United States Army, Chemical Warfare Service

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. 

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... 

CHLOROACETOPHENONE. Chloroacetophenone (2-chloro-l-phenylethanone, CgH ClO) is a crystalline solid whose vapors are intensely irritating. Its irritating or lachrymatory effects were known during World War I, but its use in combat was rejected owing to its low volatility. Shortly after the entry of the United States into the war, the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) evaluated chloroacetophenone, and testing showed it to be superior to other lachrymators. On this basis, the United States adopted it for use in chemical weapons (CW), giving it the code name CN. This adoption occurred too late for chloroacetophenone to be used in the war, but it did see extensive use for decades afterward by the military and law enforcement for crowd control and humanitarian purposes. Eventually, chloroacetophenone was replaced by CS. 

Project-research, a method of organizing research by stipulation of projects and allocation of these to individuals or teams of scientists in separate laboratories, was developed in the United States during World War I in research on chemical warfare. This research was initially conducted largely by academic chemists as volunteers and later by them in the Research Division of the Chemical Warfare Service of the U. S. Army. Many of the leading American chemists in the 1920s shared the common experience of research on chemical warfare. The model of project-research was tried by the leaders of the division of chemistry and chemical technology of the National Research Council in order to allocate specific research problems and foster cooperative research after the war. 

Condemnation, however, proceeded hand in hand with imitation. Within twenty-four hours of the German gas attack, Sir John French wired an urgent demand to London Urge that immediate steps be taken to supply similar means of most effective kind for use by our troops. Also essential that our troops should be immediately provided with means of counteracting effect of enemy gases which should be suitable for use when on the move. Some of Britain s leading chemists joined the battle. In the United States, more than 10 percent of the country s chemists eventually would aid the work of the army s Chemical Warfare Service. 

Cochrane RC. Biological Warfare Research in the United States. Vol 2. In History of the Chemical Warfare Service in World War II. Historical Section, Plans, Training and Intelligence Division, Office of Chief, Chemical Corps, US Department of the Army 1947. Unclassified. 

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 Gas Service was enlarged to meet the demands of its many responsibilities whenever men and equipment became available. For example, a completely staffed and equipped laboratory arrived in France early in 1918 and an officers training camp was organized in France later in the year. The provision of a laboratory had been one of the projects of the Office of Gas Service since the time of its organization in the United States in October 1917. The increasing demands on the service resulted in the reorganization of Fries s immediate office in March 1918 to combine offense and defense into a Military Division and to establish a Technical and a Production and Supply Division. In May the Military Division was again separated into Offense and Defense Divisions. Finally, in June, the Gas Service in the United States was converted into the Chemical Warfare Service, National Army. The Gas Service, AEF, became the CWS AEF, officially the... 

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. 

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. 

Considerable training had been accomplished in connection with the projected mobilization of chemical combat troops. The composition of these troops and the tactics of their employment in conjunction with field armies were studied at service schools and in correspondence courses. The CWS expected that gas warfare would be resumed where it had left off in 1918 that the scale of gas casualties suffered by the American Army would be reduced because of improved defensive techniques and that gathering momentum in the United States in the production of gas munitions during the final phases of World War I would quickly be regained in a new war so as to assure dominance in this field. In the view of the Chemical Warfare Service, at least, gas was a normal military weapon and, as a result of progressive training, the theory of its employment had become integrated into the main stream of Army tactical doctrine. 

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