1. 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

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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
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 Munitionsfor
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
MassachusettsPress,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 Disposaland 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.)

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Vilensky, Joel A. Dew of Death: The Story of Lewisite, America's World War I Weapon of Mass
Destruction. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005.