Chester Smith

 

Colonel (Ret.) Chester Smith

C.C. Smith, a native of Morristown, graduated from ETSU with a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1964 and was commissioned as a U.S. Army second lieutenant through the ETSU ROTC program.

A platoon leader with the 25th Chemical Company in South Korea, he returned to the U.S. in 1966.

As a newly minted captain, he was sent to Vietnam with the first shipment of gravel antipersonnel mines.

After attending the Chemical Officers Advanced Course, he was assigned to command ordnance companies in Germany before being named chief of an instruction branch at the Chemical School at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
Next, he was selected to go to the Kingdom of Jordan to help establish a chemical school and nuclear, biological and chemical defense program, a task he repeated the next year in Portugal.

A tour as commander of the 267th Chemical Company on Johnston Atoll followed.

Before his retirement in 1993, he also served in London, England and as chief of the Chemical Defense Section in the Pentagon.