Official Logo for Legacy of our Veterans’ Military Exposures (LOVME)
As a young U.S. Army soldier during World War II, Rollins Edwards knew better than to refuse an assignment.
When officers led him and a dozen others into a wooden gas chamber and locked the door, he didn’t complain. None of them did. Then, a mixture of mustard gas and a similar agent called lewisite was piped inside.
Mustard gas damages DNA within seconds of making contact. It causes painful skin blisters and burns, and it can lead to serious, and sometimes life-threatening illnesses including leukemia, skin cancer, emphysema and asthma.
“It felt like you were on fire,” recalls Edwards, now 93 years old. “Guys started screaming and hollering and trying to break out. And then some of the guys fainted. And finally they opened the door and let us out, and the guys were just, they were in bad shape.”
Edwards was one of 60,000 enlisted men enrolled in a once-secret government program ā formally declassified in 1993 ā to test mustard gas and other chemical agents on American troops. But there was a specific reason he was chosen: Edwards is African-American.
Mustard gas and American race-based human experimentation in World War II.
