$35.00 CAD
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Photo postcard of what I think are the barracks of Camp Warden McLean which was a training school for white officers,
‘Quaters of the 2500 officers training at Chickamauga Park. Each building is 20 x 246 feet #18’
Based on ‘AZO’ photographic paper used, dates from 1910-1930.
Unused
(Red text is an electronic watermark that is not physically part of the photo for sale)
In 1917, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park was still under the management of the War Department. The Army, just as they had done during the Spanish American War, utilized the national military parks as training depots for thousands of soldiers preparing to fight in the trenches of Western Europe. At Chickamauga Battlefield, the War Department established three camps – Camp Warden McLean, Camp Greenleaf, and Camp Forrest. Camp Forrest was the smallest of the three, and served primarily as a training hub for engineers. Camp Warden McLean was a Reserve Officer Training Center, and its barracks were located in the field that today is home to the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center. Camp Greenleaf was by far the largest of the World War I encampments at Chickamauga. Located in a sprawling complex throughout both north and south Dyer Fields, Camp Greenleaf was home to the army’s medical training operations. Doctors, medics, nurses, ambulance teams, and even entire field hospital staffs trained among the monuments at Chickamauga. Just north of the park, in Fort Oglethorpe, were hundreds more buildings, including a prisoner of war camp for captured Germans and American civilian internees suspected of disloyalty under the Espionage Act of 1917. All total, more than 1,500 buildings along with six miles of trenches and rifle pits dotted the landscape in and around the park. 60,000 American servicemen passed through Chickamauga Battlefield on their way to Europe
