How peach pits helped American allies win World War I

What Americans provided soldiers with for defense in World War I was nuts.

Literally.

Dried peach pits, nut shells, cherry seeds and other fruit stones were patriotically deposited into receptacles set up inside grocery stores, schools and department stores during a nationwide nut-gathering campaign in 1918.

“Not one should be thrown away, even if the pockets may get a little mussed up sometimes,” a reporter wrote in the Oct. 20, 1918 edition of The Macon Daily Telegraph. “Every woman, man and child can help protect our soldiers from the horrors of poisonous gas.”

Nuts and fruit pits were dried and shipped to a carbon plant where machinery ground up the bits and the material was distilled to uniform-sized carbon pieces that looked similar to black explosive powder. The powder was shipped in 225-pound drums to the Gas Defense Plant New York, where factory workers assembled gas masks, according to “The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field,” a book on military history.

The first masks were shipped to soldiers overseas in January 1918, about three years after German forces introduced poison gas to warfare.

Gas masks were new to the U.S. Army, which was challenged with obtaining sufficient charcoal for the gas mask canisters. For a while, according to the book, the War Department looked to India and the Philippine Islands to obtain coconut shells, but the process took too long so the department began exploring alternatives to coconuts.

Scientists learned then that olive pits, apricot pits, date seeds and hickory nut shells also could be used to make the charcoal.

Georgia Gov. Hugh Dorsey proclaimed Nov. 16 as “Gas Mask Day,” and all counties were expected to participate in a “nutshell drive.”

The Telegraph also began printing, in the upper corners of the first page of each edition, a reminder for folks to “do your bit, save a pit.”

The campaign faded when the war ended on Nov. 11, 1918, and the gas mask factory was shut down the following year.

This story was originally published November 12, 2018 at 4:57 PM.