The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-05-12

the American army in the great war
 is unfolded in a book being prepared under the direction of Assistant Sec
 retary Crowell of the War Depart
 ment, who was Director of Munitions
 Up to the close of hostilities, when
 he was specially assigned by the Pres
 ident to direct the demobilization of material
 Advance pages of two sections of the book, those dealing with the Chemical Warfare material, offensive and defensive, and with the equip ment for the Signal Corps were made available today, telling for the first time officially and completely not only of the stupendous scope of the pro ieCts; but of the difficulties and de- lays encountered and of the patriotic support of the war program given by American business generally. The chemical warfare section tells | of the original work done by the ! ordnance department toward obtain | ing toxic gases and anti-gas devices ] for the use of American troops. Sub lseduently this service became a sepa-
 rate branch of the army under the direction of Major General w. L.. | Sibert.
 Among other secrets disclosed Is | the basis of frequent statements that ! at the time or me SlRn1nS Ol IlAS arnnistice, the United States alone was producing gases for military use at a
 rate ten times in excess of the best 1 production Germany could obtain.
 The Germans produced with all their 1 facilities about six tons of mustard | gas per day, while the United States l was producing more than 60 tons a day and employing methods of pro duction far more modern and eft1ci- ent than anything attained by the enemy.
 There were three plants at work 1 on mustard gas, the Edgewood, Md, arsenal which was manufacturing 50 | tons a day by November Il and had 1 turned out I'll tons up to that day; the plant at Hastings, N. Y, which
 was to have capacity of 50 tons a l dav and was ready to operate on | November II, and the 50-ton plant of | the National Aniline and Chemical 1 Co.,. At Buffalo, N. Y, which was 50
 per cent. complete.
 1 The chemical name of this com l pound is dichlorethylsurph and its | popular name of mustard gas comes ! from it's odor.
 i Another element of the program
 was the production of tear gases, not [ deadly under ordinary circumstances but designed to produce blindness, thus forcing the troops to use masks 1 extensively, impairing their military | efTfciencv The foundation of these | gases was bromine the main supply of which is obtained from subter- ranean solutions found chiefly in the
 vicinity of Midland, Mich, where the government financed the sinking of
 17 brine wells under direction of the l Dow Chemical Co.,, which were pre- pared to supply 65O,O00 tons year The other chief gases are the so- 1 called killers the gases so deadly as to bring death unless safeguards are provided, chlorine and chlorpicrin and phosgene The only one of these ] produced commercially in the United | States was chlorine and even with 1 that the supply was utterly made uuate to the demand.
 l A statistical table shows that 1 ASS tons of chlorine in liquid form; 1908 tons of chlorp rpicrin; >420 tons of phos- i gene and 19O tons of mustard oil were actually shipped overseas from Janu- ary to November, 1918. In addition soc. 900 75-mm shells loaded with chIorpicrin and 10000 loaded with
 mustard oil went abroad, the ship | ments including 224,000 phOsporuS l grenades as smoke bombs and IS, ,06C 1 Dhosgene bombs for Livens mortars The capacity for filling shells anc bombs on the day of the armistice | exceeded 4SO0,0O0 a month. At tha
 time the pra ctice of shipping gases abroad in bulk to be loaded into pro- Jectiles on the other side had beer abandoned.
 eve therefore shipped to Europe in bulk" the report states, '3, 66z tons of gas or it's equivalent, whict r1tn shells 9nC used by the United States troops ol those of the Allies. This quantity
 was sufficient to load, 100000 shells two-thirds of them being of the 75- nm calibre and the other one-thfr6 I155-mm, the total number belns
 thought to be at least equal to the l; total number of gas shells fired b7 | American troops in action.
 ''Thus while American gas was no
 actually fired in American shell: against the Germans, American gal , was used against the enemy an' , America furnished at least as mucl gas as she fired.
 } ''In addition to this we shipped
 1S6OO, Livens drums loaded witt phosgene. These contained 279 ton . of gas. and some of them were fireC at the enemy" At table of casual , ties at the Eedgewood Arsenal show that while only men lost their live from gas at this plant, 925 were in jured, the bulk of them, 674, in mus
 tard gas accidents.
 Taking up the defensive side of ga } warfare material, the report show that the American troops had 'th best and most protective gas mask the world had seen; and they brough fthese with them by the millions"
 total of 5.250,000 masks was pro
 duced of which 100000 were sen overseas and the report states tha
 these masks "gave 20 times the pro lection afforded by the best German gas masks"
 ''No American soldier was eve . Eassed due to the failure of an Amer
 ican gas mask the report says, 'an
 such gas casualties as did occur wer
 due to the fact that the masks wer not quickly enough utilized when tn a gas was thrown over, or because tn
 soldier was unaware of the presenc
 of gas"
 The original order from the depart = lnent was for 25,000 masks to go wit n Pershing's first expedition and the re
 port tells in detail of the frantic ef
 l fn af