The Gardener

Since the war began, in November of 98, the US Army had learned a lot about fighting on the Tennessee Front. This front was considered one of the more critical, by Fort Lincoln, of any south of the Canadian border since the basic plan for dealing the CSA was to drive down the Mississippi Valley all the way to the gulf. Unfortunately for the US Army, the Confederacy was not only well aware of this plan but, had taken more than adequate steps in defending the western part of the state. Naturally, as we all know, this included planting the invasive weed, Kudzu, which proved to be so effective that Confederate soldiers came to be known by that name.

Even as US troops drove Johnny Kudzu south of the border there was no way they could drive the weed with them. The US soon found that the weed not only helped break up attacks at the front but, it also made occupying territory just plain difficult. The typical scenario was that a US forward base, such as supply depots and field hospitals, would move onto a patch of ground that looked relatively clear, usually because the ground had been fought over recently and the artillery had destroyed most vegetation. As it turned out, to the army’s chagrin, this only made the ground more inviting to Kudzu, which, now found that even the meager competition from local plants was gone. Within weeks the weed would be back and within a month it would overgrow everything, that the army had set up, if a legion of soldiers were not devoted to hacking it back on a daily basis.

The Confederates did not suffer from this problem since they depended on the weed to camouflage their block houses, rifle pits, and sniper positions, of which, it did all too well. This is how the US Army’s 361^st Combat Engineer Battalion found itself with the one and only dedicated mission of eradicated the Kudzu. It was a tedious and thankless job and made the men of the 361^st the butt of a good many jokes, by other soldiers, particularly when the moniker “The Lost Battalion” finally stuck with them sometime in 1899. It was apparently a reference to a joke about how the unlucky engineers were getting lost in the weeds and, unfortunately for them, it was not far from the literal truth.

Prior to the summer of 1900, the 361^st would be the limit of Fort Lincoln’s willingness to devote resources to combating Kudzu. As they saw it, the weed was a regional problem and hence, the responsibility of XVIII and IX Corps to deal with. Neither unit had the resources to do very much and, indeed, reports written by their staff indicated that they were of the opinion there was nothing they really could do. US troops learned to use Kudzu in a similar fashion as Confederate troops but, the weed was only really beneficial if you were on the defensive. The US Army was tasked with the mission of overwhelming Fort Bragg and capturing Memphis, hardly a defensive operation.

The Lost Battalion attempted every possible solution that was known at the time, for fighting pesky plants. They burned field after field only to discover that the roots were safely underground and the ash made for excellent fertilizer. Then came attempts to get at the roots with explosives. They left nice craters, which turned into little lakes, that thirsty Kudzu seemed to be quite fond of. They were also making the rear area’s look like the front lines and the Corps commanders put a stop to the blasting. The truth was, the 361^st simply did not have enough explosives to get every single root system anyway, so, their early efforts always led them right back to lines of men with giant hacking blades.

Then came some unexpected help from the least likely of places. Charles Lee Reece was a chemist and long time college professor that found himself working back in industry once the war began. The pay was far better and Reece commented that he actually felt like he was doing something important. Specifically, he took a position with the DuPont corporation who, at the time, specialized almost exclusively in making smokeless gun powder, which, was considered a very crucial military technology. It was in this capacity that he had visited the Tennessee Front on any number of occasions and how he came into contact with the Lost Battalion.

After an embarrassing incident in which Reece had mistaken the soldiers as military prisoners because of their appearance and their job, he became somewhat interested in how this could happen. When he was educated on the subject of Kudzu, something he had virtually ignored up till this point, he realized he could be of service. Once returning to Wilmington he quickly tasked several of his chemists to begin researching the subject of using chemicals to kill weeds. Reece had been vaguely aware that this was being tested in Europe and, he was pleased to discover that the US Army Corps of Engineers had actually tried it in the United States.

Not understanding how the military bureaucracy worked, Reece was a little confused as to why the army had not thought to try a chemical approach to removing the weed when they had been treating invasive plant life in waterways for nearly a decade. Then he discovered that, while technically speaking, the CoE was a part of the Army they had little to do with the actual military organization and were primarily civilian. Not wanting to deal with the bureaucracy, any more than he had to, and knowing that DuPont had the capability to produce as much Sodium Arsenite as was needed, Reece took it upon himself to proceed with a field test on no one’s authority but, his own.

The Lost Battalion had no objections when Reece showed up and explained what he wished to do. Their subsequent attempts, at treating the plants with the chemical, had mixed results but, for the time being, they were certainly better results than anything tried before. The 361^st went full steam ahead with their new defoliant and only then did they discover some side effects. There had been no indications that physical ailments would be a problem or, at least, not during the trial runs when only limited amounts were being carefully handled.

When Reece was called back to Tennessee he quickly discovered that the soldiers had largely ignored his instructions on handling the Sodium Arsenite. Many were suffering from blisters, problems with vision, nausea, and a host of symptoms that the army doctors were at a loss to diagnose. Reece did not doubt it was his defoliate and, at that point, he might have given up but, Reece did not see a disaster here. What he saw was an opportunity.

Reece began to ponder the idea of using his defoliate on Confederate soldiers and not just plants. He had big ideas of clearing both the kudzu and the enemy off the battlefield at the same time. The only problem that he saw, with his idea, was that Sodium Arsenite was simply not strong enough to do the job. It was only making men sick and, even then, required prolonged exposure. When Reece returned to his labs he set up yet another research project and, only then, did he learn that his idea was not exactly new.

Many chemists had been proposing the idea of using chemicals as weapons for many years. There proved to be more than an adequate selection of chemicals to use which were readily available and very cheap. Most of the substances in question were a bi product of routine industrial processes, many done at DuPont, and were simply disposed of. The idea had apparently struck some politicians, world wide, as a good one while others were horrified by it. There had even been serious talk, amongst diplomats, of banning the weapons even though they did not yet exist.

Reece was of the opinion that now, with a war raging across the globe, no one would be talking about getting rid of a new, and potentially game changing, weapon. In the first few months of 1900 he turned his academic fact finding mission into an actual testing project. By early 1900 he had amassed a small stock pile of a variety of gasses including chlorine and bromide. All that Reece was lacking was a means of delivering these weapons to the enemy. This is where Reece ran into his biggest problem.

The military, and in particular Chief of Staff General Shafter, was simply not interested in the project and, by some accounts, he was typical of most soldiers who were horrified by the idea and dismissed it out of hand. This did not stop Reece, nor DuPont, who began pulling strings on Capitol Hill and, eventually, even in the White House where John Hay was made aware of the project. Hay thought the idea had some merits but, apparently not enough to authorize any full scale development and deployment. Hay did, however, authorize a small budget that green lit the development of an artillery shell that could deliver the gas.

It would be in the shadows that Reece would work until not long after the Confederate Airships struck at Chicago on January 20^th, 1901. Root’s inauguration to his second term was only two days away and it was clear, to all, that the CSA was letting Root know they could hit him anywhere he went. Chicago had been selected to be the city where the this inauguration would take place and while the administration denied it, the reason for this selection was largely because they thought the city safe.

Root’s anger over the matter put John Hay in something of a predicament since he had assured everyone that the airships could not reach that far north. Root demanded action because no matter how small the damage was, it was making them look weak at a critical moment. Samuel Langley’s airplane seemed little more than a pipe dream at that moment and Root wanted his own big stick. That’s when Hay presented his president with the news of the little project going on down in Delaware. Hay had calculated the timing of this news with the diplomatic skill he was so famous for. Root was enthused and, Reece would get the big budget he wanted along with almost a blank check on any resources he needed. By March, DuPont would be turning out chemical artillery shells by the train car load.