Chemical Warfare School facilities

The Navy steadily used the Chemical Warfare School facilities throughout the entire war period. Notable in this connection was a consistent trend to widen the scope of instruction and to increase the number of naval students. The naval detachment at Edgewood Arsenal was greatly ex-... 

The Japanese set about the study of chemical warfare with a dedication that at times bordered on fanaticism. The Army Chemical Warfare School was established in 1933 at Narashino, twenty-one miles east of Tokyo. It had a forty acre site and impressive facilities. The School Commandant, Major General Yamazaki, promised just and severe punishment for those who failed to adhere to its code ... 

On 7 December 1941, the existing CWS RTC was quite inadequate. The Chemical Warfare School lacked accommodations for enlisted students, although construction nearing completion would eventually enable it to handle up to two hundred officer students. The branch had no officer candidate school and no unit training facilities. Of even more concern to the CWS was the fact that these deficiencies in its training establishment were indicative of the lack of a suitable chemical troop basis. Although this situation was soon to be improved by a renewed concern in the Army over the probability of gas warfare, this development was by no means foreseeable at the end of 1941. ... 

The facilities of the Chemical Warfare School at Edgewood Arsenal were never adequately used in the development of commissioned and enlisted instructors for RTC duty. Had the school been located at the training center during 1943, undoubtedly it would have played a more important role in this connection. As it was, the RTC had to depend upon its own resources for fitting its instructional staff to the specific work at hand. 

The Western Chemical Warfare School was an experiment in preparedness which would have paid appreciable dividends had operations in the final stages of World War II taken a different turn. As it was, experience in the conduct of this school demonstrated that, given a nice combination of facilities, training know-how, and proper direction, a gratifying satisfactory end product of instruction will result. The school was small and its immediate training objectives were modest yet the success with which it accomplished its mission indicated that, if necessary, it could easily have undertaken a more ambitious program. 

The final location of the Officer Candidate Division at a distance of some two miles from the Chemical Warfare School proper had the inescapable effect of lessening intimate supervisory control of officer candidate training by the school authorities. This minor difficulty might have been avoided had more integrated planning of OCS facilities been feasible. 

In spite of all this, Hitlerite Armed Forces did not unleash large-scale chemical warfare. Undoubtedly, the high preparedness and gas alert readiness in the Soviet Union, the fear of a retaliatory strike with the same weapons by the anti-Hitler coalition affected this decision. The fascists knew that the Red Army had had special units of chemical protection and efficient technical and medical facilities for defence. The work of our outstanding chemist Academician N.D. Zelinsky and his school had a determining influence on the development of anti-gas protection, and all veterans of the Great Patriotic War remember well our reliable army gas masks. 

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