Chemical Warfare Board established

Harold Hartley (1878-1972) was educated at Dulwich and Oxford, and studied chemistry with Richard Willstatter in Munich, before graduating from Oxford in 1900, and becoming a Fellow of Balliol. In 1915, he was sent to France as Chemical Adviser, Third Army. In 1917, he became Assistant Director of Gas Services at GHQ, and in 1918, transferred to the Ministry of Munitions as director of the Chemical Warfare Department. In 1919, the department was transferred to the Artillery, and he returned to Oxford. In 1921, he helped set up the Research and Development Establishment of the War Office, and served on its Chemical Warfare Board until the 1950s. See Biog. Memoirs, Fellows of the Royal Society, 19 (December 1973), 348-373, esp. 356-357. 

Assisting the Chief, CWS, were an Advisory Committee of fifteen civilian authorities in chemistry and chemical engineering, a CWS Technical Committee, and a Chemical Warfare Board. The Advisory Committee, which was unofficial in capacity, was set up in the American Chemical Society in 1920. The members of the committee met periodically with CWS scientists and administrators to discuss policies and problems of research and development. The CWS Technical Committee, also set up in 1920, came into existence as the result of a need for co-ordination among interested branches of the armed forces in the development and standardization of chemical warfare items.On the Technical Committee sat representatives of CWS and of the following Field Artillery, Coast Artillery, Infantry, Air Corps, Cavalry, General Staff, National Guard Bureau, and the Assistant Secretaries of the War and Navy Departments. The Chemical Warfare Board was established at Edgewood Arsenal in 1923 to study and co-ordinate technical developments with tactical doctrine and methods. 

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