Arsenal Operations, Chemical Warfare Center

The Chemical Warfare Center included an Arsenal Operations Department which supervised strictly arsenal activities. As the new arsenals at Huntsville and Pine Bluff and later at Rocky Mountain got into operation, the nature of arsenal activities at Edgewood changed. These new arsenals took over the bulk of the arsenal operations in the CWS, and the Edgewood plants eventually assumed the role of pilot plants, in addition to handling a number of "blitz jobs. 

The centralization of personnel functions at the Chemical Warfare Center has already been referred to. Huntsville Arsenal also experienced the need for a centralized personnel organization, for at that installation, where all activities were highly decentralized, personnel fimctions were no exception to the rule. Each operating division at the arsenal had its Own personnel officers who were invariably officers of company grade subject to the command of the respective division chiefs. Although there was a personnel division at headquarters, it was lacking in effective authority. 

The CWS technical reports, along with many evaluations of munitions and plans, both for the United States and its Allies, were deposited in the Technical Library, Army Chemical Center, Md., and have been identified and described in From Laboratory to Fields The best World War I source, pending the preparation of an official volume on gas warfare in World War I, is the draft History of the Chemical Warfare Service, American Expeditionary Forces. Copies of this study are available in the Technical Library and in the Office of the Historian, U.S. Army Edgewood Arsenal. Finally, as regards monographs and studies, special note should be made of the excellent Marine Corps series on operations in the Pacific. Also worthy of special note is the American Forces in Action series, which has been useful although documented and more complete accounts have in most instances appeared in the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. The volumes published in this series have proved invaluable, and the following have been particularly important ... 

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