The 42d chemical laboratory company in World War II: a chemical reminiscence

CML Army Chemical Review, Sept, 2003 by Norman Fine

A version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2002 (Volume 20, Number 4, page 13) issue of Chemical Heritage.

World War II was one of the grimmest events in history. Yet to a fortunate few, "it was a good war, " as the phrase goes. I was one of those few who were selected by chance, for a military assignment in which I could use my professional training as a chemist and chemical engineer.

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In 1942, I graduated from the Cooper Union in Manhattan, where I attended night school classes while working during the day for the then well-known consulting firm of Foster D. Snell in the old Brooklyn Eagle building, with a bachelor's in chemical engineering. After my draft number was selected in August 1943, I was sent to Camp Sibert in Alabama for basic training in the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS).

Basic training had a bad name. Yet to a kid from Brooklyn whose only previous experience with firearms was Coney Island pellet guns, it was fascinating. Like most basic training courses, CWS basic included the elements of infantry training: how to crawl under barbed wire (on your back), fire small arms, and do close-order drill--which I regarded as a sort of mass square dance.

The heart of our training was chemical warfare (CW). We learned to identify CW agents: phosgene smelled of new-mown hay; lewisite of geraniums; and mustard gas of, well, mustard. The principal method for laying down poison gas was the 4.2-inch chemical mortar. This rifle-bore mortar, equivalent to a 105millimeter artillery piece, could accurately shoot shells loaded with either a chemical warfare agent or a high explosive. The 4.2 mortars were organized in military units that were designated as chemical mortar battalions. In both the European and the Southern Pacific campaigns, the 4.2 mortars, firing high explosives, were used against the enemy with great effectiveness.

Smoke generation and napalm were also the responsibility of the CWS. Before this time, smoke had been generated from hazardous materials such as titanium tetrachloride and chlorsulfonic acid. During my time with the CWS, there was a method for generating smoke as a petroleum aerosol, a system developed by V. K. LaMer, a physical chemist at Columbia University. Oil-tank trucks equipped with the aerosol-generating equipment were used to make smoke in the field. Napalm, at that time, was an aluminum soap of naphthenic and palmitic acids (thus na plus palm). Making jelled gasoline for flamethrowers and bombs was a matter of stirring the correct proportion of napalm into gasoline.

Defense against poison gas had three prongs: gas masks, impregnated protective uniforms, and decontamination. Protective uniforms were prepared (in modified commercial dry-cleaning machines) by drenching the garments in a kerosene solution of a wax binder and an organic compound containing free chlorine (such as Halazone). The chlorine trapped in the fabric would oxidize and neutralize any liquid vesicants--blistering agents--that came into contact with the uniforms. Treated uniforms in storage were monitored periodically for available chlorine by iodometric titration. Bleaching powder--calcium hypochlorite--was used to decontaminate nonvolatile liquid vesicants on the ground.

After basic training, I was sent (with a small group of other Camp Sibert graduates) to a military embarkation port in California. While conversing in our private Pullman car, we discovered that most of us were chemists. After a stay in California, our little group boarded a military transport to zigzag across the South Pacific to Milne Bay at the southeastern tip of New Guinea. Following a month's stay in rain-soaked tents under the palm trees of a Lever Brothers coconut oil plantation, our group shipped out again in the empty hold of a Liberty Ship (U.S. cargo ships designed to be built quickly and economically for the war effort) to Brisbane, Australia. En route on the Coral Sea, we heard of the Allied invasion of Europe--D Day--on 6 June 1944. After a night in an Army reception center on the grounds of a former Brisbane racetrack, we were welcomed to the antipodes by the shrill scream of a kookaburra, the down under equivalent of a rooster crowing at dawn. Soon, a truck pulled up and took us to our ultimate destination: the 42d Chemical Laboratory Company.

The CWS of World War II had its origins in World War I. The German use of chlorine on the Western Front led the United States to form the American Gas Service, which trained the American expeditionary force in the use of and defense against poison gas. In 1920, Congress authorized creation of the CWS as a permanent branch of the Army with the mission of preparing effective offensive poison gas and defensive methods.

In World War II, the CWS commissioned a new type of unit, the chemical laboratory company (CLC). In all, three CLCs were organized and designated as the 41st, 42d, and 43d. (1) These companies were staffed mainly with graduate and postgraduate chemists and biologists. The CLCs trained in the identification of CW agents and tested the effectiveness of defensive equipment. The ancillary staff maintained a machine shop, the glassblowing equipment, and the experimental animals employed to test the effectiveness of new CW agents. It was intended that a field CLC would be a self-sustaining unit able to function independently for long periods. A CLC's operating base was a semimobile laboratory with close access to the front. In the event of an enemy poison gas attack, its principal mission was to get poison gas samples from the field for rapid identification and evaluation. The CLC also analyzed and evaluated captured enemy CW protective equipment and related materiel and furnished general scientific assistance to the local command.