The Civilian Army

This one has a processors stamp on the back dating this print from the "Week of August 29, 1955", putting it somewhere in between Korea and Vietnam.  Since it's almost impossible to put a date on the beginning of the Vietnam War-did it start before U.S. involvement, the arrival of trainers, the first troops in the field, the Gulf of Tonkin incident-we'll just say a lot closer to Korea.

So, here's a fun fact about the U.S. Army in the 1950's.  After the end of World War 2, it was assumed by many Americans that the draft would come to an end, and everyone could go on with their lives with no fear of being called up.  But that wasn't to be.  Fear of Soviet aggression, the perceived need to keep an occupying force in Europe and Japan, kept the military in need of fresh troops, so the draft continued apace.  Never popular, it didn't take long for the whole issue of deferments to come up.  In 1950, with the backing of many in the academic community, the army decided that college students, based on their grade point average, could avoid conscription.  Needless to say, the A students could stay at home, while those with a sold C risked  a quick trip to basic training.

One of the few academics to argue against a deferment system of any kind was Harvard President James B. Conant.  He thought universal service for all 18 year olds was preferable.  In his writings he made a whole host of points, but what it all got down to was that if we were to have a military and if it was necessary to defend the country, than it was undemocratic that that burden should fall on some, and not on everyone.  Conant lost the argument.  By the time Vietnam came along, there were so many deferments that we had effectively divided the country into two categories: those who were worth saving and those who were disposable.

I was from a small coal mining town in western Pennsylvania, and I was in the disposable pool of Americans.  I got lucky. January 23, 1973, my 18th birthday, the Paris Peace Accords were signed, ending American involvement in Vietnam.  (There were no Americans in combat when Saigon fell in 1975.) The draft ended not long after that, and my assumption that I'd get swept up and sent to southeast Asia was proved wrong.

This is the last of the photographs from the military memorabilia envelope.  Sort of.  I do have a couple of press clippings, one with a picture, but if I decide to post it, it will be on my Fair Use blog.  I've already published a couple of documents from this collection, but I haven't felt the obligation to put them all on line.  Maybe they'll show up some day, maybe not.

At Attention

This one's an 8x10, and I suspect it's an official photograph for release to the press.  I had hoped that I'd be able to get an ID from the patch on the sleeve, but that was a no go.

On Maneuvers

I had hoped that I could get a date range on the uniforms and old style campaign hats, but no luck.  The clothing is too generic, and in fact isn't all that different than that which is used today.  The truck, however, at least from what little I can see of it, looks like it's from the late thirties through mid forties.  In other words, it looks like the two Sargents  in these photos are training men for World War 2.  Even if the United States was still a year or two from the fighting when these photos were taken, it didn't take a lot of insight to know that we were going to get pulled in to the conflict.

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.