text: Arthur W. Thomas, then an instructor in Food Chemistry at Columbia University, volunteered for military service in the spring of 1917 and was mustered in as a First Lieutenant in the newly formed Sanitary Corps in the U.S. National Army in September 1917.  He was assigned to the Food and Nutrition Section or Division of the Sanitary Corps under the command of the Surgeon General. Thomas took part in food surveys at army cantonments in the Northeast and also served in the Office of the Surgeon General in Washington. The officers in the Food and Nutrition Section included those who in civilian life were professors in chemistry and biochemistry.
  In January 1918 Thomas was promoted  to captain;  In March 1918 he was sent to England where he participated in food surveys at US Army cantonments in southern England.
  From April 1918 to June 1919 Thomas served in France where he was stationed  in Base Section No. 1 in the northwest, in the front lines with the 26th (Yankee) and 89th (Middle West) Divisions in the Toul sector, and at the  Sanitary Corps laboratory station at Dijon where he worked with other offices in the updating of army food rations. In the summer of 1918 he also gave instruction at the Second Army Corps school. In June 1919 he was involved in inspections of the adequacies of ship bakeries and galleys of three dozen Army and Navy troop transports returning thousands of men to America.