Echoes ofWorld War I- Chemical Warfare Materials on the Atlantic Coast by Geoffrey Carton, Kathleen Ciolfi, and Mike Overfield
W
orld War I, the Great War, is a part of history that most of us learned about in school, though some heard about it through the stories their grandparents told as they were growing up. To the majority of us, it was just that-a story. But in the 21 " century, World War I became more than just a story, it claimed new casualties. On 19 July 2004, a local police officer noticed an artillery shell leaning against a mailbox post in the small town of Bridgeville, Delaware. The State Police called theAir Force's 436'h Civil Engineers Squadron's Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Flight for assistance, and EOD personnel swept the area and collected a single 75-millimeterartilleryshell. The rusty shell's shipping plug was still in place, indicating that it was not fused. The EO D Flight determined the risk from movement of the shell was "acceptable" and transported it to a demolition range at Dover Air Force Base. The next day, a small explosive charge was used to punch a hole in the shell, and the result was not particularly exciting-at first. A black viscous liquid leaked from the shell and onto the EOD personnel when they picked it up after detonating the explosive charge. A field test subsequently identified the liquid as mustard agent, a toxic chemical agent. Mustard is somewhat insidious because there is no initial effect with contact, but large blisters start to form about a day after exposure. The fo llowing day, three members of the EOD Flight developed blisters; two airmen were treated for minor injuries and released, while the third was admitted to a hospital burn unit. The presence of a chemical shell in rural Delaware, far from any site used for manufacturing, storage, or testing of chemical warfare materials (a collective term for chemical munitions and toxic chemical agents) was a mystery at first. A subsequent review of all the Military Service's EOD response records and local newspaper reports revealed a pattern for recovery of m unitions from private properties . The mystery grew as the Department of Defense (DoD) found that more than one hundred conventional munitions were recovered from private driveways during the previous year. These included World-War-I-vintage British Mills grenades and French VB rifle grenades. The presence of these foreign items is not as unusual as it might seem. Many munitions were manufactured in
the United States for the allies during World War I, but how they arrived in people's driveways decades later is a peculiar story. The first clue to the source of munitions was identifying that all of them were recovered from areas paved with crushed clamshells . The DoD quickly traced the munitions to a seafood plant where surf clams (Spisula solidissima) were processed for chowder and strips. When the clams were removed from the shells, the company then sold the empty clam shells to a trucking firm for use as low-cost paving material. Surf clams are harvested by vessels pulling steel dredges along the bottom of the ocean at water depths up to 200 feet. Seawater jets temporarily fluidize the sediment at the front of the dredge, allowing the dredge to pass through with less chance of getting snagged. The spacing of the bars of the dredge is designed to let most of the smaller clams and other organisms pass through , while larger clams are retained. The dredge picks up anything else in its path that doesn't fit through the bars, including debris and ... munitions. Reportedly, it isn't uncommon for fishermen to recover munitions and other undesirable debris that they quickly return to the deep. Not all debris is culled aboard ship, and the seafood plant occasionally finds munitions during processing. When personnel from the DoD first visited the processing plant, they discovered some munitions temporarily stored in the basement. After reviewing their processes with the Army, the plant took immediate steps to revise their procedures to stop munitions from entering its processing operations or waste streams, thereby preventing their distriburion to the public. A review of EO D records revealed that, for at least the past few years, munitions were recovered during clamming operations at a number oflocations along the mid-Atlantic states. Tracing this particular artillery shell back to the seafood plant only answered part of the mystery. Several more perplexing questions remained: Where did the chemical m unitions originate? How did they get there, and, importantly, are there any more? The potential sources for the conventional munitions, incl uding military and civilian manufacturers and salvagers, are many, and thus the vessel or plant that disposed of them may never be
The freighter USS Elinor, c. 1918. Built by the Baltimore Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company, and originally named SS General de Castlenau, this ship was taken over by the navy for World Wtir I service and placed in commission on 20 March 1918 as USS Elinor (JD # 2465). She was decommissioned and returned to the US Shipping Board on 26 April 1919.
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