by Theo Emery
Chapter Fourteen
“All to the Mustard”
Oh man tests! how we did love them!
To dodge them was our only wish;
For they always came round on Friday
And gas don’t mix well with fish.
—Stunt-night song, American University Experiment Station
From afar, the figures appeared human, but only barely. They moved slowly back and forth across the open pasture, alien creatures in rubbery shells, wide glass portholes for eyes and a ribbed tube dangling from where their mouths should have been. A hose led from the tanks strapped to their backs to the sprayers in their hands, and as they crisscrossed the field, the men in gas suits played the nozzles slowly over the bare ground in a grid, spreading an aerosol that gave off a pungent odor as it settled into the soil.
The security around the test site was tight—if the warning signs posted around the field weren’t enough to keep away trespassers, the guards would be—but chances were slim that anyone could stumble across the experimental field. American University was three-quarters of a mile away, and the farmhouse of the Weaver family, who was leasing the land to the army, wasn’t close. Streetcars only passed about twice per hour on the road six hundred feet away. And anyone who strayed close to the field where the men sprayed the ground would regret it soon enough.
After they sprayed the ground, the men brought dogs and mice and placed their cages on platforms at different heights above the sprayed soil. Few of the animals put an inch above the ground survived, while more of the ones at six inches lived.
When the sun was out, the men didn’t last long in the suits—only about ten minutes before heat exhaustion set in. When they were done, the soldiers stripped off the suits, then the rubber boots and gloves. Masks came off next, then the sweat-soaked stockings and union suits dunked in linseed oil. Once they had stripped down, the men took hot baths with soap. Still, almost all the men working at Weaver Farm suffered injuries at some point, with chemical burns on wrists and ankles, eye inflammations, and sore throats. A half-dozen men were badly burned; one had blisters on his entire lower body. Some men’s feet were burned through their rubber boots. The chemists called the field “Mustard Farm.”
When the day ended on September 27, the American University chemists shucked off their gloves and gas-defense suits and hung up their masks. It had been a cool, cloudy Friday evening at the close of another week of man tests and mortar shots, and it was time to unwind. After leaving American University, hundreds of chemists crossed town for a dance at Catholic University. The school’s bishop had kindly lent the administration building to the Research Division for the chemists’ second social event of the season. Two officers from the American University Association, the Research Division’s newly formed professional organization, had spent the afternoon decorating the building and some three hundred members of the Research Division and their dates streamed into the hall.
There was plenty to celebrate. The newspapers trumpeted the torrent of news about the successful first day of the offensive in France and the ferocious American attacks that had rolled back the German line in the Argonne. “Americans Advance 7 Miles, Take 12 Towns, 5,000 Prisoners West of Verdun” blared the Washington Post. The Star pointed out that chemical weapons may have been even more effective at the Argonne than expected. The afternoon papers arrived with still more positive news from the wires. The Evening Star reported that Germany’s ally Bulgaria had asked for an armistice, sending a general to Paris to negotiate peace and end the fighting in Macedonia. Ottoman control of Palestine was teetering.
The festivities at Catholic University began with a reception and the soldiers lining up to shake the hand of the division chief, Colonel George Burrell, trim and commanding in his officer’s cap and wire-rimmed spectacles, with his wife beside him. Next to them was Captain Winford Lee Lewis, the wizard of lewisite, and his wife, Myrtilla.
Before the music started, the colonel spoke a few words. The men faced strenuous hours of work at the station, he said, and needed rest and relaxation. Many would soon receive promotions for their work, he told them, which raised cheers from the men. A major from the publicity committee stepped up next with a pitch for membership in the American University Association and spoke for a few minutes about athletic and educational opportunities that the group planned to offer. Finally, Captain Lewis said a few words of welcome, as full of humor and dry wit as ever. Then the band struck up, the chemists took their dates by the hand, and the couples glided to the dance floor.
The daily drills, the searing heat in summer, and the freezing winter nights huddled in unheated shacks all were a dreary grind for the enlisted men of the Research Division, taking a toll on their spirits and often their skin, eyes, and lungs as well. Almost everyone working at the station had burns, blisters, or scars from their experimental work. It was grim work, this chemical weaponry, requiring a healthy sense of humor and diversions to maintain morale. But their lot wasn’t all bad. While some men were disappointed not to be sent overseas, for the most part they were grateful to be spared from the battlefield. They were doing their part, even if it was in the comfortable environs of Washington, D.C., fighting “the Battle of Arsenic Valley,” as they joked. While the Hellfire Boys fought their way through thickets of barbed wire and wastelands pocked with shell holes, the men of Mustard Hill sipped punch and tapped their feet to the music at Catholic University.
A strong esprit de corps developed among the soldiers in response to the difficult and sometimes-dangerous demands put on them. In the fall, the American University Association formed a committee to organize morale-raising social events, talent shows and dances. Musical clubs started up, along with intramural sports teams—the surprisingly effective football team, the Mustard Gassers, was proudly undefeated in a long stretch of games against other army squads. Evening classes could earn the men college credits, and they could practice marksmanship. The lunch counters around the station teemed with soldiers, and Washington’s theaters and parks and zoo were only a streetcar ride away. With longer leave, soldiers could get on a train for Baltimore or New York or Pennsylvania. Gossip about romances spread like wildfire across the camp, and sometimes men at the station reappeared after leave with a wedding band and a marriage certificate.
As part of its campaign to boost the spirits of the men, the association published a newspaper, the Retort. The tabloid chronicled the station’s social life, albeit with careful censorship and no clues as to the nature of the research. With the slogan “All to the Mustard” at the top, the Retort proclaimed itself “A Newspaper Published by the ENEMIES of GERMANY at American University Experiment Station.” The paper cost five cents a copy and was packed with news articles, gossip from around the hill, engagement announcements, and features about top officers and scientists. It published long lists of promotions and dedicated a section called “Roomer Hath It” to updates on prospects for barracks that would end the detested daily commute to the station.
A wildly popular humor column called “Why Soldiers Go Wild” chronicled fictitious letters between a dimwitted stenographer named Effie Jane Smith and her friend back in Pittsburgh. The sports columns reported the latest standings in the sports leagues and the Mustard Gassers’ most recent victories. There were entreaties for musicians to join a glee club and a banjo and mandolin club. The personals column was full of wry anecdotes and anonymous observations about the station.
Colonel Burrell earned a prominent place in the inaugural edition with a lengthy profile and a photo. He was also given a column to write on any subject he desired. He used it to heap praise on the chemists at the experiment station:
You have been asked to “do your bit” on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, a part of the huge staff of men and women [in] back of the men who are in the front lines. This is a technical war, admitted by us, admitted by the enemy, and proven by the events that have transpired to date. The side with the strongest technical staff will win.
Public-health officials rushed to make sanitary masks available for soldiers and the military camps. They also prepared posters warning against coughing without covering one’s mouth and sharing cups and hand towels. The precautions came too late for some. The Retort’s second edition, on October 19, included an obituary section, printing the names of six men and one woman from the Research Division who had recently died. Under the announcements of the seven deaths, this item appeared: “It grieves us to add to this list the names of Mrs. W. L. Sibert, wife of Major-General William L. Sibert, our Director, and Mrs. R. E. Winert, wife of Lt. R. E. Winert, of the Mechanical Section.”
Though all of Sibert’s six sons were in the war, the greatest threat to his family proved not to be shells, bullets, and gas but influenza. A relatively young woman at thirty-seven years old, Juliette Sibert had fallen ill and quickly succumbed on October 8. Her funeral and burial were in Pittsburgh. It would have taken a week or more for a cable to reach the Sibert boys overseas.
Major General Sibert had little time to mourn his wife’s death. Projections on gas production in Niagara Falls, Bound Brook, Edgewood, Midland, and other sites came across his desk. The Ordnance Department had solved the long-standing problems that had held up production of shells. The three helium plants in Texas had proved even more successful than imagined, and bids were about to go out to build a ninety-four-mile pipeline to send the “argon” to the coast.
The service hummed along as never before, but there were still problems at American University. Work remained stalled on the new chemistry laboratory due to the accounting error that had tripled the price, and American University had begun to protest the army’s treatment of their campus. The chancellor, Bishop Hamilton, complained to Assistant Secretary of War Benedict Crowell about the Research Division’s activities, leaving Crowell with the distinct impression that the War Department had overstepped its bounds and was encroaching on the university. Crowell asked for an investigation of the matter. The district’s board of commissioners also complained directly to Secretary of War Baker, claiming the Chemical Warfare Service’s work was a danger to city residents.
Major General William M. Black, the chief of engineers, was still complaining loudly as well. The American University Experiment Station was dangerous, he wrote in a scathing memo on October 25, polluting the air, maiming dogs that hobbled around the neighborhood, and generally being a nuisance to the community:
I would regard its continuance at this place a decided detriment to the city and one that will retard the development of the section of the city where located, and permanently depreciate the value of property. The entire establishment should be removed to a reservation where its presence will not work injury and where experiments with gases can be made freely without danger to the neighboring community.
In early morning darkness of September 26, Higgie waited in no-man’s-land with his platoon. The tip of his cigarette glowed in the dense smoke and mist around him, and his mortar lay in the mud beside him. The First Army was moving up toward the German lines. With the front so fluid, Stokes mortars were the only weapons that allowed the gas regiment any mobility; projectors were impossible to move quickly enough.
After a time, the infantry emerged like ghosts from the mist behind him, and Higgie hoisted his mortar onto his shoulder to follow them forward. They waded through swamps and over brooks and across trenches in pursuit of the Germans. Higgie struggled under the weight of his gun as he slogged through the mud. The mist around him gradually brightened as daylight broke. He was grateful for the fog and smoke—German machine gunners left behind to fire on advancing infantry were as blind as the Americans. They fumbled forward through the undergrowth and shredded barbed wire, crossing abandoned German trenches. The line had been blown to pieces in the bombardment. Equipment was everywhere, dropped in the German rush to fall back. When the mist lifted around 10:00 a.m., Higgie could see American infantry fighting on the hill ahead.
After so many months behind static entrenchments, men and machines crashed northward in a disorienting stampede. Somewhere near Higgie, Jabine’s platoon of five runners plunged through the smoke and mist, sprinting through machine-gun fire and artillery rounds as they relayed movements and potential mortar positions between the infantry and Company C. Unencumbered by guns, Jabine’s platoon was much more nimble than Higgie’s, keeping step with the infantry. Two of Jabine’s men fell wounded, but he kept on, moving northward as the infantry advanced. Blind in the thick fog, the American infantry and German machine gunners were unable to see one another, and the infantry was able to slip right past the gunners. Then the fog lifted, and the gunners took aim at Jabine. He dove into a trench, bullets snapping over his head. In the distance, he heard the growl of engines, and when he peered over the top of the trench, he saw American tanks roaring across the field toward the German gun nests. Dozens of gunners popped up and fled, and Jabine’s heart leaped as he watched the terrified men shed rifles and equipment as they ran. When Jabine was able to go back for his injured men, he pulled captured Germans from a line of prisoners to carry the stretchers to the dressing station.
Higgie and his platoon hiked all day, the mortar a leaden weight on his shoulder. They stopped for only a few brief rests. The longest stop was for a meal, and the men sat puffing on scavenged German cigars. They went on. At one point a group of German soldiers stepped from the brush and surrendered without a fight. Higgie’s platoon searched them and escorted the prisoners back toward the rear. Late in the afternoon, they reached Véry, a town only about twenty miles from the Belgian border. Higgie could finally put down his mortar. Some of the fellows went out scavenging for souvenirs.
As the afternoon wore on, word arrived from farther up the line that a German counterattack was coming. Higgie was set to move again when he heard the grinding roar of engines, and twenty American tanks reared over a nearby hilltop with more infantry behind. Higgie had never seen a tank before, and he watched in awe as the machines snarled down one hill and up the next just as easy as could be. Everywhere he looked, he saw soldiers with columns of German prisoners streaming back behind the American lines.
With the front secured, it was a long hike back in the dark before Higgie could sleep. It took him five hours to retrace his steps through territory captured from the Germans and return to the ammunition dump where his day had started. He and his platoon arrived at the depot at midnight. Higgie found a truck that was returning to the barracks. The platoon rode back, and when they got to camp, they woke up the cook to get coffee and something to eat. He finally went to bed at 4:00 a.m.
Higgie slept the whole morning. When he woke up, he found thirty letters from home waiting for him. He stayed in bed reading all day, got supper, and rolled up to go to the ammunition dump again. Overhead, the battle raged on—Higgie watched two observation balloons roar down to earth engulfed in flame and an American plane get shot down in a fight with four Germans. He left in the afternoon, arrived at the dump after dark, and watched one of the pl
atoons set off a thermite show. Ordered back to Véry, he spent the entire night on the truck, wedged in the gridlock of traffic jamming the roads leading to the front.
Higgie finally got to Véry at eight o’clock in the morning, had something to eat, and then his platoon started out for the front with mortars and bombs. He went a couple of miles up to the new battalion headquarters and then pressed on. He came to an open field that the Germans were shelling. He kept low, the shells falling quick and fast as the platoon struggled forward with the mortars. In the daylight and out in the open, he could see the mayhem wrought by the bombs, the unending detonations, the ground quaking under him, the shriek of incoming artillery. The shells were killing soldiers all around him, wounding others with flying shrapnel and gas. He kept on, still carrying the mortars closer to the front. They crouched low, trying to stay out of sight. The whistle of incoming artillery came close and fast, and a gas shell landed in the middle of Higgie’s platoon. Some of the men were slow to get their masks on and got gassed. They were at the front, but the wind blew hard, too hard to launch gas shells. There was nothing for them to do, so Higgie and his men abandoned the mortars and retreated back to a first-aid station near a hill. He rested for a bit, then returned to Véry. Higgie had slept for only ten hours in five days. Exhausted to the point of collapse, Higgie and five other men crowded into a tiny room for a few hours’ sleep, before they were roused for breakfast and sent back to the mortar placement they had left the previous afternoon.
All across the American sector, the Germans were retreating, abandoning their guns and surrendering by the thousands. For two days, there were no more shows, no more gas attacks. Thirty-two members of Company B were evacuated to a dressing station after they drank water contaminated with mustard gas. Dead horses lined the roadsides, and Addison joined a group of Hellfire Boys to bury the corpses of their mates where they had fallen.