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Issue 1561 November 25, 2012
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CORRECTING THE RECORD: Dow, Not Conant, Made Mustard Gas in World War I

January 12, 2018       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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Correcting the historical record muddied by revisionist historians is like trying to turn a battleship that is off course.

But we will make a valiant attempt to go back 100 years and correct the historical record right here in this column.

Tomorrow, Friday, Jan. 12, 2018, we will be interviewed by phone by a London, England, TV station, for a story on chemical warfare and will reinforce the truth of who actually made mustard gas for the Allies in World War I. The interview will be part of the Science Discovery Series of WAGTV, of the UK.

Jennet Conant, the author of several best-selling books on World War II, is out with a major book about her grandfather Dr. James B. Conant. She gives him full credit for first making mustard gas that was so vital to the Allied effort in World War I.

Ms. Conant was interviewed on Book TV the other day and made the bold assertion that her grandfather was the inventor of the gas, horrible as it was, that helped the Allies combat the Germans whose chief scientist Fritz Haber had launched its deadly clouds at the Battle of Ypres.

Well, we beg to differ, completely and vociferously, with Ms. Conant. Building on the work of Dow Chemical historian Ned Brandt, we obtained documentary evidence from the Chemical Heritage Foundation that Dr. Albert W. Smith, one of the founders of The Dow Chemical Company, was, in fact, the sole U.S. inventor of the process to make mustard gas (dichlorethylsulphide).

The book produced from those documents, "The G-34 Paradox: Inside the Army's Secret Mustard Gas Project at Dow Chemical in World War I," was published by Historical Press LLC of Bay City in 2015.

The book examines and expands on a tumultuous series of events that occurred in Midland during the production of mustard gas, including a mustard oil attack by a nurse outraged over sexual harassment attempts by an Army doctor sent here to tend to soldiers injured in the mustard gas plant. Shades of the "Me Too" movement of today.

The incident led to the cancellation of the Dow project by the Chemical Warfare Service and suspicions leveled against Dow founder Herbert H. Dow and the nurse, Irish firebrand Winnifred Murphy. Both were cleared of any wrongdoing and Mr. Dow was lauded by the Army for his role in the production of vital war materials.

The whole mess was complicated tragically by the death of two soldiers injured by mustard gas and subjected to malpractice by the Army doctor and two interloping University of Michigan scientists. Perhaps because the situation was so farcical, information faded from view for nearly a century until bare details came out in Brandt's 1997 book, "Growth Company: Dow Chemical's First Century," published by Michigan State University.

The historical record shows clearly that Dr. Smith alone formulated and produced the deadly gas in Midland in the spring of 1918. The Army then dispatched two squads of soldiers here and the plant at Dow became a branch of the Edgewood Arsenal of Maryland.

According to a book by Ludwig Haber, son of the famed German scientist, "J.B. Conant worked on cracking crude oil to obtain mixed olefins whence ethylene was extracted." Although ethylene was a building block for mustard gas, there was no mention of any of his work involving the production of mustard gas. Based on that contribution, there is no way Conant could have been the major innovator the deadly war chemical.

Ludwig Haber, a lawyer who moved to the United States after the war, also inexplicably did not mention Dr. Smith or Dow Chemical in his book, "The Poisonous Cloud."

The record shows that Dr. Conant, who later earned the title of "Father of the Atomic Bomb," and was president of Harvard University, worked with 1,000 soldiers at a closed automobile plant in Willoughby Ohio where Lewisite, an inferior poison gas, was made. Even at that, Lewisite was not produced until after the war.

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Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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