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      This route went directly through the Camp and proved ideal for the Army as the line had been designed to transport heavy log loads thus, it was well suited for the transportation of men and heavy military equipment.

      Whether arriving at the Post via truck or train both Orin and Ed were met by noncommissioned officers who divided the new arrivals into platoons and marched or as Ed described it, “ . . . they tried to get us into columns . . . but with little success so we went as a herd  . . . ”to their respective units.

      Chris Hald’s arrival was a little less confusing but only because he had some control over it.  He had graduated from the Army Officers Candidate School at Ft. Benning, Georgia after receiving 90 days of officer training and now was assigned as a platoon leader at White.  He arrived in Medford a day before he had to report so he took advantage of this time to become familiar with the area.  The next day, he and a couple of other officers took a taxi to the Post and reported to the 91^st Division Headquarters.

      By truck, train, or taxi, the first glimpse that new arrivals had of Camp White would have been an impressive one.  The main post stretched for more than three miles east to west, and almost a mile in width north to south.  Approaching from the south, soldiers would have seen the east/west expanse but could only assume that the north/south distance was the same, as the width of the Post was obscured by several building.  Two large parade grounds located on either side of the Camp could be seen between the barracks buildings.  There were neither lawns nor trees, just dirt and rock broken up by asphalt streets.

      Chris Hald described the Camp as consisting of  “. . . black topped streets to which abutted rows and rows of barracks on each side of a huge parade ground . . . on the west side of the Camp we could see rows of warehouses and beyond them, a duplicate of the east side of the Camp.”  There was a larger concentration of buildings on the eastern half of the Post as opposed to the western.  The difference in design had to do with training.  The eastern portion of the Camp was built to train an entire division thus the buildings were constructed so that each regiment had its own area.  On the western portion of the Post, the design was changed to house smaller units of company and battalion size.  Here, the 240, 241, 242 Field Artillery Battalions, the 299^th and 300 Combat Engineer Battalions and the 14^th Cavalry Group along with other smaller units were housed.

      The book The Corps of Engineers Construction in the United States describes WWII cantonments as designed around the infantry company which consisted of 217 men.  Posts were “. . . laid out . . . in blocks . . . of four . . . barracks plus a mess hall, a recreation building, and a supply room of appropriate size . . .”  At Camp White these groups were arranged  into rectangular formations of 17 building with ends facing each other.  (As of this writing I have not been able to identify the purpose of the 17^th building but I believe it may have been the bachelor officers’ quarters)  Perpendicular between the barracks ends were the mess halls, supply rooms, and orderly rooms.  This area was designed so that sufficient space was allowed for companies to form up before marching onto the parade field

      This pattern of construction soon recognized each company commander as the CEO of a self-sufficient military unit and served throughout the war as one of the most versatile in Army’s arsenal of tactical elements.

      Although other portions of the Post were designed to meet the needs of artillery and armor cavalry units, those structures surrounding the eastern parade ground were built for the WWII triangular division.  These buildings were furnished with the basics; desks, typewriters, beds, file cabinets, pots, pans, etc. which were normally part of the facility and would remain in the complex as the units completed their training and moved to their respective assignments.  By 1945, these items would serve as the ghosts of units who had trained and left Camp White.  They would set idle when the base was closed and would later become part of the surplus property sold at the conclusion of the conflict. 

      Day or night, those first few hours for new enlisted arrivals were somewhat confusing.  The barracks were two stories wooden framed with open bays on either floor, and small rooms at one end for a platoon sergeant and squad leaders.  The exteriors were painted olive drab (Army green) with green asphalt composition roofs.  Each floor was designed to hold two squads with each building housing one platoon.  The Army series 700 and 800 buildings allowed 50 feet of floor space and 450 cubic feet of air space per man.  Later, as the needs of the War increased, beds were bunked, thus allowing one platoon to occupy each floor with space reduced to 40 and 375 feet respectively.  Heat was provided by a coal fired furnace. Bathrooms were located on the first floor and consisted of eight to twelve showers, eight to twelve toilets and the same number of sinks.

      After arriving at their new homes, enlisted personnel were directed to store their equipment, make their beds, and either go to bed if they had arrived late at night, or be prepared to fall out and meet their new command staff.   Ed Walsh described the area given to each recruit as limited to a bed, foot locker and shelf attached to the wall with a clothes rod for uniforms just below it.  Items on the shelf, hanging from the rod or placed in the foot locker had to be displayed or stored uniformly.  Left sleeves were to face out displaying the patch; pants, shirts, and coats were hung in a certain order.  Ed further described his first day as most unusual when after lunch the new recruits were directed to return to their barracks, undress and fall out wearing only their rain coats and shoes.  They were directed to the day room area where to the relief of the new trainees, a Doctor was waiting to complete more of the never-ending medical processing.  Welcome to Basic training.

      Chris Hald related an unusual incident during this portion of in processing when one of his N.C.O.’s asked him to look at a bed one of the new inductees had made up.  Chris noticed that the bed was stretched so tight that he could bounce a quarter on it.  Further investigation revealed that the enlistee was somewhat older than the rest so Chris began to make some inquiries.   The new recruit explained that he had been an officer in World War I and had never resigned his commission.  Chris, now faced with a dilemma, quickly contacted Regimental Headquarters staff and the problem was resolved.  Lt. Hald was given a set of Captains bars and told to present them to the enlisted man

      He was first reminded to do so with the utmost of courtesy as this new inductee actually outranked Lt. Hald.  Chris completed his assigned tasked and helped the new Captain relocate his belonging to more suitable quarters.  The Captain was later assigned to an air defense unit.

      Officers were housed in bachelor offices quarters (BOQ’s) which were designed the same as the enlisted barracks with the exception that each officer had his own room.  They shared a common bathroom and shower.

      The Camp consisted of not only barracks but mess halls, movie theaters, enlisted and officer clubs, P.X.’s, orderly and supply rooms, Division and Post Headquarters, Chapels, a fourteen hundred bed hospital and numerous other types of structures.  A total of more than thirteen hundred buildings that had been constructed in six months.  The direction for the use these facilities were given to the new recruits after they had settled in.  Ed Walsh describes one such occasion when all the new personnel had settled into a theater just after a rain shower.  He stated “One thing about the theaters, the smell of moth balls . . .  500 guys in the theater in their wet overcoats, it smelled like the place was being fumigated!”

      The Post would continue to grow and as Roy Livengood described in his book Thunder in the Apennines, young men from all over the United States would continue to arrive.  “. . . bewildered . . . confused with the strange new life they had just entered.  Tired train crews brought in the long troop trains, the whistles sounding eerily throughout the countryside and the steam hissing from the old cowcatcher engines.  Day after day they came into the city of Medford, pulling noisily into the Southern Pacific Railroad station at North 5^th and Front Streets.  Many of the recruits unloaded there; it didn’t matter, the process was the same for everyone struggling with the unwieldy barracks bags and answering the shouts of the noncoms.”

      Arrival at Camp White as described by Roy, meant more “. . . bewilderment, the men again fell into line and were assigned a guide who wore a large number on his chest and who was as confused as all the rest.  As far as the eye could see the two-storied barracks stretched in a consistent pattern, block after block.  As the roll was called, the recruits peeled off from each column to join a company which was to become their permanent home; within these units, they would lose all individuality and would become the anonymous GI – the infantryman, the artilleryman, the signalman, the engineer . . . and none of the men, not even in their wildest dreams, could comprehend how their lives would change nor could they imagine the events that were to follow in the coming months, nor could they know how those events would continue to haunt them all the days of their lives.”

      As I mentioned previously, I will be writing several articles about training at Camp White over the next several months.  For those readers who may have stories about training you would like to share or descriptions of the buildings at the Post, i.e. movie theaters, P.X.’s, chapels, recreational halls, gymnasiums etc, please forward them to me via e-mail or the Camp White Historical Association.  

Next issue - Basic Training Begins

Del Hussey

Camp White Historian