Medical Aspects of Chemical Warfare (2008) - The Black Vault

Medical Aspects of Chemical WarfareFig. 2-32. American Expeditionary Forces gas casualties in World War I. Casualty statistics reflect those Americans treated inAmerican, French, British, and Belgian field hospitals. The categories “Not Distributed” and “Other” reflect those Americanunits not organized into divisions.ber of gas cases in the surgeon general’s records. Basehospitals of the French and British divisions receivedmany of the early AEF chemical casualties. Therefore,these American casualties were either not statisticallyrecorded as chemical casualties or were counted underBritish or French statistics.In addition, gas officers, who were responsiblefor compiling chemical casualty statistics, arrivedin Europe after the first few AEF divisions. Consequently,they were unable to tally chemical casualtystatistics early in the war, when lack of discipline inthe trenches caused the greatest numbers of chemicalcasualties.Also, chemical casualties from inhalation were difficultto prove because only pulmonary signs and symptomswere evident. Medical personnel viewed soldierswith no clear dermatological signs and symptoms asneurotic malingerers feigning illnesses to leave the frontlines. Although pulmonary intoxication from chemicalweapons was common, death was often the result ofinfluenza, a major problem in World War I. Chemicaltoxicity as the result of inhalational or dermal exposureto agents often led to bacterial infection and death.Base hospitals underestimated the effects of chemicalson casualties because many mortalities were talliedas death secondary to influenza, rather than from theinitial chemical insult. The majority of the gas casualtyreports filed included immediate deaths only (mostlikely due to a combination of shrapnel and gas); theyoften did not include deaths from gas exposure thatoccurred days or weeks later. Chemical shelling wasalso the cause of many cases of “psychoneuroses.” Foodcontamination from dispersed chemicals in the air wasa major paranoia among World War I soldiers.The 1920sAn international push to ban chemical weaponsfollowed the conclusion of the war (see Chapter 4).Despite the treaties, rumors of chemical warfare attacksplagued the world throughout the 1920s. Besides theUnited States and the major World War I powers, severalother countries began to develop chemical warfarecapabilities, and some countries put their capabilitiesinto operation. During the Russian civil war and Alliedintervention in the early 1920s, both sides had chemicalweapons and isolated chemical attacks were reported.Later accounts accused the British, French, andSpanish of using chemical warfare at various timesduring the 1920s. 4,53 The Berber-led resistance movementagainst French and Spanish colonialism in42