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WORLD WAR I TRAINING CAMPS

WORLD WAR I TRAINING CAMPS. To build the camps and cantonments required to train U.S. National Guard and National Army divisions during WORLD WAR I, the federal government created the construction division of the army in May 1917. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker ordered the building of sixteen wood-frame cantonments and sixteen NATIONAL GUARD camps, where troops would be quartered in hastily erected tents with wood floors, with wooden buildings for kitchens and mess halls.

Each National Army cantonment contained, in addition to the barracks, quarters, and administration buildings, a hospital, warehouses, railroad tracks, target range, and, in many cases, a power station. Each cantonment could accommodate a "Pershing" division, approximately 28,000 men. By 1 September 1917, the thirty-two construction projects were housing troops. Contractors, taking advantage of a special wartime contract system, employed as many as 200,000 civilians to assemble the camps.

National Army cantonments built were Custer (Battle Creek, Michigan), Devens (Ayer, Massachusetts), Dodge (Des Moines, Iowa), Dix (Wrightstown, New Jersey), Funston (Fort Riley, Kansas), Gordon (Atlanta, Georgia), Grant (Rockford, Illinois), Jackson (Columbia, South Carolina), Lee (Petersburg, Virginia), Lewis (American Lake, Washington), Meade (Admiral, Maryland), Pike (Little Rock, Arkansas), Sherman (Chillicothe, Ohio), Taylor (Louisville, Kentucky), Travis (San Antonio, Texas), and Upton (Yaphank, Long Island, New York).

National Guard camps built were Beauregard (Alexandria, Louisiana), Bowie (Fort Worth, Texas), Cody (Deming, New Mexico), Doniphan (Fort Sill, Oklahoma), Frémont (Palo Alto, California), Green (Charlotte, North Carolina), Hancock (Augusta, Georgia), Kearney (Linda Vista, California), Logan (Houston, Texas), MacArthur (Waco, Texas), McClellan (Anniston, Alabama), Sevier (Greenville, South Carolina), Shelby (Hattiesburg, Mississippi), Sheridan (Montgomery, Alabama), Wadsworth (Spartanburg, South Carolina), and Wheeler (Macon, Georgia).

After the war, the government salvaged a vast quantity of material and sold the remaining installations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hunt, Frazier. Blown in by the Draft: Camp Yarns Collected at One of the Great National Army Cantonments by an Amateur War Correspondent. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1918.

Robert S. Thomas/ A. R.

See also Army, United States; Mobilization.