Belding banner. (Belding, Mich.) 1889-1918, 1917-08-29
FRED APPLEGET
WRITES FRIEND OF
az HIS CAMP LIFE
DESCRIPTION OF STUPENDOUS
OPERATIONS INJECTED
WITH HASTY CONSTRUCTION

The work of constructing the build
inPs at the numerous canonments
throughout he United States is man.
moth. Besides the work must be done
with the greatest dispatch and care.
The operations attached to construct
ing the cantonment at Battle Creek
have been most stupenduous.
Some idea of the magnitude of the
work and the speed at which it is
performed may be gained from a short
letter written by Fred Appleget, to
friend in New York and his descrip-
tons can be relied upon. He recently
visited the site of the Camp Pike can
Torment at Little Rock, Arkansas and
wrote of the incidents to one of the
magazines of his native city. This is
what Apologize said:
Don't be misled when you read that
this is one of lot Of major canton
ments-that is a super-major camp.
A kind of five-star, last, final, home,
Wall street and box-score edition, as
we say on Park Row. Us there such
a place as Park Row and do they still
print newspapers there?)
Really, though; this is tremen-
dous place-you can't possibly realize
it until you are on the ground-1, 900
buildings going up, 5000 men at
work, payroll of $4,000 day, a nil
lion and a half feet of lumber flowing
in every day and being chewed up by
twenty-five sawmills, twenty miles
of sewer pipe going in, dozens of miles
of water lines being laid, 1900 horses
and mules and a hundred hugh trucks
rushing everywhere, steam trench
diggers. and drilling machines and
a Ell IL, ,orht I'D
twenty mess houses serving 10000
meals a day, companies of tall hand
some Southern boys in khaki coming
in every day, railroads building, mile
after mile of streets being laid out and
graded and bridges built-can you see
the picture?
Honestly, | don't believe there was
ever anything like it in the way of
quick construction since the one that
fellow Genesis wrote about. (By the
way, what paper is he on now? Would
like to get him down here.)
ITS interesting and it's exciting,
but I'll confess that it's hard job to
keep track of. You make a memoir
andum of the fact that work has be-
gun on the 120 buildings constituting
the re-mount station and before you
can gallop back to where you keep
your diary, you meet one of the big
bosses who tells you the buildings are
all up and horses in and the carpen-
tiers are working over on the hospital
base. Maybe not quite so quick as
that, but not so far from it either
The other day saw two-storv bar
racks, AZ by 100 feet, go up in two
hours and 55 minutes-foors laid,
building enclosed, doors hung, win
dows in and even screened, roof on,
scaffolding down and workmen out Of
the building in less than three hours.
1t took nearly 200 carpenters to do
that trick, but it gives you an idea of
what's going on here and the speed to
it,
you can believe anything you see
in regard to the building Of Camp
Pike. The people who are building it
are the men who "Stewardized" Eng
land with the high-speed engineering
and construction methods and mira
cles are a daily occurrence here.
"Tell the boys Pm well and happy
up at reveille, eating so much off my
tin plate three times a day that I'm
ashamed to meet the commissary
chief, in the saddle good part of the
time, sleeping in barracks, and to bed
and glad to be, at taps. There goes
tattoo now. Good night and good luck
to you and The Fourth Estate"