The most conspicuous intelligence work done along these lines was by
Lieutenant Colonel J. E. Zanetti, who was made Chemical Warfare liaison
officer with the French in October, 1917. He gathered together and
forwarded through the Headquarters of the Chemical Warfare Service
to the United States more information concerning foreign gases, and
foreign methods of manufacturing and handling them, than was sent from
all other sources combined. By his personality, energy and industry
he obtained the complete confidence of the French and British. This
confidence was of the utmost importance in enabling him to get
information which could have been obtained in no other way. Suffice to
say that in the 13 months he was liaison officer with the French during
the war, he prepared over 750 reports, some of them very technical and
of great length.
As a whole, the Intelligence Division was one of the most successful
parts of the Chemical Warfare Service. Starting 2½ years after the
British and French, the weekly bulletin and occasional papers sent
out by the Chemical Warfare Service on chemical warfare matters came
to be looked upon as the best available source for chemical warfare
information, not alone by our own troops but also by the British.
MEDICAL
The Medical Section of the Chemical Warfare Service was composed of
officers of the Medical Department of the Army attached to the Chemical
Warfare Service. These were in addition to others who worked as an
integral part of the Chemical Warfare Service, either at the laboratory
or on the experimental field in carrying out experiments on animals to
determine the effectiveness of the gases.
The Medical Section was important for the reason that it formed the
connecting link between the Chemical Warfare Service and the Medical
Department. Through this Section, the Medical Department was enabled to
know the kinds of gases that would probably be handled, both by our own
troops and by the enemy, and their probable physiological effects.
Colonel H. L. Gilchrist, Medical Department, was the head of this
Section. It was through his efforts that the Medical Department
realized in time the size of the problem that it had to encounter in
caring for gas patients. Indeed, records of the war showed that out of
224,089 men, exclusive of Marines, admitted to the hospitals in France,
70,552 were suffering from gas alone. These men received a total of
266,112 wounds, of which 88,980, or 33.4 per cent, were gas. Thus ⅓ of
all wounds received by men admitted to the hospital were gas. While
the records show that the gas cases did not remain on the average in
the hospitals quite as long as in the case of other classes of wounds,
yet gas cases became one of the most important features of the Medical
Department’s work in the field.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account