The Great Secret E-Book

Jennet Conant

• Herausgeber: Grove Press UK
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking seventeen ships and killing over a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. After young sailors began suddenly dying with mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, which Churchill denied. Undaunted, Alexander defied British officials and persevered with his investigation. His final report on the Bari casualties was immediately classified, but not before his breakthrough observations about the toxic effects of mustard on white blood cells caught the attention of Colonel Cornelius P. Rhoads - a pioneering physician and research scientist as brilliant as he was arrogant and self-destructive - who recognized that the poison was both a killer and a cure, and ushered in a new era of cancer research. Deeply researched and beautifully written, The Great Secret is the remarkable story of how horrific tragedy gave birth to medical triumph.

Leseprobe

ALSO BY JENNET CONANT

Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science

That Changed the Course of World War II

109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos

The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington

A Covert Affair: Julia and Paul Child in the OSS

Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist

First published in the United States of America and Canada in 2020

by W.W. Norton & Company

This hardback edition first published in Great Britain in 2020 by Grove Press UK, an imprint of Grove Atlantic

Copyright © Jennet Conant, 2020

The moral right of Jennet Conant to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN 978 1 61185 644 6

E-book ISBN 978 1 61185 893 8

Printed in Great Britain

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In wartime, truth is so precious that she shouldalways be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

—WINSTON CHURCHILL

The real war will never get in the books.

—WALT WHITMAN

Contents

Prologue:

“Little Pearl Harbor”

Chapter One:

“A Regiment of Wizards”

Chapter Two:

“The Die Is Cast”

Chapter Three:

“Angels in Long Underwear”

Chapter Four:

“Journey into the Nightmare”

Chapter Five:

“A Special Affinity”

Chapter Six:

“Recommendation to Secrecy”

Chapter Seven:

“Magnum Opus”

Chapter Eight:

“Forgotten Front”

Chapter Nine:

“A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery”

Chapter Ten:

“Frontal Attack”

Chapter Eleven:

Trials and Tribulations

Chapter Twelve:

“The Sword and the Ploughshare”

Epilogue:

Belated Justice

Acknowledgments

Notes

Archives and Libraries

Select Bibliography

Illustration Credits

Index

PROLOGUE

“Little Pearl Harbor”

When the two Time-Life war correspondents arrived in the old port town of Bari on Italy’s Adriatic coast on Thursday, December 2, 1943, they were delighted to find the bars and restaurants open and doing a booming business. Will Lang, a twenty-nine-year-old veteran American combat reporter, and George Rodger, a trailblazing English photojournalist six years his senior, grabbed the first empty table in the Albergo Oriente, a glass-fronted hotel on a wide, tree-lined boulevard in the new part of the city. Exhausted, they collapsed onto the rickety chairs and grinned at each other. By some stroke of luck, they had a two-day layover and planned to take a little break and overindulge in the local wines before returning to the grind.

Even though the front lay only 150 miles to the north, Bari seemed not to have a care in the world. The British had taken the capital of Puglia unopposed in September, and the citizens had celebrated in the streets, relieved and grateful to fall under Allied protection. The shop windows were full of fruit, cakes, and bread, along with other delicacies not seen since before the war. Waiting customers happily gossiped, argued, and haggled. Young couples strolled arm in arm, as they had for centuries. Even the ice cream vendors were doing a brisk winter trade, an incongruous sight for the journalists after having passed lines of women and children begging for black-market food only a few miles outside of town. After witnessing the chaos and misery in one village after another flattened by German bombs, the men were amazed that the medieval city, with its massive cliffs cradling the sea, had escaped the fighting almost unscathed. Its famous landmark, the gleaming white Basilica di San Nicola, home to the crypt of St. Nicholas, appeared intact. It was good to know that in the midst of this terrible war, at least the bones of Father Christmas still rested in peace.

No doubt High Command had ordered that the splendid harbor be spared. Bari was a crucial Mediterranean service hub, supplying both the American Fifth and the British Eighth Armies, which comprised the better part of the half-million Allied troops engaged in driving the Germans out of Italy. The grand buildings along the waterfront were the newly designated headquarters of the Fifteenth Air Force, under the command of General James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, leader of the daring raid on Tokyo. He had arrived on December first and was busy trying to locate his personnel and get his organization, based seventy-five miles away at the Foggia airfields, off the ground as quickly as possible. Much to Doolittle’s chagrin, he was only there in a supporting role. The liberating Tommies had already chased the Nazis from the skies over Italy, and his long-range B-17 “Flying Fortresses,” B-24s, and fighter groups were being brought in to help mop up and expand the strategic bombing campaign against Germany.

The British, who controlled the port, were so confident they had won the air war that, earlier that afternoon, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham had arranged a press conference to announce that Bari was all but immune from attack. Radiating an irritating self-satisfaction, he assured the gathered reporters that the RAF had “knocked out” the Axis forces in the Mediterranean, adding, “I would regard it as a personal affront and insult if the Luftwaffe should attempt any significant action in this area.”

The port was teeming with activity. Some thirty Allied ships—British, Dutch, Norwegian, and Polish—were crammed into the harbor, taking up every available spot within the breakwater. Four days earlier, the American Liberty ship John Harvey had pulled in with a convoy of nine other merchantmen. The vessels were tightly packed against the seawall and all along the pier, moored so closely they were virtually hull to hull. The dockyards were working around the clock to unload the supplies for the next big push—the advance on Rome. Allied strategy hinged on making steady progress up the rugged mountainous Italian peninsula, culminating in a proposed amphibious attack at Anzio, about thirty-two miles south of the capital. The success of the advance depended on the long supply line sustaining the march northward. Because of the urgency to keep the incoming stream of war matériel moving to where it was needed most, the usual blackout orders were suspended, and the lights blazed in Bari Harbor all night.

Lang knew the ships’ holds were laden with tons of vital cargo—everything from food, blankets, and medical gear for hospitals and field aid stations to corrugated steel for landing strips, engines, and fifty-gallon drums of aviation fuel for Doolittle’s bombers. Visible on the upper decks were vehicles of every kind—tanks, armored personnel carriers, jeeps, and ambulances—full of gas and ready to roll. A procession of tarp-covered trucks lumbered into town, hogging the roads. On the quayside berths, which were all occupied, bright lights winked atop huge cranes that continually hoisted baled equipment up and out. A veritable mountain ridge of boxed ammunition and shells lined the long, broad stone mole, a sign of the heavy fighting that lay ahead.

The American-led campaign to free Italy, now in its sixth month, had not gone as planned. The invasion of Sicily, code-named Operation Husky, which commenced on July 10, 1943, secured the island after only thirty-eight days of fighting, but the Germans exacted a bloody toll in retreat. The British followed up on September 3 with Operation Baytown, the initial assault on the Italian mainland—and the first invasion of the European continent. General Bernard “Monty” Montgomery’s Eighth Army crossed the Strait of Messina and occupied the “toe” of Italy’s “boot,” while Royal Navy battleships and other forces converged on Calabria. It was a cover operation, intended as a diversion, and on September 8, the Americans launched Operation Avalanche, with General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army and the British X Corps landing south of Naples at Salerno at 3:30 a.m. There was a furious battle for the beachhead, but by daylight the worst was over. Hitler’s army headed for the hills.

In what could only be described as lousy timing, on the eve of the Salerno assault, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force of the North African Theater, took to the airwaves to announce that Italy had accepted an armistice. That night, the American soldiers, having heard the dramatic news over the ships’ loudspeakers, were so busy whooping it up that they almost forgot why they were there, and it dulled their fighting edge. The Italian government surrendered unconditionally, leaving behind a confused olive-green-clad army without orders or leadership. The stunned Italian soldiers were now expected to fight alongside their former enemies, the Americans and the British, and against their former allies, the Germans. Defeated and divided, unsure whether they wanted to redeem their honor by helping to eject the Nazis from their land, they were of little use in the ensuing conflict.

Victory was not all it was cracked up to be. Lang and Rodger spent the fall covering the slow, hill-by-hill drive as the Fifth Army climbed and clawed the steep slopes of rock and sparse scrub that offered scant protection from the Wehrmacht pillboxes and mauling artillery fire that blocked the route to Rome. Monty’s troops inched their way through orchards and vineyards, and across treacherous ridge tops, grappling with heavy rains, swollen rivers, and the resolute German infantry. Lang’s Time dispatches told a depressing tale: The combined American, British, New Zealand, Canadian, and Indian forces were suffering greater than expected losses while making a “snail’s progress.” The record rainfall transformed the roads into impassable bogs, rendering their vehicles useless and forcing them to use mules to haul their food, water, and weapons. The weather grew colder by the day. Morale was low, and no one relished slogging up the spine of the muddy Italian boot in winter, a task that Scripps Howard’s intrepid correspondent, Ernie Pyle, dubbed “the misery march.”

Gen. Clark had boasted that he would capture Rome by mid-October, but that deadline had come and gone, and their objective seemed farther away than ever. After the fall of Naples, the Germans had left the city booby-trapped with time bombs, killing hundreds—mostly civilians. The butchery taught Clark and his American forces to take nothing for granted: “There are no holds barred in this war,” he wrote. “It is a dirty game.” The latest latrine rumors had it that questions were being raised at Allied High Command about how far to push the inglorious Italian campaign.

As dusk fell, drinks in hand, Lang and Rodger were morosely contemplating what little choice they had in their wartime assignments when the air-raid siren sounded. It was 7:35 p.m. The lights quickly went out in the Albergo Oriente. There was a blinding flash, followed by a terrific bang, and then here and there an artillery barrage, which they realized was the ancient port’s one and only antiaircraft battery opening fire on the intruders. The enemy planes were not getting the angry reception from Bari’s defenses they had anticipated. An American officer newly arrived from North Africa cocked his head and observed dryly, “They don’t seem to have many ack-ack guns around this town.”

Suddenly an earsplitting explosion hurled them to the ground, shattering the hotel’s front windows and littering the tile floor with splinters of glass. Then came the sound of another explosion, and another. A large formation of German Junkers Ju-88s flew in low over the town, dropping the first few bombs short of the harbor among the narrow, winding streets and white stucco buildings in the old part of the city. Plumes of smoke and flame rose from the five sites that had been hit.

Pandemonium broke out in the hotel. Terrified customers cowered under tables and huddled in corners. In the cacophony of voices, Lang heard the American officer calling to his friends. A chambermaid, crying, ran up and down the stairs. Outside, hysterical civilians stampeded down the road and poured into the town’s few shelters, trampling anyone who fell in their path. Wide-eyed, white-faced Italians dug through the rubble searching for bodies, wailing, “Madonna, Madonna mia.”

The lead pathfinders dropped Düppel, or “Window,” foil strips designed to confuse Allied radar, achieving almost complete surprise. The cloud of thin aluminum strips hung in the air, slowly twirling and floating to earth, reflecting the strings of chandelier flares and streams of tracer bullets in a ghostly, flickering light. As the incendiaries began to rain down on the harbor, they turned night into day, lighting up the sky like a brilliant fireworks display. German bombs were screaming into the harbor. Gunners aboard the anchored ships scrambled into position and tried desperately to shoot down the enemy—too late. Opposition was virtually nonexistent. The attacking airplanes pulled away and into the night, unchallenged by patrolling Allied fighters. Although the raid lasted less than twenty minutes, the results were devastating.

By 8 p.m., Lang and Rodger were crunching along debris-strewn streets as they ran toward the docks. Ambulances blared as they raced by, adding to the deafening crack and crash of the Bofors that filled the night. The noise was overpowering, unbearable, and relentless. A great red glow silhouetted the building tops between them and the burning ships. Just as the men reached the port fence, where they hoped to have an unobstructed view of the stricken harbor, there was a tremendous roar from an explosion that blotted out everything for several seconds. The blast wave knocked Lang to the ground. He could feel a flash of heat like that of a volcanic eruption on his face. Looking up, he saw a huge rolling mass of flames rising a thousand feet high. Three hundred yards away, the tanker disintegrated before their eyes and disappeared in a pall of smoke. “There goes Monty’s ammunition,” cracked Rodger, whose back was pinned against a stone wall as he fumbled for his camera and shot picture after picture.

Hearing the clatter of hobnail boots on asphalt, Lang saw the British soldiers on the quay abandon their rescue efforts and begin running from the water’s edge. Tied up close inshore, right in front of them, was another tanker. It looked like it was about to blow. He shouted, “Let’s get out of here.”

They dashed to the comparative shelter of a nearby building and climbed out onto the rooftop. Squatting there in frightened fascination, Lang later cabled Time, they surveyed the “fiery panorama”:

Through the smoke we counted eight ships already burning fiercely. One ammunition ship was already settling at the bow shooting out fresh geysers of fire as stores exploded flinging red, green and white flares into high pathetic parabolas. A mile out to sea another ship, apparently towed or steamed there after being hit, burned by itself. The entire center of the harbor was covered with burning oil. . . .

A bomb ruptured the bulk-fuel pipeline on the petroleum quay, sending thousands of gallons gushing into the harbor, where it ignited into a gigantic sheet of flame, engulfing the entire north side of the port. Like a prairie fire, the tongues of flame spread rapidly across the surface of the water, leaping from ship to ship, so even vessels that had survived the bombing with only slight damage were soon consumed. Crews worked frantically to save their ships, struggling to free them from the cable shackles and shift them out of harm’s way before the raging, uncontrollable fires forced them to jump overboard and swim for it. Every now and then, in the brief lulls between explosions, they could hear the faint cries of “Help, help!” coming from the direction of the inferno. “There are a lot of poor wretches dying out there,” Rodger muttered under his breath as he continued to document the carnage.

They had witnessed one of the worst naval catastrophes of the war, but there was no way to get their big scoop into print. A gag order was in effect. News of the night raid on Bari was being held up by the military censors. Eisenhower’s December fourth air communiqué from Algiers released only a few details and stated that “damage was done.” The New York Times ran a short item on the bombing, but it was a hazy account and full of errors. In the end, the Washington Post broke the story on December 16, describing the severe blow to Allied shipping as the costliest “sneak attack” since Pearl Harbor, with an estimated thousand casualties. More than thirty-one thousand tons of valuable cargo was completely destroyed. It would be weeks before the port could be cleared and resume normal operations, seriously disrupting the Allied advance. Adding insult to injury, the first account of the air raid had actually come from the Germans themselves. A Berlin propaganda broadcast on December 5 gloated over the mission’s spectacular success, claiming the congested harbor was so poorly protected their bombers were able to pick off the Allied ships like sitting ducks. More than 105 Ju-88s had taken part in the surprise attack, and all but two returned safely to base.

At his weekly press conference in Washington, DC, on December 16, a visibly irate Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson confirmed the Washington Post story and reluctantly revealed that the toll was of considerably greater magnitude than first reported. The Nazis had sunk a total of seventeen Allied ships, including two ammunition ships and five American merchantmen, with additional vessels hit or partially damaged. Loss of life among Naval Armed Guard personnel and American seamen was heavy. Angry that the Bari story had leaked hours earlier, Stimson gave only a sketchy account of the raid and refused to identify the nationality of the ammunition ship that had magnified the conflagration or to furnish any other details. His wrath at the premature publication of the story struck many as out of character. When one correspondent inquired whether he would comment on the report that the well-planned, boldly executed German raid had caught the Allies “napping,” Stimson cut him off midsentence and snapped, “No! I will not comment on this thing!” Abruptly ending the question-and-answer session, he stalked out of the room.

Lang’s eyewitness account of the deadly Luftwaffe strike finally ran in the December 27 issue of Time. Rodger’s dramatic images were never published. The magazine’s editors included a companion piece covering the “belated and patently embarrassed” administration tally of the disaster, along with a blunt appraisal of the news delay, which seemed to endow the story with even greater significance. “The news of Bari was bad,” they wrote. “What was even worse was the skittishness in Washington (or London) about telling the facts.”

Whatever happened at Bari, all indications were that this was no ordinary affair. Rumors abounded that the losses were greater than those disclosed by the War Department. There was some speculation that the strict censorship pointed to the involvement of a German secret weapon, possibly the new rocket-driven glide bomb, which might have been used with appalling effectiveness against the nautical targets. Walter Logan, the United Press correspondent on the scene, hinted as much in dispatches. “Bari had all the makings of a hot spot,” observed Robert Casey, a veteran Chicago Daily News correspondent who was also present. One glance at the line of merchant ships stretching into the distance and even he had known the port would be “marked with a large red tack on the German operational maps.” The pool reporters did not let Coningham forget his unqualified boast of the day before the attack, adding to the RAF’s embarrassment. The US Navy was criticized for putting so many valuable eggs in one small basket, resulting in such a dividend of destruction, particularly when installations within range of enemy bases just across the narrow Adriatic were known to be vulnerable. Congressional concern over the debacle was underscored by the announcement that Eisenhower had asked a special Senate committee to look into the painful setback.

All told, the Bari bombing, which a skeptical and aggrieved press corps called “a little Pearl Harbor,” was a great tragedy. It shook the complacency of the Allied forces, who had been convinced of their overwhelming air superiority in Italy and overconfident of continued victories. They had once again underestimated a dangerous foe and had paid for it dearly. It was a lesson they would not soon forget. As a clearly disturbed Rear Admiral Emory Scott Land, the war shipping administrator responsible for the US merchant marine fleet across seven seas, told Time: “You’re going to hear more about that raid before you hear less.” But that was the last official word on the matter, and the incident remained shrouded in mystery.

The day after filing their story, Lang and Rodger rejoined the Fifth Army as they pressed the combat line northward to Monte Cassino. They never dreamed it would be almost thirty years before the world would learn the truth about what took place on that fatal night. Or that while they had stood there helplessly watching the ships burn and hundreds of sailors brave the oily waters, another tragedy was in the making. One that was rendered far worse by wartime secrecy, and the determined efforts of both the American and British governments to cover up the incident so as not to endanger the preparations for the most important operation of the war, Overlord, the Allied invasion of German-occupied France planned for the spring.

THEGREAT SECRET

CHAPTER ONE

“A Regiment of Wizards”

The summons came in the middle of the night. He was awake at the first harsh jangle of the telephone. The next insistent ring had him on his feet. It was second nature to him. Always a light sleeper, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Francis Alexander attributed the trait to his father, an old-fashioned family practitioner whose response to every late-night distress call was to reach automatically for his raincoat and medical bag. A doctor’s son through and through, he was dressed and ready to go in under ten minutes.

The clipped voice on the other end of the line ordered him to report at once to his boss, Brigadier General Frederick A. Blesse, chief surgeon for the Fifth Army and the North African Theater of Operations at Algiers. The briefing was cursory, amounting to little more than the recitation of a handful of facts. There appeared to be a developing medical situation in Bari following the December 2 air strike. Too many men were dying, too quickly, of unexplained causes. The symptoms were unlike anything the physicians in the local military hospitals had seen before, and they had begun to suspect the Germans had used some new, unknown poison gas. When the number of mysterious deaths increased rapidly with each successive day, the British placed a “red light” call alerting Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) at Algiers. There was an urgent request for assistance. “Expert advice” was the way Blesse had put it. Fortunately, they had just the man for the job. Alexander, a twenty-nine-year-old medical officer attached to Eisenhower’s staff, had received special training in chemical warfare. He was being dispatched immediately to the scene of the disaster.

Alexander looked young for a combat doctor. Five feet eight, skinny, with close-cropped fair hair and hazel eyes, he had the kind of open, honest face that people invariably described as earnest. The dimple in his chin added to his choirboy appearance, and it was only the fact that his hair had started to thin at the temples that lent him any air of authority. Gentle and soft-spoken, he was popular with the troops, though some patients kidded him that his bedside manner was better suited to a pediatrician than someone who had by choice seen more than his fair share of war. But he had come over with Operation Torch under the command of no less a figure than Major General George S. Patton, and he had been through the brutal invasion assault on North Africa. Despite his quiet modesty, Alexander had proven himself to be confident, determined, and resourceful. He had a good head on his shoulders and knew how to handle himself.

The day after the attack on Bari, Eisenhower’s headquarters had been buzzing with the news that the Luftwaffe’s hit-and-run raid had pummeled the unsuspecting harbor. The first reports described a scene of utter devastation. Parts of the town and port were still on fire. The carcasses of burned-out ships, their towering masts and funnels smashed, were smoldering and belching black smoke. The basin was so crowded with sunken wrecks that the rescue tugs could hardly work their way around the length of the seawall to search for survivors. Casualties were said to be enormous. Grotesquely charred and bloated bodies bobbed to the surface and were fished out of the water in nets. The grisly remains were laid out on the dock in full view—arms, legs, and torsos, already nibbled by crabs. Most of the sailors and merchant seamen who perished would never be found. There would be no way to identify the dead. No way to give them a proper burial.

SITTING IN HIS SUNBAKED OFFICE in the medical department at AFHQ, Alexander shuddered to think how the overstretched hospitals in Bari would cope with the masses of injured men. From the reports stacked on his desk, he knew that every Allied facility in the region—British, New Zealand, Indian, and Italian—was already loaded with wounded from the months of continuous combat and operating far beyond normal capacity. His mind flashed back over familiar scenes from battalion aid stations following a major assault: litter bearers, moving with swift efficiency, carrying in the wounded; surgeons in blood-spattered coveralls patching torn flesh and binding shattered limbs for further procedures once they had been evacuated; nurses hooking up copious bottles of plasma to sustain failing bodies; then clearing the decks as quickly as possible to make room for the next round of incoming. At Bari, they would be doing all that and more, only the numbers would be staggering.

But that had been just one of his concerns. He had been dismayed to learn that among the tons of lost cargo was the long-overdue equipment to outfit five planned American field hospitals, one of them a thousand-bed unit. All of the medical supplies had been aboard the Liberty ship Samuel J. Tilden, which was destroyed in the enemy attack. The newly arrived personnel were all safe, having bivouacked some distance from town, but everything they needed to provide assistance in the emergency, from bandages to syringes and morphine, was at the bottom of the harbor. Under the circumstances, the American 26th General Hospital had scrambled to open on December 4 to care for some of the bombing victims, assembling a medical wing and borrowing a hundred beds, plus linens and pajamas, from the Italians. A few surgical instruments and small amounts of dressings were scrounged from an Air Force storage depot. Complicating matters, the town’s communication system, which was knocked out in the attack, was still down, making the relief effort that much more difficult. The grim reality was that the shortage of medical supplies was going to compound the tragedy. Alexander’s initial orders had been clear. One way or another, Blesse had told him, they were going to have to find a way to replace the lost inventory in one hell of a hurry.

Now, he realized, that might turn out to be the least of their worries.

The white city of Algiers, shimmering in the soft morning light, seemed far from the ravages of war. The half-moon harbor below looked like a picture postcard, with boats of every size and shape nestled along the bay. Alexander hastened to the waiting jeep that would whisk him to Maison Blanche Airfield on the outskirts of town. Arrangements were being made for a plane to take him to Bari. He was the expert and he was going alone, without staff.

ALEXANDER’S PRESENCE IN ALGIERS was no accident. It was fortuitous, a result of Gen. Eisenhower’s foresight and his own willfulness. When he later looked back on the sequence of events that led to his being there, it always seemed to him to be more than mere coincidence, one of those serendipitous events in which it is impossible not to see the hand of fate.

Quiet and scholarly by nature, he could have sat out the war in a stateside hospital or research laboratory. At the start of the conflict, it was easy enough for a doctor to claim he could not be spared from his civilian occupation. He had heard of more than one colleague who had been categorized as “essential” and exempted from conscription. From the first, however, Alexander felt that this was a war in which he had to participate, and he had enlisted early of his own initiative.

The desire to serve ran deep. He was from self-made, self-reliant immigrant stock, part of the wave of Eastern European Jews who had journeyed to the United States in the 1880s, fleeing famine, unemployment, and political and religious persecution. His grandfather came from Bratislava in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now the Czech Republic, as a boy without a penny to his name. He struggled to earn the passage funds for each of his siblings and parents, bringing them over one by one. He put his hand to dozens of odd jobs, determined to prosper and provide his family with a better life. Poor but proud, he embraced all things American, especially baseball, which he played with gusto and without a glove, despite breaking several fingers. He inculcated in his eight children a profound sense of obligation to the new land that had given them so much. Samuel, the oldest son, began working at the age of five, selling newspapers. By dint of hard work, long hours, and night classes, he put himself through college and medical school. He eventually rose from a humble small-town doctor to become a pillar of the community in Park Ridge, New Jersey, building a large obstetric practice and delivering hundreds of babies over four decades, as well as founding the state’s first county hospital. He became president of the state medical society, president of the local bank, and served several terms as mayor.

Having spent his childhood going on rounds with his boundlessly energetic and gregarious father, conspicuous in the neighborhood as the doc’s bright boy, Stewart Alexander had only one ambition: to follow in his father’s footsteps. Born on August 30, 1914, in a small stone house that also served as his father’s office and surgery, he raced along the path set out for him. His mother, a teacher, recognized that her boy was a fast learner when he refused to go to kindergarten, declaring it a waste of time. Always the youngest and smallest in his class, he skipped several grades at the public school across the street and consistently earned top marks. In need of a greater challenge, and perhaps a bit of toughening up, he was packed off to the Staunton Military Academy in Virginia for his last two years of high school. He entered Dartmouth College at the age of fifteen, excelled at his scientific studies, and was allowed to advance directly to medical school at the start of his senior year, graduating at the top of his class in 1935. As Dartmouth only had a two-year program, he went on to earn his MD from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York and then did postgraduate work in chest diseases and neurology at Bellevue Hospital. He declined an offer to stay on—the big city held little allure for him. After completing his internship and residency training, he returned to Park Ridge and proudly hung out his shingle next to his father’s.

He had only a few months to enjoy their shared dream of practicing medicine together. By the spring of 1940, Germany was on the march, conquering France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Any real hope of avoiding the conflict evaporated as President Franklin D. Roosevelt began to urge the country toward a new, more serious phase of preparedness. Alexander, who had joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps the day he finished medical school, notified the draft board he was “available any time.” He was called up in November and inducted into the Army Medical Corps as a first lieutenant. Despite his disappointment, his father would not have had it any other way. During World War I, he had tried in vain to volunteer for the Army Medical Corps, but, to his everlasting shame and regret, he was repeatedly rejected because of a deviated septum, even after undergoing an operation to correct it. Dedication and duty—to his patients, community, and country—were the animating principles of his life. He had always taught his son: “We must do those things we ought to do.” The young Dr. Alexander absorbed the lesson, and, conscious of his old man’s thwarted efforts to serve, felt all the more compelled to do his part.

His bags were packed, good-byes said and done, when he went for the routine physical, only to be told he had flunked the exam. Like father, like son. He, too, was deemed ineligible because of a minor hereditary defect—in his case, compound myopia, or nearsightedness. In truth, he was almost blind without glasses. While the Army physician was explaining that his vision was 20/100 and “well below the minimum standard,” Alexander, looking over his shoulder at the eye chart, quickly committed the lines of random letters to memory. Insisting there must be some mistake, he removed his glasses again and demanded to be retested. This time, he passed with flying colors and was duly accepted into the service. It was a trivial incident, and the episode would have soon been forgotten had it not given rise to a new concern about whether his impaired vision would be a handicap at the front. Almost as quickly, it set him thinking about what could be done to help soldiers like himself headed for combat.

He continued to mull over the problem during the first few months he spent in the medical detachment of the 16th Infantry Regiment, First Division, at Gunpowder Creek, near Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. Green and jittery, the new recruits were naturally apprehensive about what they would encounter in the field. The barracks were rife with rumors that sooner or later the enemy would resort to chemical warfare. Poison gas had been Germany’s weapon of choice in World War I, and it was widely believed that if the war went badly and Hitler’s back was to the wall, he would retaliate by unleashing a chemical attack, even though the use of chemical and biological weapons had been banned by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. They had all read about the agonizing deaths caused by artillery shells packed with toxins, and asphyxiating gases that smothered soldiers in the trenches before they could escape. The fear was real and pervasive.

Faced with this familiar threat, it struck Alexander that if the men were confident there were good safeguards in place to counter the gas menace, they might be less nervous. He had his own misgivings, dating back to his days as a reserve officer. During routine gas drills, he had discovered that the gas mask supplied by the Army did not fit over the metal frames of his spectacles, forcing him to go without them. His poor performance on the eye exam had only exacerbated his anxieties, reminding him of the not-inconsiderable risk of having to choose breathing over seeing in the event of a gas attack. Moreover, as a doctor, he felt it was his responsibility to make sure that none of the soldiers in his care were sent into battle with anything less than complete protection. He decided to write to the Chemical Warfare Service about the problem and proposed a solution, sending along several sketches. His letter so impressed the CWS’s technical team that he was invited to make a presentation at their research and development center at Edgewood. After further correspondence, and a number of modifications, Alexander succeeded in devising a new form of spectacles that could be worn within the molded facepiece of the mask. He was granted a patent on his design, but he turned over all the rights to the Army. The new glasses soon became standard service issue.

Not long afterward, he was contacted by Colonel William D. Fleming, chief of the Medical Research Division of the Chemical Warfare Service, who inquired into his background and then, apparently satisfied with his CV, announced, “I really think you belong here with us.” It took several months for Fleming to disentangle him from the First Division, but, in the fall of 1941, Alexander was transferred to the CWS at Edgewood Arsenal. After a soggy year of amphibious landing exercises that had taken his regiment from the freezing waters of Maryland to the wilting heat of Puerto Rico and Martinique, and had most recently put them ashore in the Carolinas, he was not sorry to be moving on. He hoped, at least, that he had gained a better understanding of some of the hazards of combat, including possibly the biggest hazard—bullheaded officers who tried to drown half their company in the name of training. The mulishness of one battalion major determined to “harden” the men despite subzero temperatures inspired special fury. Alexander had not joined the Army to treat needless and debilitating bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia. With half the men sick, the executive officer, Colonel Charles Van Way, had advised him to intervene.

“Won’t I get into trouble for doing that?” Alexander asked, taken aback.

“Maybe,” he replied, “but there isn’t anyone else who can do it.”

Alexander promptly placed the entire battalion under quarantine, suspended the training exercises, and wrote a memorandum to the Surgeon General of the Army, explaining that if the cold did not kill the men, the major would. The medical inspector who reviewed the case agreed and closed down the operation.

When the wire came through with his travel orders to Edgewood, Alexander was more than ready to go. Told he could leave that day, he did. He knew almost nothing about chemical weapons, only that the chance to be part of a classified program to defend against toxic agents sounded “exciting.”

The Chemical Warfare Service—created in 1918 to organize the production of poison gas and defensive equipment during World War I—built a vast complex of munitions works on the grounds of Edgewood Arsenal. Congress made it a permanent part of the US Army in 1920, with duties to continue the “investigation, development, manufacture or procurement and supply of all smoke and incendiary materials, all toxic gases, and all gas defense appliances.” The unit later received approval for its distinctive insignia, a green dragon breathing flames, and its motto—Elementis Regamus Proelium—“Let Us Rule the Battle by Means of the Elements.” Over the next two decades, despite almost continuous debate about its peacetime preparations, the CWS focused on refining its production of lethal compounds and creating better delivery systems. Primarily, the service was expected to maintain what Roosevelt, with evident distaste, called the “defensive necessities” of the United States—in other words, maintain a state of readiness for chemical warfare.

Although bordered by beautiful woods and a sparkling river, the Edgewood facility was a somewhat uninviting place where, in the words of Major General William N. Porter, chief of the CWS, “every living soul must stay within five minutes of his gas mask.” The acrid smell that permanently hung in the air around the manufacturing plants was enough to make anyone nervous. Assigned to the Medical Research Laboratory, Alexander quickly became proficient in the field of poison gases. With characteristic drive and intensity of purpose, he spent weeks educating himself in the library. He read everything he could find about the principal killing agents: chlorine (a powerful irritant that damaged the eyes, nose, and throat), phosgene (cheap and deadly, it attacked the lungs with no effective treatment after prolonged exposure), and sulfur mustard (a liquid that vaporized, and lethal in both forms). The cornerstone of Germany’s chemical arsenal, mustard gas—the so-called king of battle gases—killed more than a hundred thousand men in World War I and badly injured a million more. The most potent gas, lewisite, developed at the end of the last war, was a new type of blister agent, or severe vesicant, that quickly penetrated the body.

He learned to identify the different toxins by their telltale odors—the pungent aroma of an indoor pool (chlorine), the fragrant but pernicious smell of newly mown hay (phosgene), the nose-tickling bouquet of garlic (mustard gas), and the faint, sickly sweet scent of geraniums (lewisite). There was no practical method of detecting most gases other than via the sense of smell, but it was a hazardous and uncertain business. Soldiers needed a quick, foolproof test. When Alexander first arrived, the lab was in the process of perfecting a new detector kit, essentially a miniature portable chemistry set for identifying gases in the field. Every soldier was issued a chart listing the main chemical warfare agents and told to memorize the odors that might be the harbinger of a deadly attack.

This reference chart, prepared by Lt. Col. Walter P. Burns, lists the main poison gases used during World War I. It was used to train troops at the beginning of World War II on the different methods of delivery, telltale odors, physiological effects, and first aid to be administered in the event of exposure. (William Frederick Nice Collection [AFC/2001/001/01339], Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)

The history of gas warfare was one of steadily increasing toxicity, matched by a quickly evolving array of defensive measures. By the end of World War I, it had become a kind of technological chess match, with military strategists and scientists devising ways to check each new offensive threat. The Medical Research Laboratory was still focused on preventions and procedures to care for chemical casualties. Work was in progress on improving protection against toxic agents, including new, adjustable gas masks and antigas-impregnated uniforms, including underwear, socks, hoods, gloves, and leggings. While all of this lifesaving equipment vastly reduced the destructive capacity of most poison gases, it had its limits. Nothing was 100 percent reliable. The new gas masks were still hot and heavy, could cause claustrophobia, and were so bulky and inconvenient to carry that troops had a habit of leaving them behind on combat maneuvers. And there was only so much that could be done to mitigate human error in donning the protective gear in those panicked seconds prior to an attack. “It’s the natural fear of asphyxiation,” a CWS officer explained with resignation. “The average sergeant will run from a stink and walk straight into a machine-gun nest.”

When Alexander first arrived, the lab’s top priority was to find a means of protecting vulnerable skin from corrosive chemical agents. He and his colleagues developed a chlorine-based ointment to neutralize mustard residue on the skin before it began to destroy cells and tissue, but it had to be modified many times before it was proven to be safe and effective. The Army finally approved it and ordered millions of tubes to be manufactured and sent to the front. Lewisite remained a troublesome agent, as it contained arsenic to produce systemic poisoning. They tackled the problem by conducting a series of experiments on ways to counter arsenic and heavy-metal poisoning. After postulating that since the skin was an active and rapid absorption organ for toxic agents, then perhaps it could be equally efficient in absorbing therapeutic agents, they were on their way to creating a transdermal drug. Several months later, the threat from arsenicals was downgraded, thanks to three Oxford University researchers who had discovered an antidote, known as British Anti-Lewisite, or BAL. By the following year, soldiers were issued M5 gas treatment kits containing four tubes of the protective skin ointment and, tucked under the tin’s lid, one tiny tube of BAL eye ointment.

Intrigued by the work, Alexander explored every poison suspected of being of interest to the enemy and every known or conjectured aspect of gas casualty aid. He wrote detailed memoranda, consulted specialists, and set up experiments on animals to evaluate different toxic agents and forms of treatment. He tested medications, administering them in various ways—topically, ingested, and inhaled—following up on even the most obscure references he found in the existing literature. Given license to improvise, he tried anything and everything he could think of to improve the current methods of dealing with chemical injuries, minimizing the effects of exposure, and protecting military personnel, civilians, and food and water supplies. He even familiarized himself with the lab’s veterinary section, an entire research apparatus devoted to the preservation of animals—and, more to the point, the country’s meat resources. All of these classified research projects were going on simultaneously. Alexander found it fascinating. He had certainly never dreamed of pursuing such a morbid subject as a career, but it was without a doubt the most important and stimulating work he had ever done. And when he was able to notch some clinical progress, and make a contribution to medicine, it was also the most rewarding.

The December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor greatly accelerated his activities. While the military divisions of the CWS provided the supply, support, and training for combat operations, the medical division’s mission took on new urgency. The push was on for the lab to complete the field tests and get new antigas protective equipment in the hands of troops as rapidly as possible. When the chemical rearmament program was launched in late 1941, Congress turned on the taps and the money began flowing. The CWS budget soared from a mere $2 million in 1940 to $60 million the following year, and an astounding $1 billion in 1942. More than a dozen planned chemical warfare plants—from a new, fifteen-thousand-acre site at Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas that opened five days before Pearl Harbor to an even larger one under construction at Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver—spurred the CWS hiring spree. The staff swelled from five thousand Army personnel to sixty thousand in 1942. The shortage of qualified CWS officers meant there was a tremendous increase in programs to train medical personnel in the handling of chemical casualties, care procedures, and decontamination methods. A major training center was erected at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania. Alexander helped to organize the course and write the manuals and then delivered the initial series of lectures.

He also served as the point person for coordinating their efforts with the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), as well as large chemical corporations engaged in defense work and universities that had been awarded classified military research projects. This brought him into regular contact with what the CWS described as “the Supreme Court of chemical brains,” represented by such scientific luminaries as Dr. James Bryant Conant, the president of Harvard University and the head of the NDRC; Dr. Roger Adams, head of the University of Illinois’s chemistry department, who helped develop adamsite, an arsenical used as a vomiting agent or sneeze gas; and Dr. Milton Charles Winternitz, former dean of the Yale School of Medicine and chairman of the Committee on the Treatment of War Gas Casualties of the National Research Council.

Alexander traveled all over the country, attending conferences and observing spectacular exhibitions of new chemical warfare weapons. They ranged from magnesium, oil, and thermite incendiaries, which could be dropped from planes and could burn through steel tanks, to new smoke bombs and smoke screens that fogged the enemy’s vision, making them extremely valuable in combat. The Germans had cracked the Maginot Line in May 1940 in part by blinding the French with smoke bombs and then sending soldiers forward to put TNT and flamethrowers through the embrasures in the turrets above the concrete fortifications. Colonel E. P. Gempel, training director of the CWS School, expressed his pride at the great strides it had made in smoke generators, stating, “Smoke saves blood—your blood.”

When the director of the laboratory was transferred, Col. Fleming asked Alexander to take over and threw in a promotion, telling him, “It will look better to have a major in charge of the medical division.” It was a wholly unexpected boost up the ladder, not only in rank but also in responsibility. All of twenty-seven at the time, with limited preparation for a job of such magnitude, he suddenly found himself in charge of a large department staffed by brilliant scientists and physicians, along with twenty researchers with advanced degrees in biology and organic chemistry, all of whom were older and more experienced. The rapid expansion of the whole organization meant that everybody was being advanced and asked to do the work of two people. If Alexander had had only minimal knowledge of poison gas when he arrived at Edgewood, he had undergone a crash course over the previous ten months and was now a member of an elite group of chemical warfare experts. It was, he later recalled, “a very heady time.”

IN THE FALL OF 1942, the Combined Chiefs of Staff turned their attention to the problem of chemical warfare, with the result that a United States policy, in addition to a broader Allied policy, began to be formulated. It called for a cooperative American and British effort at achieving the “defensive preparedness” of all United Nations troops, and for the accumulation of sufficient toxic munitions to make “immediate retaliation possible should the enemy initiate gas warfare anywhere in the world.” For Eisenhower, recently promoted to lieutenant general and named head of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa, this development was not the least bit reassuring. Raising more questions in his mind than it answered, the still-vague, ill-defined policy on gas warfare left him with some scenarios for which there seemed to be no possible good outcome.

Although the universal outrage and revulsion that followed World War I had led the Axis and Allied powers to sign the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which banned the use, but not the possession, of chemical and biological weapons, neither side trusted the other. Neither side believed the bargain would be upheld. More to the point, there was no ban on the research and development of a fearsome array of new offensive poisons. Despite Hitler’s reaffirmed promise in September 1939 not to conduct chemical warfare—he claimed to despise poison gas after being temporarily blinded by a mustard shell as a cadet—Allied intelligence had obtained evidence that the Wehrmacht was secretly overseeing the production and stockpiling of a variety of chemical agents. Numerous laboratories in Germany—in Berlin and the Ruhr—had been identified as possibly developing poison gas, with three more experimental plants said to exist near Münster, Wünsdorf, and List auf Sylt.

The Japanese not only were researching poison gas but also were actively employing it in their war against China. In October 1941, Japan, which had never ratified the Geneva Protocol, released clouds of gas at Yichang, in the Yangtze Valley, reportedly killing six hundred Chinese soldiers and wounding more than a thousand. The Japanese were known to be aggressively developing offensive gases; from 1937 onward, there had been repeated reports that they had used mustard and lewisite against the Chinese to drive them from caves and tunnels into the open, where they would be slaughtered by waiting troops. Both Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt immediately condemned the Yichang attack and vowed to take action if Japan did not desist. Photographs of the atrocities were published in American newspapers, fanning the public’s fears about Japan’s barbaric methods and monstrous chemical arsenal.

While the CWS maintained that there were no “authenticated reports” of the tactical use of poison gas on the European battlefield, a sizable haul of enemy literature and instruction manuals related to gas warfare had been seized. Army experts were of the opinion the pamphlets were more of the usual Nazi “horror propaganda,” and military officials assured the public they remained alert to the ever-present danger. CWS chief Maj. Gen. Porter confidently asserted that the Axis powers would never catch America asleep at the wheel when it came to poison gas. “The best defense against poison gas,” he told the New York Times, “is to be ready. We are ready.” Every report of a gas incident was thoroughly investigated. Every threat, regardless of how imprecise or improbable, was taken seriously.

Churchill took the threat very seriously. A staunch advocate of poison gas in World War I, he never missed an opportunity to remind his countrymen of the danger posed by what he called Germany’s “perverted science.” His philosophy on chemical warfare remained unaltered since his speech to the House of Commons a decade earlier, when he stated that “the attitude of the British government had always been to abhor the employment of poison gas,” but in the same breath he urged continued research and development so as not to be at a “hopeless disadvantage” if it were used against them. His sense of foreboding was fueled by frequent, if unsubstantiated, intelligence reports of Axis offensive action with chemical weapons. In a radio broadcast on May 10, 1942, responding to rumors of an alleged Nazi gas attack in Crimea, Churchill went further, bluntly stating that if the enemy used it first, he would be compelled to use it in return. “I wish now to make plain that we shall treat the unprovoked use of poison gas against our Russian ally exactly as if it were used against ourselves,” he warned. “And if we are satisfied that this new outrage has been committed by Hitler, we will use our great and growing air superiority in the West to carry gas warfare on the largest possible scale far and wide against military objectives in Germany.”

Completely dedicated to winning the war, Churchill was a difficult man to disagree with when conviction compelled his views. Like most American military leaders, Eisenhower was not as gung-ho when it came to using poison gas. He preferred Roosevelt’s restraint and moral reservations. But then the United States had not come out of the previous war with the same searing memories of German industrialized death that marked every British man or woman over the age of forty. Some differences in military doctrine were to be expected. As the European theater commander, Eisenhower dreaded the possibility of gas warfare but understood the need to plan for every contingency. He also knew Churchill could be excessively oratorical—Ike once observed that the prime minister “drew on everything from the Greek classics to Donald Duck for quotation, cliché, and forceful slang to support his position”—but his logic was inescapable. No Allied commander could be sanguine that the Germans were not poised for chemical combat.

The close partnership between the two countries regarding chemical warfare actually predated America’s entry into the war by a year. In a secret deal, negotiated in the winter of 1940, the United States began supplying Britain with two hundred tons of phosgene a month, just in case they found themselves in a tight spot and had to repel an invading German army. “To preserve the image of neutrality,” according to historians Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman, “the gas was manufactured in private U.S. plants (which were financed by the British) and then carefully shipped to Europe in foreign-registered vessels; technically the American government’s only official connection was the granting of export licenses.” The clandestine arrangement, which could have backfired terribly if the Germans had fathomed the true state of affairs, was typical of the Allied tendency to cloak all matters pertaining to chemical warfare agents in a mantle of secrecy that would evade notice and permit subsequent deniability.

Although the CWS leaders believed that the Axis powers were unlikely to conduct gas warfare in the North African Theater, where tactical and logistical difficulties blunted its utility, the possibility was sufficiently real that the Allied forces at least had to be prepared. In the spring of 1942, the Operations Division concurred, approving the rapid overhaul of the North Africa campaign’s capacity for chemical warfare. All theaters immediately began to implement the necessary defensive measures. As time was short, the top CWS officers all pitched into the job of forming the chemical battalions and providing the protection kits and detection devices, along with the trained personnel to handle them. With the large buildup of American troops on the continent, and in the midst of planning offensive actions, Eisenhower could not take any chances. He sent a cable from Norfolk House in London, where he had set up his temporary headquarters, to Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall, requesting that a medical officer well versed in chemical warfare be assigned to his staff.

Once Eisenhower’s request reached Col. Fleming at the CWS base at Edgewood, he passed it on to Alexander, with instructions to pluck a suitably trained man from one of his courses to ship overseas. After reading the cable a number of times, however, Alexander decided on impulse to put his own name forward. Frustrated after a promising study on the physiochemical properties of mustard gas was shelved because it did not directly benefit the war effort, he had had enough of laboratory research. He wanted to return to the field and practice medicine where it might do the most good. Fleming refused to even consider it. He could not afford to lose one of his main instructors at the very moment when there was an increased demand for their services. Alexander persisted, arguing he was by far the best qualified, and, being young and able-bodied, he did not want to spend the entirety of the war behind a desk. In the end, he got his way. In August 1942, Alexander received orders that he was being sent to England.

The next thing he knew, his orders were canceled. Alexander found himself stuck in Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, sitting on his tail and wondering where the Army would ship him next, when he received a call from Col. Van Way. One of the finest officers he had served under in his time with the 16th Infantry, Van Way was now with the War Department, and apparently important enough that he did not have to go through the usual channels. He informed Alexander that he had been selected to serve as the Consultant in Chemical Warfare Medicine to the Western Task Force under Gen. Patton. As part of Torch, the Western Task Force would travel three thousand miles across the Atlantic and attack the coast of Morocco, the first time US ground forces would be put into action against the Germans and other European Axis armies. Van Way assured him no chemical warfare activity was expected, it was just a precautionary measure, and his duties would “evolve as needed.” Colonel Maurice E. Barker, former head of the CWS and newly appointed chief chemical officer for the Western Task Force, joked that Patton would have included “a regiment of wizards” with his assault force if he thought it would promise victory on the far shore.

Alexander embarked from Hampton Roads, Virginia, with the first part of the Western Task Force on the afternoon of October 23, 1942. It was an immense invasion force—thirty-five thousand troops in a convoy of more than a hundred ships. As Alexander stood at the rails of his transport ship, the sight of the large armada left him gasping. Several days out, they rendezvoused with another huge convoy, consisting of innumerable battleships, heavy cruisers, destroyers, and aircraft carriers, as well as a flotilla of seagoing tugs, subchasers, mine sweepers, mine layers, and repair ships. It was, Patton told them more than once, the greatest amphibious operation of its kind ever attempted. Far out at sea, the enormous US Navy war fleet looked to Alexander like a floating city on the horizon, gray and ominous in the distance.