Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1920-03-18
THE OLD CAMP GROUND TO-DAY
Devens Stands Out AS City
Whose Glory Has Departed
fourteen of Americas Wartime Bar-
rack Towns Are Now Extinct Hut
Army Is StiIi Holding On to
Eighteen Others
fTrom the Home Sector)

Devens, Massachusetts. on the last day
of January. Fifteen inches OF snow lay
on the ground. On such a day Camp Dew
ems, in its white-in loneliness, stood out
Enthusiastically as city whose glory had
departed. Its deserted buildings stretch
ed for miles in the New England land
scape of low and rolling hills. and the deep
drifts about the low barracks gave the
illusion that nature had made desper
ate effort to get them out of sight. as
IL resenting their weathered grayness.
Camp Devens was like a mining town In
some far north mountain country from
which everyone had fled for the winter.
1t was only the ghost of the Camp Dew
ems of those other Januaries of 1918 and
1919 when 5000 men lived marched and
worked. Now, over the tops OF the 100
buildings. no smoke arose. The roads
which once held double lines of swift
moving trucks or echoed the hob nailed
dumping of thousands of men marching
TO and from parade grounds were now
roads no more. Only trackless snow sep
erated the row of barracks. Where the
roads should have Joined the main high
way-a channel cleared by a snow pillow
to connect the camp with the outside
world at Ayor-there were only stubby
posts which proclaimed that passage was
forbidden.
At first sight Camp Devens looked
wholly Neutrality-suspicious. to be in truth
what it was made last autumn, when the
government stocked its lakes with fish
and it's fields and thickcts with grouse
and quail and called the camp a game
preserve. The veteran who knew Dew
ems in it's roaring days of newness, com
ing back to it thus, might have exclaimed
fundamentally: How strange the old
place seems" He would have felt as n
man returning to look upon the scenes
he had known only in his childhood and
finding that the hills which had once
seemed mountains to him were now only
hills
As it is to-day at Camp Devens. so is
ii at the II other wartime camps which
the war department has retained. Not
all of them have been showed under. but
all of them are but the shadows of their
former glory. Only Goldsmith's Desert
ed Village" can supply the atmosphere of
their silent, empty streets. The spots
where the first draft coutingents of Sep
TENDER 1917, lined up for roll call and
clothing issues are now only riff'od snow
drifts or stretches of clay washed into
ruts by winter rains.
End to end. the buildings hold their
| lonely alignment, their blank windows
| standing out in company formation. their
doors closed with a look of fnality and
| hung with signs which speak only Of
| things that do not exist. "Hq. Co." has
| long since passed up the old road and so
| has "A Co.." leaving only their lettered
| boards behind them. The barber and tall
or no longer ply their shears where the
| signs still proclaim them, ana no steamy
smell of brewing sum hangs in the air
about the doorway where the doughboy
cafeteria line once waited There are 9TH
cir ipnc
| which read. Civilians. keep out or SIM
| ply terse CLOSED"
Looking upon such scenes. the veteran
of 1917. walking down the old road Of
many memories to his old cantonment,
may think of AddiSons far traveller from
New Zealand coming to look down on
crumbled London from the ruins OF Lon
| don bridge.
The illusion does not stand however.
For somewhere on the road leading into
any camp the returning veteran comes
upon a sentry box. and out of that box
| steps a figure looking like the last man
| In the army, someone forgotten after
everybody else has gone But the sentry
carries rifle and demands in the bust
ness-like manner of the old day to know
why and by what authority the stranger
wishes to pass.
For in spite of all it's first aspects OF
desolaton. the old cantonment is not
wholly dead For after reviewing acre
upon acre of empty buildings and track
less hills and roads. the explorer who
goes to his old cantonment to-day comes
finally to the heart of the camp he knew,
where there still Is life. He reaches a
region of smoking chimneys and cleo
trtcally lighted buildings where automo-
biles crunch along on swept roads. The
working brain of his old camp is still
functioning, the headquarters where the
work Of the is still being carried on
along with the new work of the peace
And somewhere near the headquarters
are barracks which are not empty. Each
camp has it's reGiments-not at full
strength. to be sure-hut regiments none
the less Of the new army which ia carry.
ing on where tho old army left off. The
new army IL even younger than the one
which marched down the old road las
summer and autumn. and It is putting its
faith in study as well as in drill !
may spend it's mornings studying the riff,
end the school of the squad and company
but it spends its afternoons from on,
until four-studying wireless telephony anC
biography. automobile construction anc
repairing. stenography and chemistry
The army school-system, still in its forms
tive stages. points TO the day when arm.
educs tional dreams may come true.
Each camp has Its other living remind
ers of the past. also. At Devens. for In
stance. the hostess house on the hill /
still open, though across the way tn
sweethearts memorial arch has almos
been showed out of sight. The basil
of the fountain is level with the road, blu
the tablet set In the stones of the arcl
still tells Of the thousands of men VIII
entered Devens under the selective scrvic
act. The monument got its name from
fanciful story by a newspaper correspon
dent who suggested that the memoria
might be built Of stones brought by no
mantle girls interested in those men, AM
score of girls actually dig carry SINAI
stones TO the camp for this TGrpose. Mos
of the stones, however. came from YER
unromantic quarry within the camp and
detail did the work.
There Is one building in every canton
ment where the past is very Tight
linked with the present. II Is the stats
tcal office, where stack on stack of I'll
Ing cases hold the records Of all the mel
who were trained at the camp and al
who We're discharged there
Here officers, enlisted men and nel
clerks are still toing to unravel mysterie
inherited from the old army. Here com
the inquiries concerning men who may o
may not have been In the camp. ma
sought by r. draft board because Of