Supplying the Ports of Embarkation

A basic responsibility of zone of interior distribution was supplying the ports of embarkation, the Army commands which, under the general authority of the Chief of Transportation, supervised the transfer of men and materiel overseas. Within each of these commands a chemical officer served as adviser to the commanding general on technical matters in his 

Australian Military Mission to Brig Gen H. S. Aurand, WD, 1) Jul 42, sub Australia-Civilian Gas Respirators. Production Div, ASF 470.72-Australia. 

Chemical sections were first activated in the ports of embarkation in the latter part of the emergency period. A chemical section existed in the San Francisco General Depot (which acted as supply agency for the San Francisco Port before Pearl Harbor) as early as October 1940, but the first Port Chemical Warfare Sections, properly so called, were those activated at the New York and New Orleans Ports of Embarkation in August 

Within three months after Pearl Harbor, CWS sections were in operation at the Seattle, Charleston, and Boston Ports of Embarkation, as well as at San Francisco, where the supply functions were shifted to the Port of Embarkation in December 1941. The Chemical Warfare Section of the Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation came into being in August 

and that month also saw the beginning of CWS supply functions at the Los Angeles subport, an installation which attained independent POE status in the fall of 1943. The volume of CWS lend-lease cargo passing 

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