Training remained hectic, but the weekend pass regulations on post were softened. The training of the 37,000 men of Fort Lewis, Camp Murray, and McChord Field continued through the autumn. On one such training exercise, the troops made a water-borne assault at Point Defiance Park, with several hundred spectators watching from a stone retaining wall as the doughboys slogged ashore. In September and October, the troops trained in amphibious operations on Puget Sound using motorized wooden whaleboats as landing craft. “Ohio” meant “Over the hill in October,” but October passed with relatively few troops deserting. Isolationists balked but Congress, after a summer-long floor fight, passed the extension by a margin of one vote on 12 August.ĭuring the extension controversy, the anagram “Ohio” became popular on post. The evacuation of the British Army at Dunkirk, the collapse of the French Republic, and the ever-widening area of Nazi rule in Europe were FDR’s reasons for this extension. In April, the initial 2,000-acre North Fort complex was unadorned and unpainted, but it was fully ready for use by August 1941.Īs spring waxed into summer, President Roosevelt asked Congress to extend the call-up by one year. If the training was haphazard, at least the combination of civilian construction crews and Army work details was making real progress on the raising of barracks and training ranges on North Fort Lewis. Poorly equipped, with sticks as rifles, beer cans as grenades, and trucks as tanks, these poorly motivated citizen-soldiers played at their training, awaiting 16 September when their one year call-up would end. In the spring 37,000 troops were in maneuvers on the Nisqually Plain training area. This influx made necessary the hasty construction of an auxiliary training and troop center on the northern part of the Fort Lewis tract. March 1941 saw 11,000 more troops planned for duty at Fort Lewis. Understandably, the troops called it “Swamp Murray.” The tents were connected by asphalt sidewalks to centralized wooden mess halls. The nearly 3,000 tents were given wooden floors and plank side walls to help protect from mud and snow. They were temporarily housed in “winterized” tents at Camp Murray. The 41st Infantry Division, consisting of 12,108 officers and men, most of them Washington National Guardsmen, arrived at Fort Lewis in the fall of 1940. He served as Chief of Staff of the IX Army Corps at Fort Lewis from 1 March 1941 to 24 June 1941, when he went to San Antonio, Texas, to be Chief of Staff of the Third Army. Eisenhower was assigned to the 15th Infantry at Fort Ord, California, in February 1940. General of the Army and President Dwight D. He served with the G-3 staff of the 3d Division and also as division public relations officer. Clark, Chief of Army Field Forces, was stationed here as a major from 1937, when he graduated from the Army War College, until March 1940 when he returned to the War College as an instructor. Two officers who were to become famous World War II generals were stationed at Fort Lewis in 19. With 26,000 regulars, guardsmen, and draftees on post by Christmas, living space became scarce. On 1 July 1940, the post garrison numbered 7,000 men with the arrival of the IX Army Corps from the Presidio of San Francisco and the troop level would increase dramatically after September, when the one-year Selective Service Act came into being. A final prewar (1938-1940) spurt of construction gave Fort Lewis 455 permanent and temporary structures worth fifteen million dollars. Intensive infantry training and frequent field maneuvers were becoming the norm on post. By May 1938, the 3d Infantry Division and Fort Lewis boasted 5,000 men in garrison.
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