Unprepared for the rising, nightmarish risk of biological warfare

As D-Day drew near, Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army chief of staff, dispatched a messenger to Gen.

Dwight D. Eisenhower in London. Eisenhower was instructed to meet alone with the messenger, a mere major.



Part of the secret Operation Peppermint, he was a specialist in radiological poisons. Washington worried that Germany might use, as a defensive weapon, radioactive residues from small nuclear reactions to contaminate large areas, such as Normandy’s beaches. Neither seen nor smelled, the residues could disable, even kill, troops.

.