United States Army, Chemical Warfare

D. Birdsell, United States Army Chemical Warfare Service Logistics Overseas, World War IF (Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania, PhD dissertation, 1962), p489 and F. J. Brown, Chemical Warfare, pp. 262-5. 

The gradual transition of area screening from theory to practice was observed with interest in the United States. The Chemical Warfare Service carefully surveyed the development of European equipment and screening techniques and, with the Army Air Corps and other Army elements, investigated the problems which would accompany the development of large area screening. 

United States Army Intelligence Agency. Dusty Agents Implications for Chemical Warfare Protections (Declassified), Report No. AST-26602-055-88. January 27,1988. 

While our battle experience was limited to the last nine months of thr war, it embraced the period of greatest development in chemical attack, and hence most accurately reflects the real powers and limitations of thi mode of warfare. The casualty records of the United States Army arc for the year 1918 only, hence they indicate the resulls of chemical warfare after it had passed through its period of incubation and had reached a stage approximating its full effectiveness. We will, therefore, conclude our study of World War casualties by considering a few of the salient points indicated by our own casualties in the war. 

Friedlander AM. 1997. Anthrax. In Sidell FR, Takafuji ET, Franz DR (Eds). Textbook of Military Medicine Parti, Warfare, Weaponry, and the Casualty Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare. Washington, DC Office of the Surgeon General, United States Army. Pp. 467-478. 

The United States Army was slow to respond to gas warfare because it assumed that masks would adequately protect U.S. troops. The civilian Department of the Interior, which had experience dealing with poison gases in mines, therefore took the lead in chemical warfare studies. The Army quickly changed its mind when the Germans introduced mustard gas in July 1917. Research contracts for poison-gas development went out to Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale and other universities. With what a British observer could now call the great importance attached in America to this branch of warfare, Army Ordnance began construction in November 1917 of a vast war-gas arsenal at Edgewood, Maryland, on waste and marshy land. 

BROPHY, L.P., MILES, W.D. and COCHRANE, R.C., United States Army in World War II. The Technical Services The Chemical Warfare Service From Laboratory to Field (Washington DC Department of the Army, 1959). 

Brophy, L. P. and Fisher, G. J. B. The Chemical Warfare Service Organizing for War. United States Army in World War II The Technical Services (Washington DC USGPO, 1959). 

The CWS technical reports, along with many evaluations of munitions and plans, both for the United States and its Allies, were deposited in the Technical Library, Army Chemical Center, Md., and have been identified and described in From Laboratory to Fields The best World War I source, pending the preparation of an official volume on gas warfare in World War I, is the draft History of the Chemical Warfare Service, American Expeditionary Forces. Copies of this study are available in the Technical Library and in the Office of the Historian, U.S. Army Edgewood Arsenal. Finally, as regards monographs and studies, special note should be made of the excellent Marine Corps series on operations in the Pacific. Also worthy of special note is the American Forces in Action series, which has been useful although documented and more complete accounts have in most instances appeared in the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. The volumes published in this series have proved invaluable, and the following have been particularly important ... 

This is the third and final volume of the Chemical Warfare Service subseries of The Technical Services in the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. Concluding the chemical warfare story that was begun in Organizing for War and was continued in From Laboratory to Field, Chemicds in Combat records in meaningful detail the ultimate and most rigorous test of all things military performance in battle. 

The United States was a latecomer to World War I it did not declare war on Germany until April 1917. By early September of that year, a Gas Service had been estabHshed as a separate branch of the American Expeditionary Force in France, but it was not until June 1918, five months before the Armistice, that members of the newly formed US Army Chemical Warfare Service, or CWS, became available for action on the front. Because of the risk of fi iendly-fire casualties and the fact that using CW drew a disproportionate amount of enemy fire, US Army field officers resisted engaging in gas warfare. It was later said by Major General William L. Sibert, the first commanding general of the CWS, that the service actually had to go out and sell gas to the Army. 2 In the end, the US Army command did overcome its reluctance and... 

OC CWS so 19, 21 May 23. For details on the Chemical Warfare Board, see Leo P. Brophy, Wyndham D. Miles, and Rexmond C. Cochrane, The Chemical Warfare Service From Laboratory to Field, a volume in preparation for the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II. 

There are several published volumes which discuss the origin and activities of the Chemical Warfare Service in World Wat I. These include Benedict Crowell, America s Munitions, i ij-i iS (Washington GPO, 1919) Amos A. Fries and Clarence J. West, Chemical Warfare (New York McGraw Hill, 1921) and Medical Aspects of Gas Warfare, Volume XIV of the series MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE WORLD WAR (Washington GPO, 1926). Volumes XV and XVI of the series UNITED STATES ARMY IN THE WORLD WAR (Washington GPO, 1948), prepared by the Historical Division, Special Staff United States Army, contain data on the Chemical Warfare Service, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). More valuable as a source of information is the official history of the Chemical Warfare Service, American Expeditionary Forces, a copy of which is on file in the Chemical Corps Historical Office. Especially useful in this history are the appendixes which ate copies of pertinent directives. On the organizational development of the Chemical Warfare Service in the zone of interior, the most fmitful sources of information are M. T. Bogert s and W. H. Walker s History of the Chemical Service Section, on file at the Technical Library, Army Chemical Center, Maryland, and the annual reports of the CWS for the years 1918, 1919, and 1920. The retired CWS files in the National Archives contain some important documents. 

Report of the Chemical Warfere Service, 1918, pp. 4-5. The annual reports of the CWS were also published as Report of the Direaor of the Chemical Warfare Service, Annual Report of the Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, and Annual Report of the Chemical Warfare Service, all hereafter cited as Rpt of CWS, with appropriate year. (2) The Chemical Service Section is discussed at greater length in Leo P. Brophy and George J. B. Fisher, The Chemical Warfare Service Organizing for War, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Washington, 1959), ch. I. 

First United States Army, Report of Operations 2 Feb-8 May 1945, Annex No. 9, p. 192. Intel Div, CWS, Theater Service Forces, ETOUSA, German Chemical Warfare, World War II, Sep 45, p. 39. Hereafter cited as German Chemical Warfare. 

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