Theo Emery

While I knew about the use of gas during World War I, this history brought into focus the specialized services developed by the military to discover new gases to use in warfare offensively alongside the development of gas masks to be used defensively. The primary focus is on the American military which only entered the war in 1917, although the author references the initial use of weaponized gas on the Western Front by the Germans in 1915 and the collaboration between the American and British on developing methods for manufacturing mustard gas. One of my favorite stories in this book was of a German spy who worked in the U.S., escaped, was captured, and then aided the chemical research being conducted by the Americans. An interesting read and one on a topic that certainly doesn't receive much attention.… (mer)

A great narrative read on the history of the US chemical weapons effort during WWI, focussed on the personal histories of a few of those involved, from the highest up to the most prolific letter writers of the field troops. It's also largely about work at the American University site in Washington, with all the implications that would later have for a toxic cleanup in recent years.

The most interesting page is late on: the throwaway fact that Germany used the most chemical weapons, France only half that, Britain only a half of the French total, and then the American only a tenth of Britain's quantities. Despite the might of US industrial power, America was just too late into the war to have had much influence in chemical terms. The much-vaunted Lewisite in particular is largely dismissed as too ineffective, too late.

The book does end abruptly with the Armistice. I would have liked to see more here, particularly for how the service did change into the inter-war era, and even a second volume on WWII.

I found this to be a very good book overall and an easy read for something so solid (500 pages). I already have a shelfful on the chemistry and mechanics of mustard, but this covers the organisational history in a way that's rarely detailed elsewhere.… (mer)

Having lived in the Washington (DC) area for almost forty years, I'm well aware of the event with which the author starts this book. This is the discovery of a long-forgotten dump of chemical munitions in a residential neighborhood abutting the American University, which led to a rediscovery of how the university was a center of research and testing for chemical weaponry during the Great War. Emery apparently was one of the journalists who covered that happening, and has since conducted the research that went into this book.

The subtitle is accurate enough, as Emery deals with the creation of the U.S. Army's chemical warfare branch, and the crash program to create a chemical weapon arsenal. The problem, if you want to regard it as such, is that Emery takes you into all sorts of side alleys, such as German covert warfare in the United States, and the doings of certain self-important American men of affairs, that are not always of evident importance. That Emery pulls it all together in the end speaks well of his organizational and writing abilities, though it still does mean that this book sometimes feels sluggish when it comes to narrative drive; it is in a no-man's land between popular writing and something more ambitious.

So, what does this technological adventure tell us in the end? Emery's thought is that this project was something of a trial run for the race to gain atomic weapons, in that the systems, and the shortcuts, were comparable. Some of the same people were involved too, as a major participant was James Conant; he spent the First World War in a suburb of Cleveland (OH) refining and producing compounds such as "Lewisite:" America's Great White Hope in the chemical arms race.

At the end of the day I can honestly recommend this book, but a lot of people might find it to be more than they really wanted to know about the subject.… (mer)