Hellfire Boys

by Theo Emery

  It was a debacle, but the army had a second option. Across the Chesapeake Bay, the estuaries of the Bush and Gunpowder Rivers hugged a forlorn peninsula of marshland and thick woods known as Gunpowder Neck. Few people lived on the neck—perhaps as few as 150—and the closest settlement was the small town of Edgewood. Gunpowder Neck was a wild, solitary place. The descendant of a Civil War general owned an eight-thousand-acre game preserve which took up much of the peninsula. Deer, Mongolian pheasants, and rabbits filled the dense woods. The waterfront teemed with wild geese and flocks of redhead and canvasback ducks. The owner had a private horse-racing track and flower greenhouses. A small army of game wardens made the preserve a risky place for poachers. It was isolated and remote, far from prying eyes and civilian populations. But it was also close to a Pennsylvania Railroad line between Baltimore and Philadelphia, and the Bush River made it accessible to the Chesapeake Bay and the ocean. It would do.

  A few days later, the army had a new recommendation for its proving ground and gas plants: thirty-five thousand acres of land that included Gunpowder Neck and land across the Bush River, with thirty-five hundred acres set aside for the shell-filling plant. The land would cost far more than Kent Island, and farmers and residents from Harford Country rallied to protest. This time, the army prevailed: over the objections of residents, Congress quickly approved a $7 million appropriation. On the evening of October 16, President Wilson signed an executive order to seize the land. “Barking Dogs of War Will End Gunners’ Paradise,” the Sun newspaper lamented in an editorial.

  If American University was the brains of the gas research operation, Gunpowder Neck would be its muscle, sinew, and lungs. The army put Lieutenant Earl J. W. Ragsdale, the chief of the Trench Warfare Section of the Ordnance Department, in charge. In late October, work began on a rail spur, and construction started on the shell-filling station in November. As plans for the plant began to take shape, the federal director general of railroads made clear that shipping war gases to Gunpowder Neck was a dangerous proposition, requiring special trains to safeguard against accidents and sabotage. It would also be expensive to ship the chemical weapons to the shell-filling plants that would be built there, so the Ordnance Department made a decision that would shape the future of the Chemical Warfare Service for a half century to come: the army decided to build its own gas factories at Gunpowder Neck, simultaneously solving the problem of manufacturing war gases and getting those gases to the shell-filling plants.

  In the fall of 1917, practically every branch of the army had some involvement with the war gas work. The Ordnance Department, the Medical Corps, the Signal Corps, the Corps of Engineers, and then, of course, the civilian Bureau of Mines. With so many offices and departments and agencies involved, it became increasingly imperative for some kind of organizational structure for all the disparate elements of gas warfare. Earlier in 1917, the War Department had cobbled together the Gas Defense Service to take charge of making masks and organizing field training and had pressed unsuccessfully for the Bureau of Mines to turn over the research work to the military. In October, the War Department created a new Chemical Service Section, which provided a kind of umbrella organization for the loose confederation of offices and departments with an interest in chemical warfare, and placed a new director of the gas service in charge. Fries had advocated for a military officer to head the effort, and the man the army chose was an engineer named Colonel Charles L. Potter. A chemist from Maine, Potter was intended to be a kind of traffic controller, advising the work of the various agencies but with little power to control it.

  When Amos Fries heard about Potter’s appointment, he was not impressed: “I have been urging them to appoint someone, but I am not particularly happy over the choice of Potter because he is a dead one so far as doing anything himself is concerned,” Fries grumbled. From Fries’s vantage across the ocean, the various separate agencies appeared to be competing rather than cooperating, and he grew increasingly irritated with Washington. “The gas game as it was getting started under the direction of three or four departments is a fine example of running a war at a distance of 4,000 miles,” he wrote in another letter.

  As October came to a close, Fries had been in his position for more than two months and had still never been in direct contact with Van Manning. Each knew of the other through the reports sent overseas and cablegram traffic, but they had never personally corresponded. Fries finally wrote to Manning on November 1, apologizing for not doing so sooner. “I have been so short of personnel as to have delayed considerably writing you on subjects that I should have written you about before.”

  It was a courteous letter, lacking any of the criticism that Fries had confided in Bessie. Fries laid out his views of which gases were effective and why. He recommended that the bureau focus on phosgene, chloropicrin, chlorine, and mustard gas. Chlorine was still being used in conjunction with phosgene and diphosgene, he said. Vincennite, the French name for hydrogen cyanide, was barely of any use at all, he wrote; the British were phasing it out altogether. He ended with a plea for cooperation. “Assuring you of our appreciation of the most excellent work you are doing and our earnest desire to coordinate the work in the United States with field experience, and trust to hear from you frequently,” he concluded.

  Manning’s reply came more than a month later. The sluggish pace of steamship mail between France and the United States likely accounted for some of the delay; still, the long gap in correspondence suggested that Manning may have been less than eager to correspond with this AEF officer who was suddenly making demands upon Manning’s chemists. However, if Manning felt any resentment, he didn’t indicate as such in his response.

  Manning discussed the bureau’s work on different chemical compounds, the research on Livens projectors, and the work on gas masks, boasting that twenty-five men were working on gas masks alone. “You will be interested to know that we have over 400 men working in the Research Division investigating war gases, and the majority of whom are chemists. Some of the very best men in the country have responded to the call for this important work,” he wrote. He thanked Fries for the reports he had sent. He noted the comments from a British officer about aerial chemical bombing. He praised Fries’s work in France and said it would greatly assist “the work that is being done in this country.”

  Manning’s letter was polite, precise, and—in one respect—oddly incomplete. Despite the fact that a deadly new war gas had been unleashed in Europe—one that the AEF and its allies saw as a pressing battlefield concern and that his own scientists were actively studying—Manning barely mentioned mustard in his letter to Fries, making only a passing reference. Either he was being discreet for the censors, or perhaps he wasn’t being completely forthcoming with the colonel about the work at American University.

  While Fries viewed the domestic service with disdain and was displeased with the choice of Potter to lead the Office of the Gas Service, at least now there was a soldier at the head who spoke Fries’s language. Fries felt that his hard work and effort were paying off, but he remained anxious about one aspect of his gas service: his gas and flame regiment. “I will certainly be glad to see them, as I want to get them underway for gas work,” he wrote home.

  Fries didn’t have much longer to wait. In October, the War Department put out a recruitment call for the gas and flame regiment, looking for soldiers who wanted to experience a new kind of warfare, “keen, red-blooded men” who would use the new unfamiliar and frightening weapons the likes of which the modern world had never seen. The army press release called for volunteers from age eighteen to forty to enlist, including those who had not yet been drafted and men older than the draft age of thirty-one. The release listed starting pay, opportunities for commission and promotion, and the positions available within the regiment.

  The men specially needed are analytical, research, and manufacturing chemists, powdermen, men experienced in the production of gas, machinists, automobile repair men, men who can operate or r
epair gas or steam engines, pipefitters, electricians, designers, interpreters, carpenters, blacksmiths, plumbers, boilermakers and chauffeurs.

  The effort was carefully coordinated with newspaper editors to drum up interest.

  “The Hellfire Battalion,” some newspapers called it, while others dubbed it “the Hellfire Regiment.” “The time has gone by for any ethical discussion as to the propriety of using gas and flames against the enemy,” the Boston Transcript wrote. “The Germans have set the pace and the practical officers of the army realize that their fire must be fought with hotter fire.” At the same time, the army circulated appeals directly to gas and chemical companies, professional organizations, and industrial manufacturers, as well as to recruiting offices and district engineering officers.

  In Lawrence, Massachusetts, a young factory worker named Harold J. Higginbottom spotted an article in the evening newspaper on Saturday, October 20. Higginbottom was a steadfast, easygoing sort, a chemist employed in the dye works at Pacific Mills, one of a dozen cloth factories that made Lawrence the nation’s textile capital. Harold had a long face and soulful green eyes and was sweet on a girl named Irene Macreadie, the daughter of the city fire chief. When he registered for the draft in June, Harold had just celebrated his twenty-first birthday. Born in New Hampshire, he lived with his mother, Emma, and older brother, Arthur, in a boardinghouse on Cypress Street, not far from the factories along the Merrimack River. His father, James, had been an overseer at the Pacific Mills plant before he died in 1914, and eventually Higginbottom and Arthur went to work at the mill as well. Lawrence had been a cauldron of union radicalism in 1912 over low pay and insufferable working conditions in the mills. Despite the recent history of radicalism and agitation, almost ten thousand young men from the city had peacefully registered for the draft in June, along with another two thousand from surrounding towns, and only a single man was arrested for refusing to register.

  The article caught Higgie’s eye. The new regiment required specialists like himself who understood the alchemy of toxic substances, and the advertisement got him thinking. When he went to work at Pacific Mills on Monday, October 22, he told some of the fellows about the article and this new chemical regiment in Washington, D.C. Maybe they should enlist. Maybe this was their role in the war, this new Hellfire Regiment.

  It didn’t take Higginbottom long to make up his mind. During his lunch break at the mill, he strolled up to the post office and talked it over with the men at the recruiting station there. He liked what they said, and he told them that he would be back. He went back to the mill and asked if he could leave work early; he had important things to discuss at home. When he got home to Cypress Street, he told his mother and his brother, Arthur, that he was enlisting. It was probably not news that his widowed mother welcomed, but he managed to convince her it was the right thing to do. He returned to the recruiting office, where he passed his first physical examination, signed his papers, and was told to report back at the end of the week, on Friday morning. He got everything in order at the mill that night and went back one last time on Tuesday to pick up his paycheck. When he was there, the fellows at the mill surprised him with a goodbye gift of a Gillette safety razor. On Wednesday, he made plans to go bowling for what he expected to be his last frames for some time. Instead, a friend brought him over to Haverhill Street, where a group of friends from church lay in wait for him. They pounced on him when he arrived and surprised him with a nifty wristwatch with glow-in-the-dark hands, a gift that would be useful in the trenches of France.

  On Friday morning, he left home at about nine o’clock for the recruiting station, where he received orders to report to Boston. On the train, he chatted with an older man who had also been recruited for the regiment. He had lunch in Boston, said goodbye to his aunt, then reported to the recruiting office. From there, he was taken to South Station and boarded a train for New York. He got to New Rochelle late that night and then caught the last boat over to Fort Slocum for training before he was sent to join the gas and flame regiment in Washington.

  Pershing’s order had called for six companies, but the army began modestly with only one. On paper, Fries headed the regiment, but in practice, Major Earl J. Atkisson was its leader. Atkisson had turned thirty-one in August and came from the ranks of army engineers like Fries and Sibert. Before West Point, he had studied electrical and mechanical engineering at Cornell University. Earlier in 1917, he had returned from two years as superintendent of locks in the Canal Zone and was ordered to report to Camp American University on August 30. When the War Department finally opened the lid on its plans for gas warfare, Atkisson became its face, his photograph running in papers across the country as the man at the helm of the gas regiment. Fries knew Atkisson well from when both had been posted at the U.S. Army Engineer School at Washington Barracks. He was a high achiever with a nimble mind, and an athlete to boot. Though Fries had no idea about Atkisson’s appointment before it was announced, he could not have been more pleased when he heard.

  The regiment’s core came from the Twentieth Engineers, a forestry regiment already stationed at Camp American University. Initially, thirty-four men were hand chosen for the gas and flame regiment. While Higginbottom was still at Fort Slocum, the new recruits began to arrive at Camp American University. Thomas Jabine, a twenty-six-year-old chemist from Yonkers, New York, was among them. An amiable sort with an eye for the girls, Tom wasn’t a stranger to military discipline; he had been a cadet in high school. At Columbia University, he wore starched collars and tweedy suits as he studied chemical engineering, orated in the debate society, and worshipped in the school’s Christian Association. In the 1912 yearbook, his inscription read “So wise, so young, they say, do never live long.”

  How Jabine learned about the regiment isn’t clear—perhaps from an article in the Yonkers Statesman or from a manager at the chemical company where he was foreman of a sulfuric acid plant. However he heard about the regiment, he wavered on enlisting but found the lure of gas warfare too powerful to resist.

  When he arrived on the hill, Jabine found he was among the small number who had enlisted from outside the army rather than being picked from the Twentieth Engineers. He also discovered that the army wasn’t equipped to provide much for new recruits. He had no uniform yet, and he was short on towels and soap. With fall approaching, he needed warm socks and underwear. He took it all in stride, writing a letter home to his mother for heavy underclothes, extra towels, and a brush to polish shoes, as well as the much-needed soap and socks. “I am getting along OK and guess I will be satisfied with this life for the time I am in the army. It’s going to be very good for me physically I am sure,” he wrote.

  For the arriving recruits like Jabine, Camp American University was a booming, riotous place. With more engineers arriving every day, carpenters raced to erect new barracks, mess halls, and latrines. For $125 a month in rent, Mary Patten’s properties in the cleft between Massachusetts and Nebraska Avenues became drilling and instruction grounds. A stove warmed the YMCA on the corner of Nebraska and Massachusetts Avenues where the enlisted men could write letters to their families, relax, and play cards. Just outside the campus, off-duty soldiers could get meals at two lunchrooms. An enterprising barber opened his doors, and a tailor set up shop to tuck uniforms and stitch badges into place. Braying bugles, the tramp of hundreds of boots, and the bark of drill orders filled the air. Every blade of grass on campus was gone, churned into the dirt and clay beneath, which the soldiers tramped through the hallways of the shared history building.

  Jabine had been one of the first chemists to enlist for the Thirtieth, and among that early bunch, his education set him apart. The lieutenant in charge asked him to help with gas research, and he eagerly agreed. “I have been working like a horse all day and never felt better in my life. A week or two of this life would do me more good than anything I could think of. I feel like a new man already,” he wrote home. At the end of October, the regiment moved into the College of H
istory building, where soldiers slept in the hallways and in spare rooms. He didn’t mind at all—it was warmer inside—but he grumbled that smoking was forbidden in the building. With the nights getting cold, he needed a warm sweater to stave off the chill. He had an idea for where to get one. “I can see where I will have to write to some of my so called girls and see which one really loves me enough to knit me a sweater,” he wrote to his mother.

  Jabine became fast friends with the regiment’s first volunteer at Camp American University, a Pittsburgh native named Fred Cecil Devlin. Single and twenty-five, Devlin was anything but a soldier; he had been working as a floorwalker at a department store before he joined the regiment. Arthur W. Archer was another early recruit. He was twenty-seven, slender and tall with gray eyes and blond hair. He was also single and had been working as a marine fireman on the Chelsea Piers in Manhattan when he registered for the draft. There was twenty-three-year-old Ellis Frink from Corvallis, Oregon, who was still a student at Oregon Agricultural College. Leonidas M. Shappell, a young chemist called Shap, came from Keokuk, Iowa, with his older brother, Sanborn.

  Over the coming weeks, dozens more recruits arrived. On Thursday, November 8, an electric tram with about a dozen soldiers aboard trundled up Massachusetts Avenue and stopped outside the camp. Higginbottom was one of them. He was hungry and tired after twelve days of drilling and exercise, inoculations, and physical exams at Fort Slocum. A hearty meal cheered him—“a good feed,” as he put it—and he got a cot to sleep on in the hall of the College of History building.

  Reveille woke the new recruits the next morning at 6:00 a.m., and they got an up-close exhibition of the regiment’s future that afternoon. They watched some gas experiments, a demonstration of liquid fire spewing from the nozzle of a flamethrower, and the billowing clouds of a smoke screen.

  One Sunday after he arrived, Higginbottom was on police duty with Jabine, and when their work ended by noon, they went on a scenic hike with two or three other men, crossing the Potomac River into Virginia. There were still only about sixty-five men in the company then, which quickly turned into a tight-knit group of friends. Higginbottom particularly liked Jabine and Frink.