FIGURE 5. MUSTARD PROOF SUIT, GLOVES AND BOOTS. COMPLETE PROTECTION AGAINST ALL GASES

FIGURE 4. AMERICAN HORSE MASK

the Long Island Laboratory who doesn't know well the smell of chlorine, chlor-picric, phosgene, diphenylchlorarsine, xylyl bromide and stannous chloride, to name only the commonest gases used in the experiments.

After the reorganization of the Laboratory, Colonel Dewey put me in charge of the "Specification Branch." This department wrote the descriptive specifications under which all materials, both raw and finished, were bought from outside manufacturers or made into finished masks at the Gas Defense Plant. It was the link between the development work of the Laboratory and production by the manufacturers, particularly the Gas Defense Plant.

The Gas Defense Plant alone is worthy of a volume. because of its interest and manufacturing peculiarities, but I'll just hit a few high spots. There were eight thousand employees, mostly women, and a large percentage of these were there to do their war work. They were the wives, sisters, mothers and sweethearts of soldiers in France. They were easily taught the value of careful work, the need for a safe mask. They knew that a bad seam, defective materials or decrease in quantity production might mean the lives of American soldiers. The whole organization was at war in the full sense of the word. A walk through this plant was an inspiring sight; drive and punch were evident everywhere, mixed with well taught care and skill. Every assembly operation was inspected and checked, reinspected and tested by all sorts of special methods to an extent that would be absurd in every day manufacturing, but a defective mask meant an American casualty if it got to the front. You should have heard these mask operators cheer, without missing a stitch or checking their speed, when a visiting French soldier went the rounds of the plant. I heard it once and it was the most genuine yell I've ever heard.

Three new types of good, safe, comfortable masks were in growing production when the armistice was signed. They are known as the A. T. (No. 16 Figure 1), a moulded rubber type designed to be made by the rubber companies; the K. T. (No. 17 Figure 1), a sewed fabric type; and the blue ribbon of all masks, the "Model 1919" (No. 18 Figure 1 and Figure 8). All these masks were without the uncomfortable mouthpiece and nose clip. They were face coverings that relied on a tight, gas proof contact between the edges of the mask and the face.

I have slept through a comfortable night in the Model 1919 mask. A platoon of our men wore them for a week, day and night, except for three half-hour periods each day for meals. They went into gas daily with them, dug trenches, hiked across country, carried shells, and generally "carried on" as we had heard our soldiers did in France.

Besides giving the best protection and being the most comfortable, it was the easiest to make, being blanked by machinery out of stockinette covered rubber. There was only one seam, six inches long.

The proof in this mask's greatness lies in its apparent simplicity. Anyone not knowing the difficulties of gas mask design would wonder how anyone ever thought of any other type of mask. But the invisible details were controlling; for example, the design seemed impossible until one of our lieutenants had the brilliant idea of cutting the eyepiece holes oval instead of round, forcing a round eyepiece into the oval hole and causing the eyepiece to project out from the facepiece, a necessary requirement for good vision, straight shooting, and, above all, comfort.

As to real soldiering, we drilled often both with and without masks, learned to salute, to do "fours right" and "fours left" more or less imperfectly, and to handle small bodies of men, a foundation on which greater knowledge could have been built had the war lasted.

I spent one night in a barrack in the Gas Defense Camp at Lakehurst, New Jersey. That was an occasion! Real, sure enough, big gas clouds were turned loose the next morning, into which a company of the 59th Pioneers from Camp Dix, wearing the new masks, charged "over the top," dug themselves in, advanced by squads, etc., etc. Many officers were to windward as observers with masks at "alert" in case the wind changed. The sentries posted to keep us to windward were too interested to be efficient, so many of us slipped by them and into the gas with our masks on.

The casualties at this test were heavy, but only among the poor goats and guinea pigs, used for the purpose of proving that the gas was really there. You couldn't see the gas unless you got down low and looked up at the sky, which was all a greenishyellow color.

An amusing incident occurred. I was kneeling behind a burly pioneer who had dug himself in deep. General Seibert