Written By: Command Sergeant Major James H. Clifford, USA-Ret.
In 1913, the U.S. Army began a military training camp program which brought young male volunteers together each summer for four weeks of military training without an obligation of service. Just when this program was gaining momentum, World War I broke out in Europe, spawning a spontaneous reaction nationwide which became known as the Plattsburg Movement and the creation of an association of influential camp alumni called the Military Training Camp Association (MTCA). MTCA lobbied Congress to expand the training camp program to take advantage of its popularity, which it did for the summers of 1916 and 1917.
The declaration of war on 6 April 1917 put the training camp idea on hold in favor of actual conscription and mustering of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). As a result, the Army transformed several small camps located all over the country, originally designed to function for a few weeks each summer, into full-scale military installations. The Army established dozens of new camps virtually overnight. One of these was Camp Gordon, Georgia. Named in honor of John B. Gordon, Georgia native, Confederate general, governor, and U.S. Senator, the camp was located in the Silver Lake area of DeKalb County, near the town of Chamblee, approximately a dozen miles north of Atlanta.
On a site selected by Major General Leonard Wood, the largest temporary training camp in the South was built in just five months by Lockwood-Greene & Company under the supervision of Major J.N. Pease of the Quartermaster Corps. At that time, it was the largest construction project in Atlanta’s history. When finished, the post sat on 2,400 acres (two square miles) and consisted of over 1,600 buildings, with barracks space for nearly 47,000 men and corrals for 7,600 horses and mules. As with all military installations, the local area reaped benefits from its existence. As soon as Camp Gordon rose from where dairy farms previously stood, the town of Chamblee added forty new stores, two hotels, three theaters, and a bowling alley to serve soldiers.
As soon as it opened, a cadre of officers arrived on post in preparation for receiving the thousands of would-be soldiers coming in, mostly from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. Most of the field grade officers were from the Regular Army, with the company officers being recent graduates of the first officer training camp at Fort McPherson in Atlanta. A small number of noncommissioned officers from the 6th and 17th Infantry Regiments were added to the cadre. These soldiers and officers together formed the 82d Division under the command of Major General Eben Swift, who commanded the division from August to November 1917 and was then followed in quick succession by Brigadier General James E. Ervin and then Brigadier General William P. Burnham.
The 82d, which would become one of the most storied formations in the Army, trained on Camp Gordon from August 1917 to April 1918, when it became the eighth American division deployed to France. Within the first six weeks of training, the 82d was rocked by an unexpected War Department order transferring all the enlisted soldiers, less 783 men, to National Guard units of the 31st Division. These men were quickly replaced by an influx of soldiers from Camps Dix, Devens, Upton, Lee, and Meade. In all, some 28,000 new men arrived at Camp Gordon by 1 November. Approximately twenty percent of these were foreign-born men who spoke little or no English. Thus the 82d was burdened with the additional task of teaching English to over 5,000 men.
Concerns about espionage were high. Suspicious cases were transferred into the 157th Depot Brigade—the contemporary version of a garrison command—where they could be segregated from training and closely watched. Over 1,400 were discharged as admitted or suspected enemy aliens. The division also lost 3,000 men deemed as specialists in such areas as plumbing and carpentry due to their peacetime occupations. These losses were replaced by a fresh influx of 5,000 men from other camps and new draftees from Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. Initial training of the 82d was limited to road marching and organizational singing.
Real military equipment arrived slowly to Camp Gordon, but the soldiers made do with what was available. Early military ceremonies were marked by soldiers carrying wooden rifles until they were issued the Model 1917 Eddystone .30-06 rifle, which soldiers of the 82d learned how to use at the divisional rifle range established in nearby Norcross. Training soon moved on to offensive operations and trench warfare taught by several French and English officers who came to Camp Gordon to assist the 82d. The arms shortage constrained the division’s ability to train everyone on all the weaponry.
However, some soldiers learned how to use foreign made weapons such as the Chauchat light machine gun at the divisional automatic weapons school. Machine gun companies were issued Colt machine guns, although they were never used in combat. A few officers and noncommissioned officers were selected to train at the division hand grenade school, which meant that they each got to throw a few grenades. Rifles and grenades were not the only weapons in short supply. The division mortar platoons never saw the 3-inch Stokes mortar they would use in Europe. The 37mm gun platoons received just one gun apiece just a few weeks before training ended.
The artillery units of the 82d did receive sufficient supplies of ammunition. They fired thousands of rounds from their 3-inch guns at a nearby range, the precise location of which is unknown as records are believed to have been destroyed in the 1950s. Contemporary newspaper stories and government reports indicate that the range existed on approximately 6,000 acres of land on the west half of Blackjack Mountain, one mile east of Marietta in Cobb County. In the early 1990s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) investigated the site as a Formerly Used Defense Site (FUDS) where possible unexploded ordnance (UXO) might have been located. There was one report of a possible 3-inch round being found in the area during the 1970s, but no evidence of any other UXO was found by USACE. Today the area is well developed with no evidence that an artillery range ever existed there.
One of the most feared and misunderstood aspects of World War I was the use of chemicals. Army training on the subject was rudimentary at best, but Camp Gordon had an up-to-date gas house to familiarize soldiers with what they would experience in Europe. Every soldier passing through Camp Gordon was required to visit the gas house where he would remove his mask to experience a light concentration of chlorine and lachrymose gas. It was hoped that this experience would minimize the possibility of panic on the battlefield when soldiers were exposed to enemy gas attacks. Overall, training at Camp Gordon was rudimentary and rushed. Raw troops, fresh from the cities and farms of America, were trained by a cadre with only slightly more experience themselves. As hurried as it may have been, the troops were imbued with the requisite amount of combat skills and discipline as required by Army regulations by the time they shipped out for France.
Life at Camp Gordon probably resembled that of most every other camp. Fortunately, one soldier’s regular correspondence to family and friends leaves us with a picture of camp life. The letters of Walter M. Renfro are maintained in the Georgia State Archives in Forest Park in a bound volume donated by his family. Renfro, from Springfield, Illinois, was assigned to the 307th Field Signal Battalion. Apparently Renfro had no paper of his own as his early letters were written on advertisements for Chicago AA Portland Cement and paper from the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Jewish Progressive Club, and the Knights of Columbus.
His first letters from Camp Gordon were dated in October 1917 and relayed initial impressions of a huge, confusing place that had “too many roads” and “all kinds of electric lights” and where “all the buildings looked alike.” He reported that, early on, there was no hot water. Like soldiers of several generations, he took photographs to send home, having them developed in Atlanta. A prized possession was Renfro’s watch, a rare possession among the soldiers at Camp Gordon. He was proud of the status it bestowed and once mentioned in a letter home that “nearly anyone of any importance has one.” On the weekends, he was allowed to leave camp to explore Atlanta and DeKalb County. He frequently went to church at the “KC Hall” about two miles from Camp Gordon, sampled the local fare at restaurants and private homes, and socialized with folks in the neighborhood.
Renfro’s descriptions reveal much about life on Camp Gordon but little about the training that took place there. However, he did express an interesting opinion about whether one should enlist or await conscription. In one letter, he encouraged those back home to enlist rather than await the draft. Enlisting, he counseled, was preferable because being drafted “takes all the glamour off your patriotism.”
Whenever large numbers of troops come together, issues of health and disease are paramount. Army Surgeon General William C. Gorgas instructed Major Edward C. Davis of the Medical Reserve Corps to establish a hospital and recruit medical professionals to staff it.
Base Hospital Number 3 was established on 30 August 1917 at Camp Gordon. Getting the facility fully up and running took months, but in the end, it had 500 beds and a staff of twenty-four officers, sixty-five nurses, 154 enlisted soldiers, and six civilians. Since almost the entire staff came from Emory University, it became known simply as the Emory Unit. After a time of training and operations, the hospital would see service in Europe. While the 82d was at Camp Gordon, the overall health of the camp was good, according to Division Surgeon Lieutenant Colonel Frederick G. Barfield. Division medical personnel instructed soldiers on hygiene and sanitation and administered inoculations against typhoid and smallpox. Barfield reported some cases of mumps, measles, pneumonia, and a few cases of meningitis, but nothing resembling an epidemic. It may not have been in epidemic proportions, but in December, a measles outbreak occurred at Camp Gordon. Walter Renfro reported that thirty-two in his company were hospitalized.
In late 1918, the world was gripped by a pandemic of the Spanish influenza (also known as the Spanish Lady). The flu hit Camp Gordon in early October. On 2 October, there were 138 soldiers hospitalized, ten of whom would die. The Atlanta area was gripped in the panic of the epidemic. Schools, theaters, libraries, and churches closed. After just a few weeks, the pandemic, which lasted eighteen months worldwide, ran its course in the Atlanta area. Forty million people died throughout the world, with 675,000 of those in the U.S. The death toll in Atlanta, however, was relatively low, with 750 dead. Several celebrities or soon-to-be celebrities trained at Camp Gordon.
The most famous was an unassuming soldier from Tennessee named Alvin York. History sometimes records that York was a conscientious objector, but that is not exactly true. York, an elder in his church, was against the war, but he honored his draft notice. As he explained it, “There were two reasons why I didn’t want to go to war. My own experience told me it wasn’t right, and the Bible was against it too…but Uncle Sam said he wanted me, and I had been brought up to believe in my country.” On 16 November 1917, York arrived at Camp Gordon for training with the 82d Division. Assigned to the 21st Training Battalion, he learned how to march, mastered close-order drill, and performed the same menial tasks as all junior enlisted soldiers throughout history. He missed his native Tennessee terribly. At night, he would often step out under the stars where the quiet and shadows reminded him of the hills and woods of his home.
On 1 February 1918, York was assigned to Company G, 328th Infantry Regiment. For the next several weeks, he easily mastered soldier skills, especially marksmanship, which he learned as a boy in the Tennessee woods. After a ten-day leave in March, spent conducting a revival meeting at home, he returned to Camp Gordon. He left the camp on 19 April 1918 as just another anonymous soldier of the 82d Division. No one would have guessed it at the time, but by the time he returned home, he was of the the most decorated and one of the most famous American soldiers in U.S. Army history.
Another celebrity of Camp Gordon was the author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Already an accomplished playwright and budding novelist, Fitzgerald gained a commission as a second lieutenant in October 1917. He served short stints in Kansas, Kentucky, Alabama, and New York, in addition to Camp Gordon, from April to June 1918. The war ended before Fitzgerald could join the AEF, but he did have enough time to write the novel The Romantic Egotist while in the service of his country. The book was rejected by publishers, but a reworked version was later accepted under the title This Side of Paradise.
Ragtime composer and musician Roy F. Bargy attended the officer training school at Camp Gordon. He arrived just after the end of the Spanish influenza epidemic and was still in training when the war ended a few weeks later. His military career came to an unceremonious end on 1 December 1918 after just eight months in uniform. Unfortunately, even in times of great stress, racism can distract from the mission at hand. Such was the case in World War I when black soldiers were frequently prohibited from assignment on the same installations as whites. Nevertheless, approximately 9,000 black soldiers served at Camp Gordon.
The armistice of 11 November 1918 ended World War I and, with it, the need for so many training camps. The government moved quickly to divest itself of so much property. Almost as fast as it was built, Camp Gordon was dismantled. Property was sold at public auction, with much of it snatched up cheaply by real estate developer T. R. Satwell to parcel out as farms. A group of local aviation enthusiasts prevailed upon Satwell to reserve 300 acres for an airport. Eventually DeKalb County acquired that land to establish a county airport.
In the years between the World Wars, the Navy occupied a small portion of the county airport as a Naval Reserve training base. After World War II erupted, the Navy leased the entire airport for $18,000 per year. In 1942, the airport was designated a naval air station and became a major flight training site during the war. Several celebrities of the day trained there, such as Tyrone Power, Robert Power, and Wayne Morris. After the war, it became Naval Air Station Atlanta. Control of the airport reverted back to DeKalb County in 1958 when NAS Atlanta moved to Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta.
Additionally, Lawson Veterans Hospital occupied portions of the former Camp Gordon site. During World War II, this hospital was a premier facility for training amputees in the use of prosthetics. Harold Russell, a sergeant in the 13th Airborne Division during World War II, lost both hands during a stateside demolition accident and learned to use “Boston” arms at Lawson. Later, his story was turned into the training film, Diary of a Sergeant. This led to a role for Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives, for which he won two Oscars; one as best supporting actor and an honorary award for “bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans.”
Today, the former Camp Gordon is the site of the second busiest airport in Georgia, the DeKalb/Peachtree Airport. Personal and corporate aircraft come and go there every day. The dairy farms have been replaced by commerce, industry, and urban bustle. It is a good bet that most of those coming and going through the airport, or making a living in the nearby businesses, are unaware of the important role the area played in the defense of this nation during World War I, World War II, and the Korean War as an Army post, naval air station, and veterans hospital. In 1988, the state placed a historical marker near the entrance to the airport to designate the site. Other than that there is nothing left of Camp Gordon except memories.
