Evening star., 1941-03-20

OF SelectlVe service men couldn't
have been inducted into service in
recent months for lack Of uniforms.
Has 254 Men.
The salvasing unit consists Of 254
men and IA officers. And in this
age Of Army mechanization and mo-
torization, the scope of the Quarter
master salvagers Is broader than
ever before.
What the Army can't repair in the
way Of damaged articles it tries to
sell for scrap or waste-everything
from a soldiers clothes to the COM
manding officers car.
Camp Lee is the Army's largest
quartermaster replacement center in
the United States. The only other
Is at Fort Francis E. Warren in Wy
oming.
Its cadre is completely organized,
Tor 1t was the first replacement CEN
ter to open. GA cadre is persistent
Army term denoting a skeleton Or
ganization trained to form military
units and serving as a permanent
garriSon)
The cadre, therefore, of 31l officers
and 1881 enlisted men will train
groups of 0,400 men each l3 weeks
for service in the Quartermaster
Corps. Their duty is the serious
business of feeding, clothing, hous-
ing and transporting the Army.
A Peaceful Camp.
Camp Lee is distinctive for an
other reason. One can go for days
without hearing a gun fired. Resi-
dents of Petersburg, miles distant,
are never likely to hear the sharp
explosion of heavy artillery or the
staccato firing Of machine guns. 1t
is one camp that Is calm and peace
full, going about its businesslike
pursuits with only human noises.
But the men in the Quartermaster
Corps are classified now as combat
ants for the first time. For that
reason, so per cent of the training
time will be devoted to basic mil
itary training. Because enlisted men
in the QuarternAster Corps must
now bear arms, ~'ifle range is be-
ing constructed at Camp Lee. When
the range Is ready. sometime after
April !. the men will learn to shoot.
But it will be nothing like the range
firing one encounters at an ordinary
training camp.
For the most part the quarter
master boys will be learning the
new close-order drill, how to take
care OF their weapons and equip
ment and the fine points of military
courtesy and department in general.
There are many infantry officers
stationed at Fort Lee to train the
men in infantry drill. Some of them
are somewhat skeptical about this
basic military training, claiming 1t
doesn't 60 far enough.
In these days of modern warfare
the huge bases Of supply behind the
lines-food, equipment and ammuni-
ton dumps-are the targets for
rowing or mass attack by air bombers
and tanks. Yet the Quartermaster
Corps, on which the Army must de-
pend for uninterrupted streams of
supplies in combat, is not being
trained to use anti-aircraft or anti
tank guns. i
The Army has other plans of its
own to take care Of that business
when it comes, but in such an emer-
gency, these infantry officers say, the
quartermaster men ought to be able
to lend q hand with more effective
weapons than rifles.
Equipment is arriving at the re-
placement center in greater amounts
and by April l or thereabouts, prac-
tically all equipment for the II unit
schools will be on hand.
The military will take possession
of practically all buildings at Camp
Lee by the end of this week. Only
the finishing touches remain to be
done. BY April l.. the construction
force will be reduced to about 1000
men compared with the $4,000 en-
ployed during the peak Of building
Col. John A. Warden is command
ing officer of the quartermaster re-
placement center.
In addition, there is also a medi-
cal replacement center which will
have a capacity of training 5000
men every 13 weeks. The only other
medical replacement center Is at
Camp Grant, Ill.