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  In the lead-up to the battle, word quickly reached the British commanders about an unfamiliar German weapon. On the night of July 12, tens of thousands of German shells tumbled down on two British divisions near Ypres. The shells carried unknown markings on their casings: a yellow cross. When the shells landed, they made a strange sound—a plop that came from a new German fuse. Inside was a liquid compound the British soldiers hadn’t experienced before. When burster charges blew open a shell and a cloud of the aerated fluid wafted over unprepared soldiers, nothing happened immediately. When shells didn’t burst but cracked open, the oily liquid settled to the ground in a thick dew and slowly dispersed. Sometimes the soldiers didn’t even know they’d been exposed but for a faint smell of mustard or garlic that wafted to their noses. At first, soldiers removed their masks, believing the smell to be nothing more than an odorous ruse from the Germans.

  But after several hours, their eyes began to sting and redden, and soon they were half blinded, tears oozing from bulging, swollen eyelids. It caused sneezing and vomiting, and then a dry, hacking cough from an inflamed throat. On the second day, enormous blisters appeared on the most tender parts of the body—the groin, the armpits, the chest. The blisters grew until they burst, causing infections. The gas seeped through uniforms, so even those who kept their masks on were affected and had to be stripped of their clothes and washed.

  Some called it yellow cross because of the marks on the shell casings. Others called it Yperite, for the place where it was used. Some named it after its odor: mustard gas.

  The French border city of Armentières had been a quiet sector, a refuge for old men and children and mothers; the young men had all gone to fight. Artillery rumbled at the front just a mile away, but within the city, the tea shops were open, and at night, a restaurant or two still laid out meals for patrons.

  Falling shells shattered the peace in July; high explosives pulverized houses into dust and blasted out shop fronts, pounding the church of Saint-Vaast into a heap of masonry and broken buttresses and glass, scattering organ pipes among the rubble in the nave. As fires raged, the inhabitants fled into basements, seeking refuge belowground.

  Overnight on July 20, the same day that Baker drew the first draft number in Washington, thousands of yellow-cross shells began to tumble onto Armentières. Too small to pierce the paving stones, the shells burst as they clattered onto the streets and buildings, releasing their oily contents. So many fell that rivulets of liquid ran in the streets, dripped from walls and gutters, and pooled in gardens and courtyards. The fumes wafted from room to room in houses and sank down into basements where residents huddled for safety, filling the enclosed spaces with the pungent odor of mustard or garlic.

  As with the British soldiers, the fumes brought only sneezing and coughing at first. After several hours, residents’ throats began to burn, then their eyes. Women were affected even more than men, because it clung to their long hair. Ambulances careened through the rubble, picking up stricken residents to bring to crowded hospitals at Hazebrouck, at Aire-sur-la-Lys and Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise. The victims felt that they were burning inside. As they died, they suffered hideous hallucinations. The hospital halls filled with the sound of delirious laughter punctuated by silence. All of the parish churches in Armentières had been destroyed in earlier shelling, and Father Camelot, dean of Saint-Vaast, was the only priest left to minister to the sick. As he tended to his afflicted congregation, the mustard gas poisoned him little by little. Soon he, too, was dead.

  The gas shelling of Armentières on July 20 and again a week later caused about 6,400 casualties; 675 were civilians, 86 of whom died. News of the debut of the German war gas didn’t arrive in the United States immediately. It wasn’t until August that a wire report ran in newspapers across the country about the attack on Armentières and the mysterious new weapon used there. “Fiendish Work of Devils in Human Form,” one headline read, the article reporting that British medical officials were scrambling to determine the nature of the new poison, which was believed to be the same gas that had felled British soldiers earlier in July.

  The reports were true, but only partially so—by the time the American public learned about the gas, the British and the French had already identified it. Within a day of the first time the new gas was used, British gas defense had found unexploded yellow-cross shells and defused them. One was sent back to London and the other to the BEF’s central laboratory, where they were opened and the viscous, amber liquid inside was examined.

  Both the French and the British quickly identified it as dichloroethyl sulfide. It was not a new chemical. An impure form had been discovered more than sixty years earlier, and two other chemists described its toxic properties shortly thereafter, reporting that even its vapors “when in contact with the more delicate parts of the skin of the body cause the most serious destruction.” In 1886, a German chemist named Victor Meyer developed a production process, so in spring of 1917, when the Germans began searching for a new and more effective war gas, Haber and his colleagues already had a substantial body of literature about dichloroethyl sulfide and its awful effects.

  Mustard gas was different from its predecessors—the asphyxiants, lachrymators, and sternutators. Mustard was a blister agent called a vesicant. When it came in contact with skin, pustules formed hours later, often in spots where the skin was most tender. The blisters caused agonizing pain as the skin separated from the underlying tissue. Clothing didn’t provide protection: the liquid soaked through cloth and leather to the skin underneath. To make matters worse, it was still toxic if inhaled, even in small quantities, and caused terrible inflammation of the throat and lungs. It caused temporary blindness if it came into contact with soldiers’ eyes. It could be lethal in high concentrations, but the vast majority of cases were long-lasting injuries that took exposed soldiers off the battlefield for eight weeks or more. While it had a distinctive smell, it could be faint and was easily masked with other gases.

  But mustard’s greatest advantage by far was how long it took to disperse—what the chemists called persistence. Unlike other gases that quickly dispersed or were swept away by wind, mustard lingered for days, and even longer in cold weather. It clung to trench walls and trees and pooled on the ground, where unsuspecting soldiers could step in it or lie in it days after a shell burst. It coated weapons and equipment, rendering them unusable. It settled onto unprotected rations, making food inedible and water undrinkable.

  It was, the French and British grudgingly concluded, the perfect war gas.

  The British fired off telegrams to their five field generals with warnings about mustard and guidelines for precautions, and circulated a detailed letter a few days later with descriptions of the shells and their markings, the effects of mustard, and the cause of casualties.

  With the new peril of mustard on the battlefield, the dynamics of the war changed again. Other gases depended upon the element of surprise to be effective. If soldiers were suitably prepared, a gas attack was little more than a passing threat, one danger among many. But mustard was omnipresent, requiring constant vigilance to prevent masses of soldiers from being incapacitated. It demanded entirely new equipment, clothing, and even fabrics for protection. Soldiers needed new training all the way from the front down the supply chain, to be sure that equipment could be handled safely. The interlocking processes of coordinated activities on the lines—from detection and alert and identification of gases, to individual and collective protection, to treatment and morale—all had to be changed.

  Mustard had a damaging impact even in locations where it wasn’t being used—its novelty and its fearful effects fired rumors that raced through the Allied troops. That it caused sterility. That it caused arms and legs to fall off. Esprit de corps, already suffering among the Allies, plummeted further.

  Compounding the insidious new problem of mustard, the Germans introduced another new war gas around the same time in 1917. Diphenylchloroarsine, a kind of sneezing agent, was neither a
gas nor a liquid at all—it was a cloud of odorless particles, fired with high explosives and dispersed in the blast. Though it could be toxic in high concentrations, its bigger threat was that it penetrated masks and caused sneezing, coughing, and vomiting. Sometimes it was fired by itself in shells marked with a blue cross; other times it was mixed with lethal gases, such as with phosgene in green-cross shells. When coughing, vomiting soldiers tore off their masks to breathe, they were exposed to lethal gases. Mustard so preoccupied the British that it wasn’t until August 1917 that were able to identify the new substance.

  General Pershing personally opposed chemical warfare as cruel and morally abhorrent, but it was a reality on the battlefield that he could not ignore. While he was learning about these harsh realities almost as quickly as his British and French allies, an ocean separated him from the War Department and the investigators in Washington. In the War Department cablegram of July 13, when he learned about the twenty thousand defective masks from the Bureau of Mines, he also learned details about the organization of the gas service in Washington for the first time.

  His principal link with the efforts back in the United States was George Hulett, Manning’s scientific ambassador. Hulett’s scientific expedition was nearing its end. The National Research Council had sent the Princeton chemist as an emissary of chemists generally, but his singular focus on gas warfare to the exclusion of other problems provoked protest from other members of the delegation. Ames, the delegation organizer who had initially welcomed Hulett so warmly, had soured on the Princeton chemist for his constant attention to gas warfare. “Hulett has spent all his time on gas attacks, so as to help the Bureau of Mines (which pays his bills). I have protested, but in vain,” he complained.

  As the yellow-cross shells containing mustard tumbled onto Armentières, Hulett had been in London and beginning to get homesick—his mail had been held in France, and he hadn’t heard from his family since early June. He didn’t care for the bread—“hard to get and terrible when you do”—and longed for the cuisine of France. He was even more anxious to return home when he finally got his mail in Paris and learned that his wife had been ill. “I am so anxious to see you,” he wrote home plaintively. He would return to the States at once on the Chicago, the same ship that brought him over, bringing back the catalog of chemical warfare information that he had accumulated.

  As Hulett’s departure approached, he and Pershing quickly drew up plans in early August for the overseas organization, a copy of which Hulett scrawled onto Princeton University letterhead. The organizational chart that Hulett sketched out was completely different than the one Manning had drawn up in the States. Crucially, at the top of Hulett’s chart was the AEF commander in chief—Pershing—and the War Department; the Bureau of Mines didn’t even appear anywhere on the chart. Pershing also wrote a letter for Hulett to personally deliver to the army adjutant general with a series of recommendations. Not only should a high-ranking military officer be in charge of the domestic service, but the rapidly growing expertise of the AEF in Europe should guide the research directions, and the efforts in America should be subordinate to the overseas division, where the army was in closer proximity to the battlefield. He also recommended building a research lab in France.

  Pershing sent a cablegram to the War Department on August 7, outlining his recommendations and reporting that Hulett would return shortly to the United States with the AEF’s plans. Pershing made sure that Van Manning knew that his emissary was en route. “Please inform Director Manning, Bureau of Mines,” Pershing added to the cablegram.

  Hulett left for the United States that same day, bringing with him the plans that he and Pershing had drawn up. When Hulett stepped off the boat in New York on August 19, he carried the letter from Pershing to the army adjutant general with the same urgent recommendations for the organization of the service in France, a lab for research work, and—at the top of the list—the demand for an army officer to be put in charge of the domestic work. Not only should the military be in charge of the service, but the growing expertise of the AEF in Europe should provide the direction for the service.

  Hulett didn’t go immediately to Washington—first he took the train up to Princeton. He was so impatient to get home that he set out on foot from the train station to his family homestead. His wife, Dency, and their son George were away, but he checked on the garden and the chickens in their coop. Pershing had asked him to return to France as a top chemical adviser, but after Hulett came home, the homesick chemist declined the general’s request, opting instead to organize a war research laboratory at Princeton and commute to Washington several days a week.

  After his stopover at home, he was off to Washington to confer with the Bureau of Mines and to pass on Pershing’s recommendations for organizing the gas service. Warnings about gas had barely moved military leaders in the lead-up to the war. Now, with generals in France, it had become clear how crucial chemistry had become on the battlefield, demanding offensive and defensive strategies that constantly evolved. Specially trained soldiers were needed to handle gas on the front. But the arriving officers and soldiers knew almost nothing of gas warfare, and General Pershing needed someone to take charge. Someone like Amos A. Fries.

  Fries’s passage across the Atlantic had been a largely uneventful trip, full of brisk exercise and French classes and hearty meals, the only discomfort the frigid cold of the North Atlantic. Nine days after leaving Halifax, the Orduña steamed into submarine-infested waters. As dusk approached, signal lights appeared ahead—British destroyers to escort the convoy toward Liverpool. Two days later, as the ship prepared to dock, the submarine alarm suddenly rang, and the passengers on the Orduña could see a commotion in the waters about a mile offshore. Two destroyers raced toward the spot, and one of them rocked suddenly in the water. With the submarine threat at hand, the Orduña turned and anchored offshore for safety, away from the docks. “I think most of us slept but little. It was our most uncomfortable period on shipboard,” Fries recalled.

  The boat docked the next morning. Fries disembarked with about twenty other engineers and boarded a train to cross Britain to the English Channel for passage to France the following day, August 13. As the train crossed the countryside, Fries marveled at the quaint villages, the rolling hills, and lush meadows. He spent the night in Folkestone on the coast. Late in the day, he boarded his transport, one of five ships in a channel convoy, and set out for France at full speed. The channel waters were placid as a fishpond in the sultry summer air. Destroyers sliced through the waters around them, and blimps hovered above. After Fries disembarked, he boarded a train to Paris. Sixteen engineers crammed into a compartment intended for eight; the men took turns standing through the night as the train rumbled across the countryside. It pulled into the Gare du Nord at 6:00 a.m. They had a meager breakfast of rolls, jam, and tea at their hotel. Fries had a top-floor room, with a view of the Eiffel Tower and the Tuileries.

  At 9:30 a.m., he reported to the AEF’s chief engineer, General Harry Taylor, who gave him the job he had expected, director of roads. Relieved that he knew what was expected of him, he wrote home that he was pleased with the assignment. “It will be very hard in some ways and get worse as the war develops but it is vital in any advance and I believe I can make good and help the cause here probably more than in any other capacity.”

  The army gave Fries an office, assigned him four clerks, provided him with equipment and supplies. He got to work, happy to be able to contribute in his area of expertise.

  A few days later, a general staff officer named Alvin Barber walked into his office. Barber asked Fries if he’d rather have a different job: director of the gas service. The question took Fries aback. He stammered that he didn’t know anything about gas. Barber launched into a lecture for thirty minutes or so about the importance of the British gas service, the generals who led it, and what an opportunity it would present. Fries asked Barber if he could think about it overnight. He conferred with his fellow off
icers in the evening and finally concluded that “I might as well be the goat as anybody else.” The next day, he accepted.

  Fries now had a job that he’d never heard of. “I am to be the chief of gas, O no, not hot air, but the offensive and defensive warfare with gas,—gas clouds, gas bombs, gas shells, gas masks, liquid fire, and all the rest of the hellish paraphernalia invented to date in connection with gas and liquid fire. It is a big job—Barber says one of the biggest in the whole field. I will have to organize or at least control a corps of chemists, maybe two, and several schools to teach all men how to avoid the evil effects of gas, how and when to use it, how to detect it in the air, or when being fired from bombs, ad infinitum,” he wrote. The enormous British service had several thousand men, and there was a note of pride in Fries’s words that he had been chosen for this task. “I get the job from having the reputation as a hustler,” he wrote. “I am inclined to think myself in big luck to be here now as later I would not get half as good a chance as either one of the jobs handed me so far.”

  On August 18, Fries met with Pershing for the first time since his appointment. It had been a decade and a half since Fries had glimpsed Pershing in the Philippines, bent over a chessboard across from a Moro chief. The general was delighted to see him, Fries wrote home to Bessie. Despite his reservations about gas warfare, Pershing needed someone to organize and command the gas warfare work that Hulett had begun. That day, Pershing wired the War Department: “Have appointed Lieut. Col. Fries Director of Gas Service. Request organization of Gas and Flame Service regiment in United States so arranged that Lieut. Col. Fries as senior will remain in charge of Gas and Flame Service.” One of the first orders of business for Fries after he took office was to order gas masks—one hundred thousand from the British and one hundred thousand from the French.

  When Fries began his new job on August 22, an officer handed him a thin folder—the sum of everything the AEF knew about war gases. Fries was astonished to learn that only a few officers knew anything about gas warfare at all, and those that did had gleaned their information from the British. He had only two officers, no gas masks, no gas, no literature, and no organization. He was starting from scratch. He even invented his title, calling himself “chief” because he disliked the word “director.” “It’s a big job and a vital one to the army, and no one seems to have wanted to go into the thing so the dearth of information is startling,” he wrote home to Bessie.