Interesting Facts About Camp Atterbury in Indiana:
A History of Camp Atterbury:
From: http://www.indianamilitary.org
Three traveling ministers, preaching fire and brimstone, came to the little town of Mt. Pisgah, Johnson County, Indiana, in 1902. One member of the congregation recorded this excerpt from a sermon: "The time will come when not a house or farm shall be left standing in these parts and your lands shall be a place of desolation."
Forty years later, the site of Mt. Pisgah was the center of Camp Atterbury, and its sister community of Kansas, Indiana, had become a ghost-town before the fast rising yellow structures of an Army Camp.
The bitter shock of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor lingered in the hearts of millions of Americans, but America's entry into World War II brought many changes in the lives of this small group of Indiana farmers who were asked to give up homes and farms, many of which had been in the family more than a hundred years.
The Army's announcement that a training camp large enough to house 30,000 men would be built, came from Washington on 6 January 1942 -less than a month after entry into World War II.
The Army moved swiftly to start construction of the camp, and by April, 1942, more than 15,000 civilian workers were employed. The camp was built on the northern part of more than 40,000 acres of land purchased from farmers in Johnson, Bartholomew, and Brown counties. Throughout the Spring of 1942, it rained almost continuously and a sea of mud confronted the builders.
COL Welton Modisette, Post Commander from the time of construction until late in 1945 -says that his memories of arrival are most vivid. "I arrived late in May when construction was still going on. I had never seen anything like it and never have since! My car sank in the mire and I had to walk from the outskirts to the heart of the Camp to introduce myself. A day later I got my car out."
The new post was named for Hoosier Brigadier General William Wallace Atterbury, the famed World War I military transportation expert, and later President of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Inevitably civilians building the camp, and later soldiers, took the cue and nicknamed it "Mud-Berry."
"THE WORLD WAR II YEARS"
Six months after construction started, soldiers began pouring into the Camp. No official dedication took place, to mark the opening of the approximately $86,000,000 Camp, but on August 15, 1942, the 83rd Infantry Division was activated and the Camp was thrown open to visitors. More than 25,000 Hoosiers watched the colorful ceremonies and inspected the Camp and its facilities that day.
According to most military men, however, a base is born on the day it's headquarters is set up and the first numbered Order is written. Atterbury's first special Order rolled off a mimeograph machine on 2 June 1942, in a headquarters, set up in a red brick house, located on Hospital Road and formerly the home of Mr. Dale Parmalee, a local farmer.
The 83rd "Thunderbolt" Division, commanded by Major General (later Lt. General retired) Frank W. Milburn of Jasper, Indiana, was the first of three divisions to receive training at Camp Atterbury during World War II. In April, 1944, they departed for overseas and fought in France, Luxembourg, and Germany.
The 92d Division, second to arrive for training, 15 October 1942, was composed of black troops and eventually deployed to the Mediterranean Theater, participating in the Italian Campaigns.
The "Old Hickory" 30th Division was the third to arrive for training. They arrived on 7 November 1943, and departed for England in January, 1944. The 106th "Golden Lion" Division was the last big unit to receive its training at Camp Atterbury during World War II. They spent nearly eight months in training and left for England in October 1944, for another brief period of training. The 106th took a position on a "quiet" sector in France on 11 December 1944. A few days later the Germans, led by General Von Rundstedt, made their final desperate bid for victory. The "Golden Lions" took the brunt of the attack, in the Battle of the Bulge, and suffered 8,663 casualties in a period of less than a month.
During World War II, more than 100 units, nearly 275,000 men received their training at Camp Atterbury, and thousands more, who received their initial training elsewhere, were sent here for advanced training.
Passing through the rows upon rows of deserted barracks, it is hard to visualize the bustling camp as it once was. Movie theaters, restaurants, churches serving all denominations, gymnasiums, service clubs, barber shops, a huge hospital, libraries, laundries, bakeries, a dial telephone system, inter-camp bus lines -all were here.
The camp’s hospital, Wakeman General Hospital, was named in honor of COL Frank Wakeman, a Hoosier educated Army Doctor.
The 9,000 bed hospital, one of the largest of its kind in the nation, treated more than 85,000 patients during World War II and was one of the Army's plastic surgery centers.
The base also served as an internment camp for approximately 15,000 Italian and German prisoners of war. They were housed in a large compound located on the extreme western edge of camp. Many of them left the POW compound during the day to work on nearby farms and in canneries in Southern Indiana. Symbolic of these captured prisoners, is a place of worship aptly named "The Chapel in the Meadow" located about a mile from the Post Stockade. It is a building, 12 x 18 feet, of poured concrete. Inside the Chapel is an altar and a coating of red paint, in lieu of carpet, leads in from the open front. The Madonna, Angels, St. Anthony, and the Dove of Peace were painted, in fresco style, into wet plaster by Italian prisoner artisens. Barbed wire has been strung around the Chapel to protect it from animals. The German-American and Italian-American clubs of Indianapolis are making plans to preserve the Chapel and to hold yearly memorial services in honor of the 19 Germans and Italians who were in the Atterbury Cemetery. The remains of these POWs have since been moved to the National Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois.
