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fromSome Past Arms, Present Locations (2020)

Michael Ceraolo

“NOW WE KNOW WHAT
THOSE BEN HUR
BOYS are Doing
Most Powerful of Gas Being
Manufactured Here”

read
a late-July 1918 headline,
referring
to the abandoned Ben Hur Motor Plant
in Willoughby
And what they were doing
was manufacturing lewisite,
a chemical weapon colloquially called
the dew of death
(though
that may just have been hype),
for

use in the planned March 1919 offensive
that didn’t happen because of the war’s end

Today the site has a water tower
advertising De Milta Iron & Metal,
along
with some barbed-wired-topped fencing
and some earth mounds high enough
not only to keep people out,
but

also to keep them from seeing in

And
a century later no one knows
how much lewisite was produced,
or

what became of it:

was it buried on-site?

was it dumped into Lake Erie?

was it transported elsewhere and dumped?

some combination of these?

or some other disposition entirely?——

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