Camp Blanding 2

There's actually a bit on the history of Camp Blanding in the last post.  You might have to click on the section of written text to bring it up in a bigger window, but it's there.  Some things did get left out though, or to be more precise, had yet to happen when this postcard folder was published.

For instance, during the war, the War department leased 140,00 additional acres from local land owners.  At it's peak, Camp Blanding had 1,000 buildings, 125 miles of paved roads and was the fourth largest community in Florida.  The Camp was both an induction center, and an infantry replacement center.  I've always wondered how future replacements felt while they were being trained.  They must have known that they were being prepared to take the place of the wounded and the dead.  Camp Blanding was also a POW camp for German soldiers as well as an internment camp for 343 German, Japanese and Italian civilians who had been living in the United States at the beginning of the war.  While under the jurisdiction of the War Department, more than 800,000 trainees spent some time at Camp Blanding.  And finally, after the war, it was returned to Florida for use by that state's National Guard.  The original 30,000 acres from before the war.