United States Chemical Weapon Disposal, 1946-2015: A New Iron Harvest

William N. Connelly III

Phi Alpha Theta- Alpha Delta Zeta chapter

University of North Carolina Wilmington

Each spring, farmers prepare their fields for planting season. The remains from the

previous year’s crops have lain dormant on the ground all winter, waiting for farmers to plow

them into the ground to assist in soil aeration and nutrient replenishment necessary for the

coming season’s crops. For most farmers, this process is a tedious but fairly simple one.

Facilitated by modern farming machinery, a farmer can generally plow anywhere between one

hundred to one hundred and twenty acres a day and most farmers report that even on the most

sizable farms, the plowing stage lasts about a week under normal conditions. However, in the

agriculturally fertile heartland of France this process takes considerably longer even with all the

trappings of modern farming technology at their disposal. This is not a result of marked

differences in application of technology, or climatic and geologic differences, but rather this

difference is historical in nature.

The French refer to this anomaly as the Iron Harvest. Like clockwork, each Spring brings

up hundreds of pounds of unexploded shells and canisters filled with chlorine, phosgene, and

sulfur mustard; the detritus of World War I. Farmers mention they have to be exceedingly careful

when plowing and can often relate first-hand accounts of the cost paid by those who were not

vigilant enough. Due to the vast amount of these munitions and the general uncertainty of how

much of it still exists, an integral part of the Iron Harvest are arrangements made between the

farmers and the French and Belgian armies for recovery and disposal of these remnants from the

Great War. Included in this protocol are pickup areas at each farm or cluster of farms, and

disposal units who regularly check these areas in order to remove the munitions to a storage site

where they are eventually destroyed.1

In France, the agriculturally fertile areas of the Somme and Ypres rivers were home to

extensive trench networks commonly associated with World War I that effectively brought the

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war to a stalemate. Both Axis and Allied troops employed chemical weapons to drive soldiers

out of the trenches and into the open. Thousands of pounds of these shells rained down upon

trenches. However, many shells did not explode. The testament to the sheer amount of munitions

used on these battlefields is exhibited in the yearly Iron Harvest.

This legacy is not just inherent to France, as the state of currently existing US stockpiles

promises to extend this legacy to American shores. The United States began mass manufacture

of similar weapons starting in 1917, in anticipation of its own entry into the Great War. Including

the normal array of chemical weapons in vogue on the battlefields of France, Americans started

research and development of new and potentially more deadly weapons including lewisite, an

arsenic based compound that was absorbed directly through the skin, and variants on the already

widely available sulfur mustards used in the production of mustard gas. American manufacturing

expertise has also added to this legacy as American production facilities were able to produce

twice the amount of chemical agents that Germany did during the entire war, in nearly half the

time.2 While many American military leaders shared the opinions of the German General Staff--

that chemical weapons were an ineffective and dishonorable way to win the war-- this did not

stop them from producing tons of chemical weapons.3

Even with ramped up production of these weapons by the United States, none of the US

arsenal was ever used in World War I or any other wars.4 By the time the United States entered

the war in 1917, the Axis powers were on the brink of defeat. With the Axis power’s dwindling

resources and a general lack of public support for the war, the United States fought the war in

Europe barely over a year. The stockpiles of chemical weapons it had produced expecting a

protracted European war lay unused and stockpiled on American soil.

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Eventually, disposal of these large stockpiles became a concern for military and political

leaders as the general public became aware of the potential environmental damage these

weapons may produce. In the 1960’s, the US Department of Defense (DoD) initiated programs to

ease some of these stockpiles and allay the fears of the US populace. Using several methods of

disposal, the US began the monumental task of destroying hundreds of tons of deadly chemical

agents. Some were sunk offshore during numerous iterations of Operation CHASE (Cut Holes

And Sink ‘Em), while many others were simply buried in holes dug on federal property in often

unmarked and undocumented locations in attempts to prevent terrorists from unearthing and

using them against domestic targets.5 Chemists at the time claimed that the buried weapons, even

if the canisters did leak, would not cause any future problems ecologically and that burial was

the safest disposal method available.

These experts were proven terribly wrong decades later in 1993. The bulk of lewisite

buried at the former American University laboratory site leaked from the barrels and

contaminated groundwater supplies in Spring Valley with arsenic, a primary component of

lewisite. As residents of the affluent D.C. neighborhood became ill with arsenic poisoning, new

awareness was brought to the issue of problems arising from buried chemical agents, but this was

simply the tip of a large and controversial iceberg.6 The DoD kept few records of where these

chemical agents were buried and how much was buried at each site. It remains unclear how

much is still out there and what environmental damage has occurred. Additionally, those who

have attempted to tackle this controversial issue have overlooked the issues with non-stockpile

chemical material that has proven to be just as troublesome as remaining stockpiled weapons.

My research engaging government reports, interviews with residents in problematic areas,

journal articles and monographs written by leading historians in this field, and historical memoirs

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by those who actually witnessed the use of chemical weapons bridges the gaps left by

researchers in regards to non-stockpiled munitions and demonstrates that in burying chemical

warfare materiel and not keeping accurate records of the disposal sites, that the United States has

created an Iron Harvest of its own.

These weapons were never used on the battlefield because it was well known that

numerous military leaders felt that use of chemicals in war was considered a dishonorable

method of winning a war, but this did not prevent their use during World War I. Military

strategists noted several examples from the Great War where deployed chemical weapons were

either ineffective due to low agent concentration, or ended up causing friendly fire casualties as

prevailing winds suddenly shifted blowing the deadly gas back into their own trenches.7

However, the United States continued production of these weapons after 1918 in hopes

they could be used in successive wars. Strategists directly involved with operations during World

War II such as General Carl Spaatz of the US Strategic Air Forces and Admiral Ernest King,

Chief of US Naval operations, argued that chemical weapons could be used as deterrents to

prevent German and Japanese forces from using their own.8 This did not prove to be the case

during World War II as Hitler, who had been gassed himself during the Great War, was not

convinced of the value of chemical warfare and preferred to invest in research for synthetics to

bridge gaps left by Germany’s lack of resources such as rubber and petroleum.9 Japan also had

chemical battalions such as the infamous Unit 731, but rarely used chemical weapons as they

lacked the natural resources to create effective chemical weapons. The US was left with

hundreds of tons of weapons deemed useless by modern military standards.

However, the United States was not deterred from continuing research and development

of chemical weapons. Between 1950 and 1953, in the midst of the Korean War, Americans also

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expanded on research done by British researchers on the new V-series agents that were

considered more toxic than any of the agents used during World War I. However, due to US

accession to the 1925 Geneva protocol, US leaders were reluctant to break the treaty and employ

chemical warfare. Once again, the United States was left to store all the agents used in both

World War I and World War II, in addition to hundreds of additional tons of V-series agents.

The Vietnam War presented an entirely different scenario. Chemical weapon production

continued on V-series agents between 1955 and 1969, but the US was additionally producing

tons of riot control agents (RCA’s) and Rainbow agents (named for the color of bands on the

storage barrels), the most widely used being Agent Orange. Initially, RCA’s and Rainbow agents

lay within a grey area. RCA’s were already being used stateside against Vietnam War protesters,

so it was hard for critics to classify these as chemical weapons. The Rainbow agents were

defoliants used in the jungles of Vietnam. While it has been found that exposure to dioxin in the

Rainbow agents causes long-term health effects; at the time, the use of defoliants to save

American lives from the VC’s guerilla-like tactics was also not classified as chemical warfare by

the Nixon administration.10 This eventually became problematic as negative public opinion about

the US’s role in Vietnam and its continued use of even non-lethal chemicals in war led president

Richard Nixon to call for a unilateral ban on the production and use of both biological and

chemical weapons, a move that eventually laid the groundwork for both the Biological Weapons

Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

The CWC presents an interesting case study in and of itself. The treaty was proposed in

tandem with the BWC as an extension of the 1925 Geneva Protocol that called for a ban, “on the

use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or

devices.”11 The BWC was fully ratified by the United Nations in 1972, but the CWC was not

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approved until 1992. Historians point to the fact that as chemical weapons were more pervasive

than biological weapons and they carried the threat of retaliation in kind, many countries dragged

their feet in signing the CWC. It has also been noted that as biological agents typically need to be

kept under strictly controlled conditions, many signatories were happy to shed the financial

burden associated with production and storage of biological weapons.12

An interesting twist in the history of both these conventions lies in the wording of the

treaties. The BWC bans all biological weapons except those used for defensive purposes. This

provided a convenient loophole for many countries in continuing their research, especially since

there had been no provision made for an enforcing body to monitor compliance. Simply put, a

government only had to say they were making an agent for defensive purposes to satisfy any

inquiry made regarding research and development. The framers of the CWC wanted to make

sure there was a strict doctrine in place that included random inspections and an extensive

verification mechanism. Their answer to this problem evident in the BWC was the formation of

the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which would enforce the

protocols laid out in the CWC.

However, the US had already begun destruction of its stockpiles starting as early as 1946.

The US Army’s Chemical Corps research found that a major issue with combat use of lewisite

was that it was highly soluble in water. This led the Army to conclude that the only way to

properly dispose of this agent was to dump the stockpiles into the ocean.13 The first major

disposal happened off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina in 1946 when the US army

dumped 10,000 metric tons of lewisite. Shortly thereafter, the Chemical Corps disposed of an

additional 6,832 metric tons of mustard and 448 tons of lewisite by loading them aboard the SS

William C. Ralston, and scuttling it off the coast of San Francisco, CA.14 This trend continued

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until it became properly dubbed Operation CHASE (Cut Holes and Sink ‘Em) in which

numerous ships were filled with chemical munitions were towed out to 250 miles offshore and

then scuttled allowing the deadly chemical to find their final resting place on the ocean floor.

The Army’s Chemical Corps likely would have continued to dump chemicals in the

oceans had it not been for the backlash inspired by the declassification of documents related to

Operation CHASE. Environmental groups such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

and Greenpeace spoke out against this style of disposal claiming that it was polluting territorial

waters and endangering the oceans delicate ecosystem. Additionally, the CWC banned ocean

dumping and burial as accepted disposal methods. This left those in charge of chemical disposal

in accordance with CWC guidelines only two options for further disposal methods—

neutralization or incineration.

Incineration seemed to be the least problematic of disposal methods at first since

incineration sites could be located at isolated facilities. This was the impetus behind the Army’s

construction in 1985 of the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in the South

Pacific. The site was chosen since Johnston Atoll was unoccupied. Since it been the site for

multiple nuclear weapons tests, the chances of causing further environmental damage was

decreed to be minimal. The Johnston Atoll facility operated until 2003, when the chemical

weapons that were relocated there were eliminated through incineration. In the interim, after the

supposed success of operations at Johnston Atoll, the Chemical Corps opened facilities in the

United States in attempts to eliminate domestic stockpiles using incineration.

However, problems mounted as none of these sites were in remote locations like the

Johnston Atoll facility. At sites such as Pine Bluff Arsenal in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Blue Grass

Army Depot in Richmond, Kentucky, and Pueblo Chemical Depot in Avondale, Colorado--

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incineration became a controversial issue as people residing near these areas started noticing

marked changes in air quality.15 Fearing yet another public backlash, Army officials began

looking into neutralization methods for stockpiles still remaining at both these sites.

Recently, residents near Redstone Arsenal just outside of Huntsville, Alabama have

unearthed unmarked barrels that were found to contain sulfur mustard and other World War I era

agents. These were not being found on military installations, but much like the European Iron

Harvest, on privately owned property. It is unclear how much is buried around the former

military site. Many such as Terry de la Paz, current Public Works director for the Arsenal,

suggests there may be as many as eighteen sites containing hundreds of tons of buried chemical

warfare materiel in the area.16 What complicates this issue further is the fact that the Army

instructed soldiers to bury these weapons and not document where they were being buried as to

prevent them from being discovered by terrorists, foreign and domestic. Subsequently, much of

this land was sold to private parties. Researchers such as Milton E. Blackwood Jr. and Johnathan

B. Tucker have found that Anniston is just one base of many that stored chemical weapons and

was then closed. Considering military records on other burial sites are scarce if not non-existent,

it has left many residents living near other bases wondering what surprises may lurk in their own

backyards.

Even more problematic, and arguably more difficult to identify and recover is non-

stockpile materiel. This includes materiel used for training purposes during World War I and II

used to train soldiers who were not members of the Army’s Chemical Corps. While much of this

material is not considered toxic as it largely consists of dummy rounds and smoke grenades,

unknown is the status and location of hundreds of chemical agent identification sets (CAIS).

These “sniff kits” were sent to multiple training locations in the US and Europe in an effort to

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familiarize soldiers with what various chemical agents smelled like so they could have advance

warning if there was a chemical attack or if an area had already been impregnated with

chemicals. In light of the ban Nixon placed on chemical weapons, disposal of these kits became

part of the mandate and officers in charge of their disposal ordered soldiers to dig trenches and

toss every sniff kit at the facility into them, as the Chemical Corps decided this was the safest

way to dispose of the agents. The amount of active agents in each identification set is negligible,

but considering that a trench on even the smallest of facilities may contain dozens of these kits,

the potential for casualties from accidental exposure remains high. Army officials maintained

that burial was safer than transporting them to a centralized location for incineration, but just like

the stockpiled munitions at former bases like Redstone Arsenal, no documentation was kept

regarding the burial locations, implying that it is only a matter of time before they are unearthed

by an unsuspecting party who will become a casualty of an obsolete weapon. 17

The Army Corps of Engineers is currently working on locating these sites through their

Formerly Used Defense Site and Superfund programs under the aegis of the Department of

Defense, but those affiliated with the program state that due to the lack of accurate and reliable

documentation, that it may be decades before all the sites are first located, and then

decontaminated. Additionally, the CoE must navigate through a complex series of laws regarding

land transfers and property ownership before any type of remediation process can begin.18

What remains a mystery is why the Chemical Corps never documented these disposals.

Their claim that secrecy was a top priority falters when we look at the copious methods of

documentation the US military used for many other activities where security was a concern.

There is no shortage of information available regarding controversial military actions such as the

Manhattan Project or the Tuskegee Syphilis trials, nor do they have a shortage of information

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concerning the disposition of various biological warfare agents and experiments. The fact that

the US Chemical Corps did not keep such detailed records of where these deadly chemical

agents were disposed of is atypical of traditional military doctrine. It is this anomaly that has

already produced instances of civilians finding these outdated yet still deadly chemical agents in

their backyard and will be part and parcel of a North American Iron Harvest.

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Notes

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1 Allan Hall, “Mustard gas blisters and a daily risk of death: Bravery of soldiers still clearing the 'iron harvest' of World War I shells from beneath Flanders' fields,” Daily Mail, Feb. 14, 2013.

2 Benedict Crowell and Robert Forrest Wilson. The Armies of Industry: Our Nation's Manufacture of Munitions for a World in Arms, 1917–1918 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921), 491.

3 Erich Ludendorff, Ludendorff’s Own Story (New York: Harper & Bros., 1920), 167.

4 Stephen L. McFarland, ”Preparing for What Never Came: Chemical and Biological Warfare in World War II,” Defense Analysis, vol. 2, no. 2 (1986):117.

5 Patrick Coffey, American Arsenal: A Century of Waging War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 165.

6 House Committee on Government Reform, Spring Valley—Toxic Waste Contamination in the Nation’s Capital, 107th Cong., 1st sess., 2001,3-5.

7 L.F. Haber The Poisonous Cloud: Chemical Warfare in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 266.

8 McFarland, “Preparing for What Never Came”, 117.

9 Ibid., 113.

10 Edwin A Martini, Agent Orange: History, Science, and the Politics of Uncertainty (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), 56.

11 Peter H. Rohn, World Treaty Index. League of Nations Treaty Series. Vol. 94. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio Information Services, 1974. p. 66-74.

12 Jeanne Guillemin, “Scientists and the History of Biological Weapons: A brief historical overview of the development of Biological Weapons in the Twentieth century,” EMBO Rep EMBO Reports 7 (July 2006), 71-73.

13 Joel A. Vilensky, Dew of Death: America’s World War I Weapon of Mass Destruction (Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 2006), 110.

14 Ibid., 109.

15 Suzanne Marshall, “Chemical Weapons Disposal and Environmental Justice,” Kentucky Environmental Foundation (Nov., 1996). http://cwwg.org/EJ.HTML (accessed Mar. 3,2016).

16 National Research Council. Remediation of Buried Chemical Warfare Materiel. (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2012), 66-67.

17 Milton E. Blackwood Jr., “Beyond The Chemical Weapons Stockpile,” Arms Control Today 28, no. 5 (1998): 12.

18 United States Army Corps of Engineers, “Formerly Used Defense Sites.” http://www.usace.army.mil/Missions/Environmental/FormerlyUsedDefenseSites.aspx (accessed Mar. 6, 2016.)

Bibliography

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Crowell, Benedict and Wilson, Robert Forrest. The Armies of Industry: Our Nation's Manufacture of Munitions for a World in Arms, 1917–1918. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921.

"Formerly Used Defense Sites." Headquarters U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Missions Environmental Formerly Used Defense Sites FUDS Inventory. Accessed March 6, 2016. http://www.usace.army.mil/Missions/Environmental/FormerlyUsedDefenseSites/FUDSInventory.aspx.

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Hall, Allan. “Mustard gas blisters and a daily risk of death: Bravery of soldiers still clearing the 'iron harvest' of World War I shells from beneath Flanders' fields.” Daily Mail, Feb. 14, 2016.

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