be designated to command the authorized gas and flame regiment.49
Colonel Fries took up his new duties on 22 August 1917 and left Paris on the same day to make his own appraisal of the British gas service in the field and to determine American requirements for gas organization, protection, and weapons. He learned from the British that the American masks recently received had failed to afford adequate protection in British tests, and on 23 August 1917 he accordingly recommended the adoption of the British small box respirator as the standard American mask. American troops were also to carry the
French M2 mask for emergency use in event the British mask was lost or became no longer wearable.50
Fries returned to Paris on 28 August and completed the draft organization for the AEF gas service. He also drafted the order formally establishing the AEF Gas Service.51 The AEF order, issued on 3 September 1917, charged the Chief of the Gas Service “with the organization of personnel, the supply of material, and the conduct of the entire Gas Service both Offensive and Defensive, including instruction.”52 At the same time Fries became colonel and titular commander of the 30th Engineers, Gas and Flame, later the 1st Gas Regiment, then being organized in the United States under the actual command of Maj. Earle J. Atkinson.53 Fries’s initial problems were many: he needed officers and men; he needed supplies; he needed to train American troops; and, in order to help discharge the offensive portion of his mission, he needed to persuade American commanders that gas was a useful offensive weapon.
In meeting all these needs except that for officers and men he had to rely on Allied, especially British, help and experience. His own service he organized into an Offensive Branch and a Defensive Branch. Colonel Church became chief of the Defensive Branch, and Fries himself assumed the duties of the Offensive Branch. These branches were intended to operate in the field through gas officers assigned to army, corps, divisions, and regiments, as in the British organizational pattern. Both branches were to join in the operation of gas schools, the first two of which Fries and Boothby opened in the Army school at Langres on 10 October 1917 and within the I Corps Center of Instruction at Gondrecourt on 15 October 1917. The Offensive Branch was to direct the operations of gas and flame troops according to the British brigade pattern. There were then no troops to direct. The first companies of the 30th Engineers did not arrive in France until February 1918, and it was not until the summer of 1918 that officers began arriving in sufficient numbers to staff the gas service.54
As indicated above, supply, both offensive and defensive, came mainly from the British and French. At first, Fries attempted to handle supply personally through liaison offices established in London and Paris and through the supply services of the AEF. Maj. Robert W. Crawford, as Chief of Gas Service supply, soon relieved Fries of supply operating functions. Crawford found that the Gas Service was automatically assigned lowest priority by the established supply services who had their own problems. He accordingly secured direct purchase authority for the Gas Service and arranged for the Gas Service to handle its own supply system all the way from requisition or purchase to actual supply to troops in the field.55
Fries felt that his most difficult problems were to persuade American commanders to employ gas and to educate troops to take adequate protection against gas. It was necessary for Gas Service officers to “go out and sell gas to the Army.”56 A service which intended to sell its method of warfare, train the Army in the field, operate its own supply system, conduct offensive operations with its own troops, and advise on the conduct of both offensive and defensive operations by other combat troops clearly required more than a handful of officers and a more comprehensive organization than the one originally envisioned.
The Gas Service was enlarged to meet the demands of its many responsibilities whenever men and equipment became available. For example, a completely staffed and equipped laboratory arrived in France early in 1918 and an officers’ training camp was organized in France later in the year.57 The provision of a laboratory had been one of the projects of the Office of Gas Service since the time of its organization in the United States in October 1917.58 The increasing demands on the service resulted in the reorganization of Fries’s immediate office in March 1918 to combine offense and defense into a Military Division and to establish a Technical and a Production and Supply Division. In May the Military Division was again separated into Offense and Defense Divisions. Finally, in June, the Gas Service in the United States was converted into the Chemical Warfare Service, National Army. The Gas Service, AEF, became the CWS AEF, officially the
Chart 1: Organization, Chemical Warfare Service, American Expeditionary Forces, 13 July 1918
NOTE: Chief, Chemical Warfare Service, a member of the staff of the Commander in Chief, reported to the Commanding General, SOS, in matters of procurement, supply, transportation, and construction. GHQ AEF GO 31,16 Feb 18.
Source: Adapted from: Plate VII, General History, History, CWS, AEF.
Overseas Division, CWS, and Fries, now chief of CWS AEF, was promoted to brigadier general.59 The final CWS AEF organization which was prepared at that time included six divisions, and the duties of these divisions are evidence of the scope of gas warfare activities in the final year of the war. (Chart 1)
The Offense and Defense Divisions within the Office of the Chief, CWS AEF, exercised staff supervision over tactical gas warfare activities,. evaluated combat experience, planned the employment of gas and flame units, and suggested changes in gas warfare tactics and techniques for all combat elements through army, corps, and division gas officers. These “military” divisions cooperated with the Technical Division in supervising the AEF Gas School and the army and corps gas schools. The Defense Division was also charged with the issue of defensive equipment and therefore supervised the CWS Services of Supply (SOS) troops immediately involved in combat supply support and training.60 The Technical Division, in addition to controlling the AEF Gas School, directly operated chemical and medical laboratories and a gas research experimental station. The Office of the Medical Director, with divisional status, translated Technical Division findings into procedures for the care of gas casualties and cooperated with the Medical Corps in the development of treatment equipment and the application of care procedures. The Intelligence Division collected chemical warfare intelligence material for the use of the operating divisions and served as a clearinghouse for all CWS reports and requests for information. While the “military” divisions and the other divisions supporting them were mainly oriented toward combat operations, the remaining division, Production and Supply, was the element charged with those functions most clearly associated with the basic, logistics-oriented SOS mission. The organizational relationship of the CWS AEF to the SOS therefore largely depended upon the functions of the Production and Supply Division. Branches of this division computed chemical matériel requirements, procured munitions and equipment, supervised manufacturing plants in England and France, directed field salvage of chemical materials, and controlled four CWS SOS depots, chemical sections in six
ports of debarkation, and chemical sections of several field army depots.61
Fries’s own office, after the establishment of the SOS command, was located in SOS headquarters at Tours, but Fries continued to report to General Pershing’s General Headquarters (GHQ) , AEF. Most CWS administrative matters, except those directly relating to SOS, were handled through GHQ with the assistance of a CWS representative stationed at that headquarters. Fries handled detailed administrative work, including the assignment of CWS officers throughout the AEF, through his own administrative staff which included an adjutant, a personnel officer, and representatives in the AEF Liaison Service in London and Paris. Fries, by the time of the armistice, immediately supervised more than 150 officers. More than half of these officers were assigned to CWS staff and liaison duties while the remainder carried on laboratory and training work. Approximately another 30 officers directly supervised CWS SOS field operations. While Fries deferred to field commanders in their supervision of tactical chemical operations, he could exert considerable pressure on tactical planning officers because of his direct control of 168 field army, corps, and division gas officers. These gas officers reported to and advised their organization commanders according to the accepted staff pattern. The Chief, CWS AEF, was empowered to and did require detailed reports of offensive and defensive chemical operations. His “military” divisions presented their summaries and analyses of these reports in a weekly bulletin to organization gas officers. The bulletins contained criticisms of past chemical operations and suggestions for improvement. Gas officers on regimental and battalion staffs, as well as noncommissioned officers, were not members of the CWS; they were chosen by unit commanders from the unit complement. Yet, Fries could exercise some measure of control over these officers inasmuch as AEF orders specified that they be trained at CWS schools and that they be given gas warfare work as their principal duty.62
Another change which took place with the formation of the Chemical Warfare Service in the National Army was the redesignation of the
30th Engineers, Gas and Flame, as the 1st Gas Regiment, CWS. This organization had been gradually growing as the war progressed, and by the time of the armistice it comprised 4 battalions with a total of 6 American companies and 4 attached British companies. Three platoons of each company fired projectors, and the fourth fired Stokes mortars. The authorized goal of one gas regiment for each field army was not achieved by the time the war ended.63
The extent of Fries’s control over CWS activities in World War I is important since some CWS officers subsequently viewed Fries’s authority as setting a precedent for the authority of principal CWS officers in World War II. The nature of Fries’s position is also important because it was one of the factors in determining general and special staff relationships and duties. The U.S. Army had not employed the general and special staff concepts in war before World War I. AEF experience played a part in molding these concepts as they emerged in the period between the wars. General Pershing kept a tight rein on all elements of the AEF organization, and he apparently expected all his staff officers, including his Chief, CWS, to act as extensions of his own person throughout his organization.64 Thus, Fries dealt with gas warfare matters while cloaked with his commander’s rank and authority. The extent of his control is illustrated by the fact that Fries on one occasion relieved a division chemical officer.65 Fries clearly believed in the necessity for maintaining a field chemical warfare organization broad enough to link research in chemical weapons and protection by “the closest possible ties to the firing line.” He felt that he had established a strong, well-coordinated service in the AEF which encompassed research, development, manufacturing and supply, tactical employment of chemicals, and employment of chemical weapons by chemical troops in the field. “The success of the CWS in the field and at home,” he wrote, “was due to this complete organization.”66
The organizational maturity achieved in the AEF quite early in the war unhappily was not paralleled within the military structure in the
United States. Unprepared for gas warfare when the United States entered the war in April 1917, the War Department divided responsibility for this new form of warfare among five different agencies, one of which was a civilian bureau.67
It is not strange that the people responsible for the battlefield employment of chemical warfare were stanch and vocal pleaders for a more rational chemical organization in the War Department. Fries’s dealings with the Hydra-headed, un-coordinated chemical warfare complex in Washington led to repeated requests for organizational improvements which would ease his labors. In making these requests, Fries had the full support of General Pershing.
As indicated earlier, the War Department set up a coordinating agency known as the Office of Gas Service in October 1917. This clearinghouse for chemical matters consisted of a director and representatives from the Ordnance and Medical Departments and from the Chemical Service Section of the National Army—a section established at the same time as the Gas Service with a principal mission of providing the AEF with a chemical laboratory. In February 1918 the Chemical Warfare Service and the Gas Division were joined in a move that failed to provide the administrative centralization and the prestige that could only come from the formation of an independent gas corps. This final step was taken on 28 June 1918 with the creation of the Chemical Warfare Service, National Army, with Maj. Gen. William L. Sibert as director.
The CWS Between the Wars
Defining the Role and Responsibilities
When General Fries returned from France after World War I he applied all of his considerable vigor to the establishment of the Chemical Warfare Service as a permanent part of the Regular Army. In July 1919 Congress had given the CWS a year’s reprieve, and, in 1920, after debate in which the Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker, the Chief of Staff, General Peyton C. March, and General Pershing registered
dissent, the Congress of the United States amended the National Defense Act of 1916 so as to make the CWS a permanent part of the Military Establishment. The new service received the functions of development, procurement, and supply of all toxic, smoke, incendiary, and gas defensive materials, the training of the Army in chemical warfare, and the “organization, equipment, training and operation of special gas troops.”68
The dissent of people as influential as Baker, Pershing, and March should have augured ill for the newly formed Chemical Warfare Service. The fact is that the period of the 1920s and 1930s was a difficult one for the Army establishment in general and the Chemical Warfare Service in particular. Reasons for this are not hard to find. This period between the world wars was one of disillusionment, disarmament, and depression. A nation, indeed a world, appalled by the costs of the recent conflict, looked for ways to prevent such a holocaust from recurring. The Washington conference of 1921 tried to limit the types of armament civilized nations might use in warfare, and four years later the Geneva conference on the regulation of arms traffic looked toward the same end. Both conferences drew up conventions outlawing gas warfare. The Washington treaty failed by one to achieve the required unanimous agreement of the five participating powers.69 The Geneva Gas Protocol of 1925 did receive the support of over forty nations and thus became the most influential statement regarding gas warfare in the body of international law. The United States and Japan were the two major powers that did not ratify this protocol.
Nonetheless, the War Department General Staff took a defensive position toward gas warfare throughout most of this period—defensive both in the attitude with which it approached the subject and in the type of warfare upon which it concentrated. In 1922 it suspended work on toxic agents and restricted other CWS efforts to defensive measures. Although this restrained approach was frequently reaffirmed in the 1920s and 1930s, modifications in the War Department prohibition of research on toxic gases allowed some work in this field—one had to know the offensive potential of an agent in order to defend against it.
In addition to these handicaps, the new service faced another rather unpleasant situation. It would seem that the large majority of the people who had faith in gas as a viable system, capable of contributing to success in battle, was centered in the Chemical Warfare Service. There was little support for it within the combat arms. AEF commanders did not properly utilize chemical warfare in World War I, and it is quite probable they later looked upon it with skepticism. Many felt it would be an encumbrance added to the battlefield, not merely in the increased logistical support it would entail but in the burdens it would place on the infantryman and in the difficulties of decontamination it would involve. If it were successfully used by both combatants it would be something akin to two fighters, each with one arm tied behind his back. And why fight under such handicaps?
The Chemical Warfare Service set about accomplishing its rather restricted mission with meager resources of men and money. These restrictions lasted throughout the depression, but by 1939 the war in Europe and subsequent reaction in the United States brought about a definite change. The annual Congressional appropriation for the CWS from 1927 to 1935 came to about one and a quarter million dollars. In 1939 it was almost 3 million dollars, in 1941 it was 60 million, and in 1942 it was over a billion. Manpower was a similar story. In 1933 the CWS had an actual strength of 77 officers and 413 enlisted men; in 1940 the numbers were 93 and 1,035; in 1941, 833 and 5,059; and the peak in 1943, 8,103 and 61,688. Civilian employees ranged from 742 in 1931 to a peak of 29,000 in 1943.70
The uneasy situation in Europe also helped modify the restrictions imposed upon the CWS. Two years before the outbreak of war the service began work on a mustard gas shell filling plant at Edgewood Arsenal, Md.
In the process of CWS expansion gray areas of mission responsibility were clearly defined, much of this work done under the direction of Maj. Gen. William N. Porter who became Chief, Chemical Warfare Service, in May 1941. This effort to define responsibilities resulted in expanded duties for the CWS, for example, development of a high explosive shell for the 4.2-inch mortar and the acquisition of complete responsibility for the incendiary bomb program. In 1941 the War Department gave the CWS the mission of biological warfare research.
General Porter
Many of the 93 Regular Army officers in the CWS in 1940 had served under and been tutored by Maj. Gen. Amos A. Fries. Many of them believed as strongly as he did in the military efficacy of gas, and they looked upon themselves as custodians of one of the most awesome weapons to come out of World War I. They considered the CWS unique among the services because it had a legal operational function such as only the combat arms had. True, the Corps of Engineers and the Signal Corps had combat roles, but neither had its own weapons which its own troops would employ in combat. There were also dissenters in the ranks of the CWS who felt that Porter and some of their fellow officers overemphasized the uniqueness of the CWS and the extent of its probable contribution to the next war. In countering these dissenters, and they were probably in the minority, the advocates of gas warfare could point out that gas appeared to be the ideal weapon for
aerial bombardment. General Porter, as chemical instructor at the Army Air Corps Tactical School 1933-37, had in cooperation with Air Corps tacticians successfully evolved a tactical system for aerial bombardment which was well received by many Air Corps officers.71 Some CWS officers felt that a prediction made in 1920 was about to come true: “gas and military aeronautics will play the principal parts in the next war, which will be literally finished in the chemical laboratory.”72
While military aviation became important soon after the 1939 outbreak of World War II in Europe, gas warfare, to the surprise of many observers, was not initiated. Great Britain, on 3 September 1939, the day of her declaration of war, sought assurances from the belligerents that they would observe the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of gases and bacteriological methods of warfare. Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania, Finland, and Japan replied that the protocol would be observed.73 Gas was therefore not used, and Japan, in accordance with her assurance to Great Britain that the Geneva Protocol would be observed, did not use gas in the Pearl Harbor attack which brought the United States into the war. Six months later, on 5 June 1942, the President of the United States threatened the initiation of gas warfare, but only in retaliation against Japan in the event that that nation used gas upon China.74 Since the President’s statement was accepted as national policy, it began to appear that gas warfare might not be employed unless Germany or Japan initiated it. The possibility of enemy initiation demanded that the United States take protective measures and that it prepare for offensive retaliation, but the preparedness mandate lacked force and precision.75 While these events determining the role of chemical warfare in international policy were taking place, the War Department was shaping the role the services were to play in possible future overseas operations. War Department planners built their concepts of mobilization organization around a combined field and theater of operations headquarters designated, as the AEF headquarters had been, General Headquarters. Under the GHQ plan, when
Chart 2—Suggested Organization of Offices of Chemical Officers
Source: FM 3-15, 17 Feb 41.
war came the Chief of Staff or the ranking War Department officer designated by the President was to assume command of GHQ, assemble and train troops, and move them into a theater of operations for combat. The GHQ commander would then convert his headquarters into a theater headquarters, or he would designate a theater commander who would organize a theater headquarters. Representatives of the War Department administrative and supply services were to form a special staff for the GHQ and theater commander, and the senior representative of each service was to be the theater chief of his service.76
The War Department-approved CWS field operations manual provided that the theater chief chemical officer, “a general officer of the Chemical Warfare Service,” would organize and administer his own service and would exercise “technical control” over CWS activities through subordinate service and combat chemical officers. (Chart 2) So far these provisions recapitulated World War I experience, but thereafter the emphasis changed to stress the role of the theater chief chemical officer as a representative of the War Department Chief, CWS. The manual indicated that the CWS organization in the United States would plan theater matériel requirements, set initial stockages and issues, determine the extent of theater matériel procurement, prescribe the movement, supply, and training of officers and troops, specify utilization of civilian labor, approve interservice agreements, and fund theater financial transactions.77 The GHQ CWS was to be much more closely tied to the War Department CWS than the CWS AEF had been. This closer tie was a direct outgrowth of Fries’s idea of a broad-scope, coordinated service which he had helped make possible by having a clause inserted in the National Defense Act of 1920 assigning the responsibility for the supervision and operation of chemical troops to the Chief, CWS.78
The Administrative System
When the United States entered World War II, the prewar plans had to be adapted to a multitheater war and previously unexpected demands for a strongly centralized Army command in Washington. (Map 1) The GHQ concept was abandoned and a “Washington
Theaters Of Operations
Command Post” was created within the General Staff, and through this post General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, exercised command of the worldwide activities of the Army. At the same time, in March 1942, the President and General Marshall delegated the zone of interior (ZI) operating functions of the War Department to three major commands, one each for ground, air, and service.79 Lt. Gen. Brehon B. Somervell, the service commander, brought the reluctant technical services, including the CWS, under the jurisdiction of his Services of Supply (SOS), later Army Service Forces (ASF). Somervell interposed his headquarters organization between the CWS and other operating elements. Thus, while chemical sections were created in the ground and air forces commands, the formal route of communication for the Chief, CWS, was through Somervell’s organization. The question almost immediately arose of forming theater organizations.80
There was little chance, in view of the subordination of the services to ASF and considering the command and staff doctrines which had reached formal statement in the period between the wars, that the Chief, CWS, would have any control within overseas organizations.81 But there were still those Fries-trained officers who were unaware of or prepared to disavow the extent of ASF control. These officers also believed that should command and staff doctrines be so interpreted as to subordinate the CWS in overseas organizations, those overseas organizations would be forced to accommodate themselves to the unique character of the CWS by delegating extraordinary controls and channels to their service.82 These officers felt that, as an absolute minimum, the Chemical Warfare Service would control gas warfare planning and chemical supply at all echelons from development in the United States to expenditure on the overseas firing line. The new War Department reorganization and the new doctrines were to lead to the establishment of procedures that were not in accord with CWS convictions.
The Logistics System
The global logistics system of the United States was oriented to an “impetus from the rear” pattern.83 Global warfare and the role of the United States as the principal arsenal of the United Nations made it impractical from a War Department point of view for the World War II logistic impetus to come from the theater commander as it had often come from the theater commander in World War I. Accordingly, the Chief of Staff, or, more specifically, his right arm, Operations Division (OPD) , War Department General Staff (WDGS) , was the principal logistics authority, the allocator of resources, of the World War II Army. OPD served as the Army logistics policy arbiter whose duties included approving requirements, priorities, and plans, acting as intermediary between the theaters and the forces in the United States, and setting up the formulas and objectives of logistics operations. The Services of Supply supervised all phases of the logistics operations in the United States and served as the principal troubleshooter on theater logistics problems. OPD and other WDGS elements often referred such problems to ASF. The continental technical services, each in its own field, were responsible for the basic computation of requirements and for the provision of matériel. In the Chemical Warfare Service, troubleshooting, both formal and informal, on overseas problems was the province of Brig. Gen. Alden H. Waitt, Assistant Chief, CWS, for Field Operations.84
The operational focus of overseas supply was the port of embarkation. Each major port was responsible for a theater or theaters of operations, processing theater requisitions, or its automatic supply, requesting matériel from the technical services, and actually shipping approved allowances. The responsibilities of the continental technical services ended at the port; the port of embarkation was in charge until cargo cleared the harbor. Technically, the theater became accountable for shipments at sea, but the physical responsibilities of the theater
organization began at the port of debarkation.85 The War Department governed supply activities of the ports of embarkation and, theoretically at least, those of the theaters of operations through a War Department provision which specified procedures for computing requirements, requisitioning, and effecting supply.86 The War Department system thus ordained clearly precluded any unitary control by any technical service, but even had the system permitted such control, the CWS would have been poorly prepared to take advantage of the opportunity.
CWS resources available at the outbreak of war for the evolving global logistics system were slim indeed. Actual CWS supplies in potential overseas bases in the month of Pearl Harbor included 12 major items for gas warfare protection and decontamination and 5 major offensive munitions. In all, the overseas departments stocked 28 items from an active supply list of 34 in limited normal maintenance stocks or war reserves. The most important single item of antigas protective equipment, the service gas mask, in late 1941 was stocked overseas in quantities totaling 281,207.87 For offensive use in the event of necessity, the CWS and the Ordnance Department in 1941 in the overseas departments stored 242 tons of bulk persistent gases, 259 tons of non-persistent gases, a small quantity of toxic-filled artillery shell, and a small quantity of toxic-filled 4.2-inch chemical mortar shell. Even in an emergency, combat delivery of toxics on the enemy would have been only by air or artillery. The CWS lacked standard weapons to project toxics except for the 4.2-inch chemical mortar which was stocked in sufficient quantity to equip a battalion in Hawaii, a platoon in Panama, and a company in the United States.88 Consequently, despite phenomenally accelerated CWS matériel production in the United States, the first large-scale wartime CWS logistics experience overseas,
in North Africa, involved at the outset no offensive materials and only one new piece of equipment, the mechanical smoke generator.
The administrative arrangements of the CWS and the War Department were to be tested earlier than the logistic procedures. Before United States entry into World War II, the CWS had staff officers and units in the Philippine and Hawaiian Departments, and a CWS officer was on duty as assistant military attaché in London. These overseas CWS elements played a role in the military events following the Pearl Harbor attack, and a CWS section was established in Australia when the first American troops reached that continent. But the first War Department effort to establish a theater 89 headquarters in its own image took place in England. This theater, which was to become the European Theater of Operations (ETO) , represented the largest overseas undertaking of the Army in terms of men and materials during World War II. In the European theater, perhaps more extensively than in other theaters, those CWS officers who believed in a unique and unitary service first tried and then modified their administrative concepts.