Camp Blanding

 

There's no name or date on this portrait, but because of the sepia style, I'm guessing it's from the World War 2 era.  Anytime I see a war era, any war, photo of a soldier, I always wonder if they came back.  And not just alive.  Did they come back physically and emotionally whole?  

It doesn't really read on the scan, but there's an embossed credit on the lower right corner.  "Portraits by White, CAMP BLANDING, FLORIDA."  Stamped on the back, "FROM WHITES PHOTO STUDIO MAIN P.X. CAMP BLANDING, FLA."  

There's a fair amount about the history of Camp Blanding online. I'm not going into a great deal of detail, but an overview.  Camp Blanding opened in 1939 as the main training center for the Florida National Guard.  During World War 2, Camp Blanding was used for the training of nine different infantry divisions, as well as one parachute division.  It was also a POW camp for captured German soldiers.  For a while, there were so many soldiers stationed at Camp Blanding that it was the fourth-largest city in the state, with over 10,000 buildings and 125 miles of paved roads.  I wasn't able to find anything about White's Photo Studio.  My best guess is that he was a professional studio photographer in nearby Starke, Florida.  

Camp Blanding 4

I know it looks like I've got a duplicate from the last post, but not really.  The hospital area card is in the folder twice.  Was that supposed to make the folks back home feel good that there was a large hospital area, or was it a reminder that in war, people are going to get hurt?  This is the last of the Camp Blanding images, but there are still more from the military memorabilia envelope to come.

Camp Blanding 3

I know, I know.  The Greetings from Camp Blanding card probably should have gone first, but it's on the back side of the one with the address from the first post in this series, and I wanted to start with that one.  The white line that goes through the hospital area card is where the flap goes to close up the folder.

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.

Camp Blanding 1

Too many parts to this long strip of linen postcards to post all at once, so I'm breaking it up in to four sections.  It's clear that the majority of these images started out as photographs, but there are a few I'm not so sure of, and all but one are  in this first section.  The flag, I suspect is pure illustration, and the cover image too.  Still, I'm sure Emma S. Brown in Slatington, PA didn't care.  It was sent to her by "Pvt. Wilton E. Christman" and he wrote her that "Everything is fine here, in good health."  Not much of a message, but at least she heard from him.