With the weaponization of poisonous gas during World War I, few people questioned the necessity of an organization within the United States Army that specialized in developing defensive measures and technologies against this new battlefield threat. But support for offensive chemical warfare, especially in a first-use, non-retaliatory manner, was almost non-existent.
By the time Chemical Warfare Service was redesignated the Chemical Corps in 1946, the threat posed by poison gas attacks and other types of chemical and biological warfare seemed to pale in comparison to the massive destruction that could be wreaked by nuclear weapons. At the outbreak of World War II, citizens in Hawaii were issued gas masks; during the Cold War, they were taught to duck and cover.
But despite the fact it had never employed any chemical weapons in either a first-strike or retaliatory manner, the Chemical Corps came under blistering fire during the 1960s due to a variety of factors. The Corps oversight of the use of napalm and herbicides in Vietnam were matters of hot debate, despite the fact that napalm had been used in World War II and that herbicides could not be classified as chemical weapons since they were not designed to kill or injure people. In 1968, thousands of sheep were killed or incapacitated near Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, an Army testing site for chemical and biological weapons, following aerial tests involving a nerve agent. The news of a chemical-weapons and conventional-munitions deep-sea disposal program dubbed Operation CHASE raised the ire of environmentalists, and the 1969 hospitalization of nearly two dozen Okinawa-based soldiers for low-level exposure to nerve agents led to President Nixon formally declaring a “no first use” policy regarding chemical weapons.
The Chemical Corps’ nadir came in January, 1973, when it was officially disbanded—but not disestablished. Changing attitudes toward preparation in the area of chemical warfare slowly began to turn the tide in favor of a realistic approach to a deplorable situation, namely that as horrible as chemical warfare is, there are nation-states that will use it, necessitating the need for steadfast research and development. In 1976, the commissioning of Chemical Corps officers was resumed, and in 1980 the U.S. Army Chemical School—now known as the U.S. Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear School—was reopened.
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