On January 7, 1993, an alarming headline greeted readers of The Washington Post: “25 HOUSES EVACUATED AS WWI SHELLS EXAMINED.” The previous day, a backhoe operator digging a trench in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest Washington had uncovered a suspicious object. The construction company called the D.C. Fire Department… who called the police… who called the bomb squad. Within hours, 25 homes in the upscale neighborhood had been temporarily evacuated as munitions crews from the Army Technical Escort Unit at Aberdeen Proving Grounds investigated. Their verdict? The objects were unexploded mortar and artillery shells – and there might be more in the area.
The neighborhood, long a popular spot for leaders of government to reside, was rattled in the wake of the discovery, which awakened the ghosts of World War I and an old agreement between American University and the United States Army.
The year was 1916, and the Great War had raged on for nearly two years, with multiple countries involved in its conflicts. While the United States had managed to avoid becoming directly involved, the rising tensions made that option less and less viable as time went on. Even before President Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany in April 1917, the stories rising out of the European trenches caused major concern. A new weapon had been introduced into the battlefields: chemical gases.
Though first researched by the French, the Germans had been the first to put chemical gases into action during the war in 1915. The attacks were “the first major escalation of gas warfare and the start of the conflict’s chemical arms race,” according to writer Theo Emery. Indeed, after seeing the harmful effects of what the gases could do – burning, blisters, respiratory damage, blindness, death – other nations hurried to understand what they were coming up against and looked to develop devastating chemical weapons of their own.
With the United States getting closer to war, their interest in chemical gases meant not only developing new technology, but also testing it in order to make sure it worked. Wanting to keep every scientist and employee in one area, the Army decided to make Washington D.C. its center of activity. It was, after all, the mainframe for the nation’s war effort.
But, while theoretically convenient, finding a place to actually conduct the experiments proved challenging. The Army needed a site that was large enough for testing and, at the same time, away from the public. After all, if the tests were successful, they could put anyone in close proximity in danger. In a city like Washington, it was a difficult needle to thread.