by Theo Emery
On November 6, Fries returned to Paris in a torrential rain. As his Cadillac wound through the streets, Fries saw that the city was coming alive. The long-dark streetlamps were ablaze once again. Taxis and autos clogged the roads. Pedestrians filled the sidewalks, no longer concerned about Germany’s long-range cannons. “The Bosche is quite on the run,” Fries wrote, before heading out to a celebratory dinner with officers from the service.
The next day, he left for First Army headquarters, and then on to territory that the American troops had retaken. The destruction at Montfaucon stunned him, the worst mess of churned-up earth and ruins he had ever seen. In a bit of battlefield tourism, he ducked into the German crown prince’s bunker to admire the elaborate concrete shelter and went to Verdun on November 9. Shells fell nearby, but he paid them no mind. “I believe the Bosche is going to give up. But we are going right on as though he were not. The Gas work is going well and a little better all the time,” he wrote. “We have had to convince the army that we knew our business and had a real live means of helping to win the war. And we have succeeded.”
Celebration was in the air at American University, too, as couples streamed through the experiment station gates on the night of November 5. It was a crisp autumn evening. Unlike the previous dance at Catholic University, this one was in a warehouse inside the fenced compound. Couples strolled past the sentries, admiring the fall-themed decorations of bundled cornstalks, wheat sheaves, and pumpkin pyramids. For the first time, outsiders who weren’t part of the Research Division were allowed inside the gates to attend. Colonel Burrell couldn’t attend, so another chemist, Dr. Arthur Lamb of Harvard, served as master of ceremonies. The orchestra played numerous encores, and Dr. Lamb danced so frequently that the men were sure he took a turn with every woman present. There was even alcohol-spiked punch—weak but wet all the same—that was gone by 10:00 p.m.
There was plenty to be cheerful about. The Washington Times splashed “Allies Attack on 150-Mile Front” across its front page, and the Washington Post carried the terms of the deal offered without negotiation to Germany, as well as the details of the armistice with Austria, breaking up the empire into five new countries and dismantling its military.
It was also a historic Election Day, with women voting for the first time in New York and control of Congress hanging in the balance. The Washington Times installed a massive searchlight atop a downtown building that would wigwag east to west if Democrats stayed in control of Congress and from north to south if Republicans prevailed. For good measure, the paper hired a pilot to fly over the city with the results: red lights on the plane meant Democrats won; green meant Republicans.
The night was a rare moment of openness at the experiment station, where visitors accompanying hill employees were allowed a glimpse of the gas alarms, the signs urging secrecy, the bomb pits. The station had not yet given up its secrets, but when the war was over, the chemists would reap recognition for their work, the Retort predicted.
Word of the chemical warfare work was already getting out into the press. Two days before the dance, one of the Washington papers published a lengthy article about the growth of the service. “In this thousands of chemists are employed making gases of various kinds and connected with it are great industrial establishments for manufacturing shells and containers and filling them with the liquids and solids which expand into gas when exploded,” the paper reported. The article also included cryptic references to new, more lethal gases that the reporter wasn’t at liberty to disclose. “As to our new combinations, I am not permitted to write.”
On the night of the dance on November 5, one of Mustard Hill’s biggest secrets was that the future of the American University Experiment Station was very much in doubt. Only the highest-ranking officers knew that the day before the dance the director of operations for the general staff, Major General Henry Jervey, had completed a sweeping review of the American University Experiment Station. He took into account the accident on August 3, the criticisms from the city board of commissioners and the Corps of Engineers. He concluded that “further use of the premises by the Chemical Warfare Service be discontinued except during such period as may be necessary to enable that Department to acquire a suitable location for carrying on its research and experimental work.”
None of this was known to the men and women of the station. The hill football team, the Mustard Gassers, was still mopping up on the gridiron. Advanced chemistry classes for the soldiers were in full swing, and French classes were held every weekday night in room 22 of the College of History Building. Experiments continued, and so did whatever dry humor the men could glean from their work. “Fred is working on a new gas that is harmless in itself but deadly poison when combined with the vapor of limburger cheese. It is intended to be projected over the German lines,” “Effie” wrote in “Why Soldiers Go Wild.”
And then, on November 7, bedlam erupted across Washington and the whole country. Just before noon, a cablegram from the United Press in France arrived at the Western Union offices in New York City. Within minutes, a censor signed off on the cable. At noon, it was wired over to the United Press office at the Pulitzer Building. The agency then put out a news flash over the wire: “Urgent. Armistice. Allies Germany signed 11 smorning [sic]. Hostilities ceased two afternoon. Sedan taken by Americans.”
The first edition of the afternoon Washington Times rolled off the press at 12:20 p.m. with the banner headline WAR IS OVER in huge type. Trying to push its competitive edge, the paper hired pilots to airdrop copies of the paper across the city. Celebrants filled Pennsylvania Avenue, with soldiers and sailors at the center. A din of sirens, horns, and signals blared from military posts through the city. Planes looped and circled overhead, and a group of post office employees propped an effigy of Kaiser Wilhelm atop a mail truck and thrashed the dummy as they drove through the streets. When night fell, Camp Leach and the other camps trained their searchlights skyward and raked the beams across the sky in celebration.
But the news was premature. A German delegation had indeed made its way to meet with the Allies that day, and a brief cessation of fighting allowed the Germans to pass through the Allied lines. The United Press apparently believed that the halt in combat signaled that an armistice had been signed. Why the government censor approved the telegram was a mystery and remained so long afterward. At 2:15 p.m., the State Department denied that an armistice had been signed, and the more circumspect Evening Star cautioned “Armistice NOT Signed,” calling the telegram a “false report.” Yet the United Press stood by its statement. Evening newspapers everywhere that carried the wire service—even those skeptical of the news—published it.
The next day, more crowds formed downtown. Parades of cars wound through the streets, sagging under the weight of flag-waving passengers hanging off the running boards. Musicians formed marching bands, and spontaneous choruses of “The Star-Spangled Banner” rang out.
The chaos must have been a noisy distraction for Secretary of War Newton Baker in his office across from the White House. He surely welcomed the tantalizing proximity of peace. Still, the war was not yet over, and he flatly rejected any de-escalation of war production until an armistice was signed. “Our policy is the same now as when the war was at its greatest height,” he told reporters.
Quietly, though, he made clear in a letter that one area of war activity would be winding down. As crowds roiled through the streets, he made a decision to sharply curtail the work at the American University Experiment Station. Large-scale experiments would move to other, more remote locations, such as the new Chemical Warfare Service proving ground at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Research at American University would be confined to small-scale experiments and laboratory work. The commission “need have no apprehension as to the safety of the citizens living in the neighborhood of the American University Experiment Station,” Baker wrote.
Back in April of 1917, the university trustees had eagerly asked to receive the “torch of war,” so that the
school might contribute to the war effort and help solidify its own fortunes. A year and a half later, that optimism had withered, and the school was at odds with the Chemical Warfare Service. The genie of science that the trustees had invited onto the hill, and the fire and smoke and poison that came with it, was no longer welcome. The short life of Mustard Hill was coming to an end.
Daylight was fading on November 8 as Higgie and his platoon started through the woods in the Argonne. Branches slapped their faces as they pushed through the undergrowth. Their packs were heavy, and it began to rain. There was no path, no road, just a compass guiding them in the dark. Whispers about an armistice had reached all the way to the front. “There was a rumor around today that peace had been declared,” Higgie wrote in his journal. If there was any truth to it, he had yet to see it. Rumors of peace or no, Company B still had a show to carry out. Its next attack was some fifteen miles to the north, in an exposed spot across the Meuse River from where the Germans had withdrawn. The trucks had brought them partway, but shells were falling on the road, so the men had to get out of the open and hike undercover.
They waded across brooks and swamps and slithered down hills, cursing as they went. Some of the men kept asking the new lieutenant in charge where they were going. One man fell down twice and had trouble getting back up; the other men had to drag him to his feet. They found a road; the mud was knee deep. Arching German flares seemed to be directly overhead, and even though the men knew that the Meuse River lay between the armies, they wondered if they had somehow blundered into enemy territory. Water soaked through Higgie’s boots and socks. When they finally stopped for the night, the undergrowth was so dense it was impossible to camp, so Higgie just rolled himself up in his tent as best he could and huddled on the hillside.
Higgie awoke the next morning in a pool of water. He jumped to his feet, cursing. Mud was everywhere, but at least in daylight they could see their positions and where they were going. He carried bombs up to the advance position, returned for coffee, then made another carry, sliding in the mud. More of the company joined them in carrying mortars up to the front. Higgie had begun to feel better—the hike had warmed him up, and he had found a swell place to camp that night, a spot nestled among trees felled by the Germans. Everyone was cold and wet and caked in mud, but at least Higgie had found a dry spot. When he went to bed, the air was so cold that he and another man kept warm by hugging each other all night.
When the frigid morning arrived, some of the men lit pieces of paper and tucked them into their frozen boots to thaw them out. Higgie made hot coffee and spread his blankets out to dry. Late that night, the 177th Brigade was going to ford the Meuse, and Higgie’s company was to fire a smoke screen to draw fire away from the advancing infantry.
Elsewhere, the Hellfire Regiment had other shows. At 4:00 p.m., Company A shot phosgene at a machine-gun position, forcing the Germans to flee. That night, Company D fired thermite shells over German machine-gun positions about six miles north of Higgie and put up a smoke screen that allowed the Fourth Infantry to cross the Meuse. Higgie rolled himself up in blankets to sleep before the show late that night. But his show was canceled, the infantry forded the river without the smoke screen, and Higgie couldn’t have been happier. He rolled himself back up in his blanket and went back to bed.
Higgie was dead asleep when a private named Charles Stemmerman shook him awake at 4:00 a.m. on November 11. Shells were falling again, and he wanted Higgie to take cover deeper in the forest. Their lieutenant and sergeant had already retreated into the woods. Higgie shrugged off the warning. If the shells got closer, he would move, he told the private. Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.
He awoke again around 8:00 a.m., several hours after Private Stemmerman had first woken him up. The early morning shell barrage had ended. In the light of morning, an impenetrable fog blanketed the forest, so dense that he couldn’t see more than ten feet around him. He got up to make breakfast and prepared for the morning show, a mortar attack with thermite.
Then the lieutenant appeared through the mist with the best news Higgie had heard in a long time. All guns would stop firing at eleven o’clock. The Germans had agreed to the Armistice terms. The war had ended. Higgie thought in disbelief that maybe the lieutenant was joking. It seemed too good to be true. He rolled up his pack and retreated deeper into the woods, just to be on the safe side. They had gone through so much, had seen so many things that he would have thought impossible, that he wasn’t going to take any chances now.
To the southeast, Tom Jabine’s old Company C was preparing a thermite attack on a German battalion at Remoiville. Zero hour was 10:30 a.m. With fifteen minutes to go, the men saw movement across the line. The company watched warily as one hundred German soldiers stood up in plain view. As they got to their feet, they thrust their hands into their pockets—a gesture of surrender. An officer clambered up out of the German trench. The Americans watched as he crossed no-man’s-land. The Armistice had been signed, the German officer said, and asked that the attack be canceled. Suspecting a trap, the Americans suspended the operation but held their positions, just in case. Minutes later, word arrived from the Eleventh Infantry. It was true: the Armistice had been signed. The war was over.
Hundreds of miles away, the sound of whistles and church bells reached Tom Jabine as he lay in his bed in the base hospital in Nantes where he had arrived a few days earlier. For days after the mustard shell detonated in the doorway of his dugout, he lay in a hospital bed in Langres, inflamed eyes swollen shut, throat and lungs burning. After a time, the bandages had come off, and he could finally see again. He still couldn’t read, but even if he could, letters from home had not followed him to the field hospital. The army had not yet sent official word about his injuries, but after his letters home abruptly stopped, his family back in Yonkers must have feared the worst. In early November, the army transferred him to the base hospital in Nantes. Not a single letter had reached Tom since his injury. Jabine could walk, but his eyes still pained him, and it was difficult to write. More than three weeks after he was gassed, he had been finally able to pick up a pen and write a brief letter to his mother. “I got a slight dose of Fritz’s gas which sent me to the hospital. It was in the battle of the Argonne Forest near Verdun. Well I have been in the hospital ever since and getting a little better every day.”
When the pealing from the town spires reached his ears, he reached for pen and paper to write to his mother again. “The good news has come that the armistice has been signed and the fighting stopped. We all hope this means the end of the war and I guess it does. It is hard to believe it is true, but I for one am thankful it is so. When we came over I never expected to see this day so soon if I ever saw it at all,” he wrote. Now, perhaps, he could rejoin his company and go home. “That seems too good to be true but I hope it won’t be long.”
Word reached Addison just after breakfast, when a major dashed in from corps headquarters with the news that the Germans had accepted the Armistice terms. “PEACE AT LAST!” the chaplain wrote in his diary. “The Happiest Day Mankind Ever Had!”
Amos Fries was at general headquarters in Chaumont when the news arrived. Later in the day, he drove into Paris in his Cadillac. Shells had fallen just days earlier; now the city erupted in celebration. After four years of bloodshed, euphoria spilled through the city. As Fries waited in his car, a young schoolgirl wearing a blue cape and a hood jumped up on the running board. She stuck her head in the open window and blurted to Fries with glee: “La guerre est fini!”—The war is over!—and then ran on. Of all the sights that day, that was the one Fries recounted in his letter home the next day. “Somehow that sight and those sweet childish words sum up more eloquently than any oration the feeling of France since yesterday at 11 am.”
As the city roiled in jubilation, a splitting headache sent Fries to bed early. The festivities continued the next day; Fries celebrated with a golf game, then dinner in the evening. “Our war work is done, our reconstructio
n and peace work looms large ahead. When will I get home? When will we get home? is the question on the lips of hundreds of thousands.”
Like the turn of the tide, the movement of the American army in the Argonne stopped and reversed, and the men of the gas regiment began retreating south. Hours earlier, the land Higgie walked on had been a shooting gallery in a firestorm. Now silence fell over the blasted countryside. For Higgie, the stillness was disquieting after months of earthshaking detonations. He still couldn’t believe the end had come. The company loaded packs on a truck and started hiking to Nouart, about fourteen miles south. They arrived in the village at about five-thirty. Higgie went to bed not long after eating. He felt ill after days of unending stress and toil. But he couldn’t sleep. As he lay in the dark with the quiet pressing in around him, he realized that he missed the noise of the guns.
He awoke in the morning to the same eerie stillness. After breakfast, he threw his rolled-up pack on a truck and began the twenty-mile hike back to Montfaucon. Everything seemed so different now as he retraced his steps. Everything was at a standstill. Nobody knew what to make of things. They arrived at Montfaucon after dark. The moon was bright and the air very cold with a fierce wind blowing. The men set up pup tents on the hilltop overlooking the valley. A month before, German planes had bombed the company as they camped in the same spot, scattering men and lighting up the encampment with bombs. For months, open fires had been forbidden at the front, to keep the troops invisible in the dark. Now, as Higgie sat on the moonlit hilltop, hundreds of campfires blazed in the valley below.
Across the Chemical Warfare Service, laboratories, factories, proving grounds, and shell-filling plants had all been in a nonstop sprint. The service had produced almost 11,000 tons of war gases; about 8,800 tons of which were chlorine, chloropicrin, phosgene, mustard, and lewisite. About 915 tons had been shipped to France, contained in about 868,000 Livens drums, grenades, and seventy-five-millimeter shells. The very first batch of helium had been pumped into 750 tanks that sat on the docks in New Orleans, awaiting shipment to France. The plants at Bound Brook, Niagara Falls, Hastings-on-Hudson, and Edgewood were churning out tons of gas a day, and the lewisite plant in Willoughby had been primed and was ready for operation. The factory in Saltville, Virginia, was almost complete, too, and the new American fighting mask was in production in Astoria. Tons of fruit pits and nutshells had been collected for gas masks.