Chemical Warfare Department

J.D.S. Haldane, Callinicus A Defence of Chemical Warfare, London (1925), p. 74 Haldane also describes in this book how someone placed a drop of mustard gas on the chair of the Director of the British Chemical Warfare Department. He ate his meals off the mantelpiece for a month ... 

Haldane JS. The reflex restriction of respiration after gas poisoning. In Reports of the Chemical Warfare Committee, Medical Research Committee. London, England Chemical Warfare Department, Army Medical Service 1918 3-4. 

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. 

Subordinated to the Chemical Warfare Department, Porton shared responsibility for chemical warfare research with a number of supervisory committees and organizations, including the Chemical Warfare Committee and university research facilities. 

Old Porton Red Book 1918—officially known as Chemical Warfare Committee, Report Upon Certain Gases and Vapours and their Physiological Effects, Chemical Warfare Department, Ministry of Munitions of War, United Kingdom, 1918, Entry for Cyanogen Chloride, pp. XLVI-1, WO 142/238. 

The American Chemical Society took pride in the role it had played in the recruitment of chemists for research on chemical warfare and it was largely responsible for the publication of the results of their work. A series of articles appeared in the widely read Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry designated as "Contributions from the Chemical Warfare Service," summarizing the techniques and findings useful to the wider study of chemistry (39). When the War Department attempted to abolish the Chemical Warfare Service in 1919, the ACS cooperated in a campaign of publicity about the work of the Chemical Warfare Service and contributed in a major way to its survival (40). Many chemists who formerly had worked in the Research Division delivered public addresses and wrote letters in support of the continuance of the Chemical Warfare Service to newspapers and to members of Congress. 

Hardman HF, Domino EF, Seevers MH. The chemistry and pharmacology of EA 1476 and the chemistry and pharmacology of certain compounds affecting the central nervous system of animals and man. Reports issued under Contract No. DA-18-108-CML 5663 between 1956 and 1959. U.S. Department of the Army, Chemical Warfare Laboratories, Army Chemical Center, Md. 

Konlg, W. Chemical Warfare Agents. Washington, D.C. U.S. Department of Commerce, Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information, Joint Publications Research Service. 1964. 

Chloropicrin. Median lethal concentration for mice 10-min exposure. U.S. War Department, Chemical Warfare Service, Edge-wood Arsenal, Md. 1942. 8 p. 

A.A. Fries., Sixteen Reasons Why the Chemical Warfare Service must be a Separate Department of the Army, Chemical Warfare (1920), Vol. 2(1), p. 4. 

US Chemical Warfare Service, US Chemical Warfare Policy, Washington DC Operations Division, War Department General Staff, Strategy and Policy Group (14 June 1945), Draft. 

A.M. Haig Jr, Chemical Warfare in South East Asia and Afghanistan, Report to Congress, Washington DC Department of State (1982), Special Report No. 98. 

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