The Enemy Strange Fruit and Stray Smoke

Ends and Beginnings - there are no snch things. There are only midges. 

Chemical warfare has its roots in antiquity. Periodically, armies have used dmgs, mostly extracted from poisonous plants, against their opponents. In more recent centuries, chemical laboratories have gone on to produce new and more sophisticated compounds along with more effective devices for their delivery. The American army paid little or no attention to this type of weapon, however, until the 20th century. When German troops used toxic gases in World War I, they found the U.S. and its allies almost totally unprepared. 

Although chemical warfare goes back at least 3,000 years, its use has always been sporadic and short-lived. Ingenious attempts to find effective substances and ways to deliver them in the battlefield almost always failed. On 

Attempts to ban chemical warfare always fell short of success. Even though the United States signed the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the Senate would not ratify it. 

Recognizing our earlier naivete, the War Department established the Chemical Corps in 1922, centered at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. Over the next forty years, the U.S. escaped a repetition of the chemical atrocities of the First World War. Ironically, it was mostly Hitler s personal phobia of chemical retaliation that saved us from the thousands of tons of nerve agents already synthesized and stockpiled by the Nazis. 

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INCAPACITATING THE ENEMY STRANGE FRUIT AND STRAY SMOKE... 

Incapacitating the Enemy Strange Fruit and Stray Smoke... 

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