Part 8

I fully realize that what I have written in the preceding pages contains no mention of the supply work performed by the corps in the United States, which was so enormous that 27 per cent of all the tonnage shipped to France up to the signing of the Armistice was from or for the Engineers. Furthermore, I have touched only here and there upon the activities of the corps oversea, where in addition to the enormous amount of engineering work which had to be done with the armies, including fighting, the construction of fortifications, and the building of roads, railways, and bridges, it executed an incredible amount of general construction, such as docks and warehouses, railroad yards and railroad bridges, camps and hospitals, balloon sheds and airplane hangars, not to mention the installation of water, heating, lighting, and sanitary systems. And, bear in mind, the oversea activities of the Engineers were not confined to France, but extended to England, Italy, Russia, and Siberia.

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“_Essayons!_” The more I have seen of the work of the Engineers, the more appropriate seems their motto.

“_Essayons!_” There is apparently nothing that these men with the castles on their collars will not essay. And everything they essay they accomplish.

III

THE GAS-MAKERS

Were you to grow up with a boy who eventually became widely talked about, watching him pass from knickerbockers to trousers and from youthful shyness to burly aggressiveness, the chances are that you would follow his career with an almost proprietary interest, and that when you came upon his picture in _The World’s Work_ or _The Police Gazette_, according to whether he had become famous or notorious, you would display it to your friends, explaining proudly: “Why, I’ve known him ever since he was a youngster. I always felt sure that he would attract attention some day.”

Such, in a manner of speaking, has been my acquaintance with poison-gas, or toxic-gas, as the chemists call it. I was in the Ypres salient, on the British front, when the first gas attack in the history of warfare was launched against the Africans and Canadians on April 22, 1915, and that night, in the hospitals, I saw the earliest victims of gas warfare, gasping on their cots like fish thrown on the bank to die. On several occasions during the months which followed I again encountered the malign creature—on the Yser, in the Champagne, in Alsace, and on the Isonzo—and on each succeeding occasion it was more threatening and was causing greater concern. So that when, after the United States had been at war a year or more, I visited the great arsenal at Edgewood, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, and was shown the vast plants devoted to the production of chlorine, chlorpicrin, phosgene, mustard, and other deadly gases, and caught the familiar nauseous odor, I felt as though I were renewing an old and undesirable acquaintance.

I doubt if the Germans started the war with the intention of utilizing poison-gas, for they did not introduce it until nine months after the beginning of hostilities, and even then they apparently failed to realize the terrible potency of their new weapon, for they waited twenty-four hours before following it up with a bayonet attack, evidently fearful that the gas had not dissipated. As a matter of fact, the gas dissipated within thirty-five or forty minutes after its release, though in that time it annihilated 80 per cent of the French, Canadians, and Senegalese opposing it. Had the Germans taken instant and vigorous advantage of the confusion and dismay created by their unexpected use of chlorine, they could unquestionably have broken the Allied front, pushed through to the Channel ports, and changed the entire course of the war. (I might mention, parenthetically, that the British had been warned by a deserter, a week before, that the Germans were making preparations for a gas attack, but they did not believe him.) But the men in the spiked helmets failed to take advantage of the Allies’ temporary panic; the latter had time to improvise a means of defense, and the opportunity of the Germans to win the war by the use of gas was gone. So effectively, indeed, did the Allies turn the new weapon to their own uses that, before the close of 1916, the Germans were putting out feelers for the purpose of bringing about a cessation of this form of warfare. Then the United States entered the war, whereupon all the resources of American laboratories and chemical manufactories were directed toward the production of gas in quantities of which the Germans had never dreamed.

But, even had the Allies been aware of Germany’s intention to make use of toxic-gases for military purposes, they would still have been at an enormous disadvantage, because, as a direct result of her policy of giving government assistance to certain industries, Germany had several huge gas-plants, connected with her dye manufactories, in operation when the war began. Now phosgene, which is comparatively easy to produce, is used extensively in the manufacture of dyes, which explains why the Germans had a virtual monopoly of it when they decided to utilize it for the promotion of dying instead of dyeing. The German Government, it should be remembered, had for years subsidized the entire chemical industry of the empire, so that when the war began it had at its disposal scores of establishments devoted to the production of dyestuffs and pharmaceutical preparations, in the production of which certain toxic-gases are an important factor, which were converted, literally overnight, to military purposes. Though there is no data regarding the German gas production available, it was probably in the neighborhood of 30 tons a day. It may have reached 50 tons, but certainly not more. Though the English, realizing how desperate was the situation, utilized every facility they could command, their total daily output of toxic-gases never went above 30 tons. The best the French could do was much below this. Yet at Edgewood, during the months of September and October, 1918, when the plant had been in operation only a few months, the output averaged 140 tons a day and would have gone much higher had the war continued. In other words, _Edgewood Arsenal alone produced nearly twice as much gas per day as Germany, France, and England together_.

Now I wish to lay special emphasis on the fact that when the United States decided to manufacture gas, and to manufacture it in hitherto undreamed-of quantities, we were embarking on strange and uncharted seas. We manufactured almost everything else under the sun, but of the production of these toxic-gases we knew little save in theory, because virtually their only commercial value was in the making of certain dyes and chemicals, for which we had depended almost wholly on Germany. It was a new game which we had to learn—and to learn quickly. We found ourselves in the position of a baseball-player who is unexpectedly called upon to bowl in a game of cricket on which the championship depends. But when word went out from Washington that chemists were needed to beat the Germans at their own game, the masters of the retort and the test-tube left their classrooms and closed their laboratories and from every corner of the republic came flocking to the colors. I am using no mere figure of speech when I assert that the mammoth gas industry which was built up from nothing in less than a twelvemonth, knowledge of which was without question largely contributory to breaking down the German morale, was the work of American college professors. Some one, an Englishman, if I remember rightly, once referred to Germany as “the land of damned professors.” When their batteries and battalions were sent reeling back by American-made gas, the Germans must have felt like applying the same term to the United States.

Notwithstanding the remarkable standard of efficiency which it ultimately attained, the Chemical Warfare Service, or the Gas Service, as it was originally called, passed through a checkered and stormy formative period. By the close of 1917, when we had already been at war for nine months, there was hardly a branch of the American Army which did not have a finger in the affairs of gas warfare. The manufacture of masks was under the direction of the Medical Corps. Gas and shell production was in the hands of the Ordnance Department. Alarm devices were produced by the Signal Corps. The gas and flame troops formed the 30th Regiment of Engineers. Field-training was directed by the Sanitary Corps. Research work, an extremely important phase, was carried out by the Bureau of Mines, a branch of the Department of the Interior. And, to complete the decentralization, arrangements were being made to form a chemical service section of the National Army for the purpose of conducting gas operations overseas.

There is nothing to be gained by describing the long series of misunderstandings, controversies, and recriminations which constituted the history of gas warfare during the early months of 1918. It is not pleasant reading. It is enough to say that the demoralization resulting from this divided authority, taken in conjunction with the introduction by the Germans of mustard and other new gases, and the difficulty which the English were experiencing in obtaining a sufficient supply of chlorine, brought about a situation which caused grave alarm to all who were familiar with the situation in Europe. The two chief obstacles in the way of a complete reorganization of the service were the Ordnance Department, the chief of which was unwilling to permit all of the gas activities of Ordnance to be controlled by an external authority, and the Bureau of Mines, which refused to permit its chemists and its organization to be absorbed by the War Department. Though at that time it was impossible to modify the attitude of the Bureau of Mines in regard to its control of research, the Chief of Ordnance did his best to improve conditions within his own department by placing Colonel William H. Walker, assistant director of the Gas Service and former professor of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in complete control of gas production, including the operation of the great plant at Edgewood, the branch factories throughout the country, and the experimental field at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The manner in which this college professor brought order out of chaos at Edgewood and its related plants, directed the activities of 7,000 soldiers and 8,000 civilian workmen, settled labor troubles, obtained material, completed and put into operation the largest toxic-gas plant in existence, and, by his insistence on manufacturing at Edgewood all types of gases, including a large proportion of the basic chlorine, made the government independent of manufacturers and contractors, was one of the most remarkable accomplishments of the war.

In May, 1918, Major-General William L. Sibert, Corps of Engineers, who had commanded the First Division in France, was appointed by the President as director of the Gas Service for the express purpose of reorganizing that service and placing it on a footing commensurate with the importance it was now realized to have. General Sibert promptly took the position that, if he was to assume this responsibility, there could be no further divided control; all gas production and all research work must be in his hands. Ensued then lengthy discussions between the War Department and the Department of the Interior, enlivened by newspaper articles and speeches in Congress, as to whether the research chemists of the Bureau of Mines should pass under military control, but General Sibert’s attitude remained unshaken and, on July 13, 1918, all branches of the work connected with gas warfare were placed under his control as chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, henceforward a complete and separate branch of the army.

When the United States entered the war, none of the toxic-gases used by the warring nations, with the exception of chlorine, had been prepared in this country except on a very small scale and as laboratory experiments. The War Department was faced, therefore, with the immediate problem, not only of developing methods for the manufacture of these gases on a large scale, but also of putting these methods into execution. Gases, the preparation of which even in very small quantities was prohibited in many laboratories on account of their highly dangerous character and which, for the same reason, the Railroad Administration refused to transport except by special trains, were now to be produced by the thousands of tons. But how? There was no suitable machinery for the purpose to be had in the United States; everything must be designed and built to order. And where were the thousands of workmen who would be required to come from? Why should a man exchange the safety of a shipyard, where he was getting undreamed-of wages, for the perils of making poison-gas? It was indeed a stupendous problem which the government was facing. Yet there was no time to mull the question over, as a judge mulls over a point of law, for every day brought word of an increasing use of gas by the Germans.

It was the original intention to interest existing chemical firms in the manufacture of the required gases, with the hope of obtaining from them the entire supply required. As the project developed, however, difficulties arose which prevented the carrying out of this programme. The director-general of railroads ruled, as I have just said, that the gases could only be transported by special train movement, and this would entail great difficulty, delay, and expense. More serious objections were encountered, however, in the efforts to enlist the co-operation of the chemical manufacturers. The methods for the production of toxic-gases on a large scale were quite unknown, the manufacturers explained, and to discover and develop satisfactory processes would necessarily require extended investigations. The companies also realized that there would be great danger to the lives of those employed in the work, that fatalities were almost certain to result, and they were unwilling to run the risk of the interminable lawsuits which are usually incidental to the settlement of such cases. Moreover, only a limited number of firms had the personnel and the experience necessary to undertake the difficult problems involved, and these firms were already crowded with war work and were unwilling to assume additional responsibility, particularly of such a character. And, finally, it was recognized that the manufacture of toxic-gases would be limited to the duration of the war, and that the processes involved, as well as the plants necessary for carrying out these processes, would have little value after the war was over.

Meanwhile the Ordnance Department had approved of a plan to utilize a portion of a tract comprising 35,000 acres, near Aberdeen, Maryland, on Chesapeake Bay, which had just been acquired by the government for a proving-ground, for erecting a suitable plant for filling shell with poison-gas—though at that time it had not been determined where the gas itself was to come from. As soon as it became evident that the necessary quantities of gas could not be obtained from private firms, the War Department decided to erect and operate its own gas-plants on a peninsula of the Aberdeen Reservation, known as Gunpowder Neck. This peninsula, consisting of about 3,500 acres, which was admirably suited for the purpose by reason of its remoteness from centres of population, its security, and its facilities for rail and water transportation, was named Edgewood Arsenal.

Only those who saw the low-lying, swamp-lined shores of Gunpowder Neck during the winter and spring of 1917-1918 can fully picture the obstacles with which our gas-makers were confronted. Have you ever seen a Virginia road after the spring rains? Yes? Imagine, then, this Virginian clay mixed with Mexican adobe and diluted with New Orleans molasses and you will have a slight idea of the nature of the soil over which enormous quantities of material had to be hauled and on which was erected the greatest manufactory of poison-gas in the world. It may be recalled, moreover, that the winter of 1917-1918 was the severest in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. For weeks on end the shores of the Chesapeake resembled the shores of Greenland, but, in spite of cold and mud and rain, in spite of apparently insurmountable difficulties in obtaining building materials and in securing transportation for those materials on the congested railways, in spite of strikes and labor troubles of every kind, the work forged steadily ahead, officers and men working themselves as a negro teamster works his mules. Scores of miles of roads were built and metalled, a network of railways was laid down, and over them snorted panting locomotives hauling endless caravans of freight-cars. The building sites were illuminated by hundreds of arc-lights, the working force was divided into shifts, and the reservation resounded both night and day to the creak of derricks, the clatter of riveters, and the rasp of saws. A total of 558 buildings were constructed on the grounds of the arsenal, including, in addition to the huge structures of steel and concrete which comprised the filling and the various chemical plants, 36 cantonments with quarters for 8,400 men, 3 field-hospitals, a base hospital with more than 400 beds, bunk-houses for civilian workmen, officers’ barracks, Y. M. C. A. and Knights of Columbus huts, and one of the most completely equipped laboratories in the country. Edgewood is, in reality, a collection of great manufacturing plants, with all that implies in housing, sanitation, heating, storage, hospitalization, and other agencies. And the work was done by men every one of whom, from the commanding officer down, was in civil life when the war began. Not a single officer or man of the Regular Army had any responsibility for the construction or operation of Edgewood Arsenal from the day that the ex-professor of chemistry, Colonel Walker, assumed command, until its operations were terminated by the Armistice.

Any one who has had practical experience in manufacturing well knows that it is usually a long step from laboratory experimentation to factory production, a step which it often takes months and sometimes years to make and which is frequently beset with all manner of difficulties and problems. But there was no such time at the disposal of the Edgewood gas-makers. In all their experiments they were never permitted to slack up on production. The need was too vital. Our armies in France were clamoring for gas, gas, gas. There were no existing models for much of the machinery needed, but the corps of brilliant young men with whom Colonel Walker had surrounded himself invented as they went along. Yet, as a result of the experiments at Edgewood, numerous new and more economical processes were discovered. The slow and dangerous water-cooling method of producing phosgene, as followed in Europe, was supplanted by an entirely new system and a plant was perfected which could turn out forty tons of this gas every twenty-four hours. When the Edgewood plant was put into operation the government was paying one dollar and fifty cents a pound for phosgene, but when the Armistice was signed we were manufacturing it at the theretofore unheard-of price of ten cents per pound and would have brought it to an even lower figure had the production been continued. The systems devised for filling, painting, and marking the shell were marvels of mechanical ingenuity. These discoveries were not intended for commerce. They were the result of patriotic effort on the part of the workmen to see the nation excel in the particular thing in which it was then engaged—war. They were the outgrowth of impatience over slow and dangerous methods, or a desire to do the work in hand a little better or a little more quickly than it had been done before—a quality inherent in the American character.

It is a remarkable commentary on the efficiency of the Edgewood organization that notwithstanding the fact that the manufacture of poison-gases in quantity was a new industry in the United States, that the machinery was improvised or designed from the ground up, that the workmen were without previous experience—many of the drafted men, mind you, were fresh from offices, stores, and farms—and that they were engaged in a peculiarly hazardous occupation, only four fatalities were directly traceable to poisoning by gas. This should not be construed as minimizing the peril attached to the work, however, for, though every possible precaution was observed in the construction and operation of the plants, there were 925 casualties between June and December, 1918, of which 674 were due to mustard-gas. During the month of August, when the gases were most volatile as a result of the excessive heat (during that month the mercury stood at 106 degrees for three days in succession), and when the weather caused the soldiers to somewhat relax their precautions, the hospitals were on several days filled at the rate of 3½ per cent of the entire force of the mustard-gas plant, though this rate of casualties was not maintained, of course, throughout the entire month. I might add that several of the divisions which took part in the St. Mihiel offensive sustained a considerably smaller percentage of losses, which shows that the dangers of the war were not entirely monopolized by the men who served in France.

Long before the chemical plants were completed it became evident that civilian labor could not be utilized in their operation. Not only was such labor difficult to obtain, but the wages were abnormally high, the work was, as a whole, extremely inefficient, and it was virtually impossible to maintain the discipline and secrecy imperative to the success of the undertaking. Moreover, it was found that such civilian labor as was available could not be depended upon to work in the chemical plants because of the danger attending the manufacture of such highly poisonous materials. It was decided, therefore, to utilize enlisted men. As the project progressed, increasing numbers of soldiers from the National Army were detailed to the arsenal, the force reaching a strength of 7,400 at one time. The soldiers, no matter how much they disliked the work, could not quit like the civilian laborers; they had no option but to obey orders, and so, morning after morning, they rose at the summons of the bugles in the dim light of early dawn, hurried through their breakfasts at the long tables in the mess-halls, and marched to their respective tasks, whether making chlorine, chlorpicrin, phosgene, or mustard gas, filling or painting shell, working in the great refrigerating-plants through which the shell were passed to be chilled before filling, loading trains and boats, building roads, digging ditches, or firing boilers—all for thirty dollars a month. To the men who wore the blue-and-yellow hat-cords of the Chemical Warfare Service, the men who performed their dangerous work without advertisement and without public recognition, is due the gratitude of the nation.

The chief activities of the great arsenal on the Chesapeake consisted, as I believe I have already mentioned, of the manufacture of four types of toxic-gas—chlorine, chlorpicrin, phosgene, and mustard—and the filling of shell with these gases. Now I have not the slightest intention of entering upon a technical account of the complicated processes by which these gases were produced. Though no doubt interesting to chemists, it would make dry reading for others. It will suffice for the purposes of this book to sketch in briefest outline, and in simple words, the chief characteristics of the principal toxic-gases and the methods followed in their manufacture.