Talk:Davids Island (New York)

message: David Island (New York)
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David (or David's) Island is a small island at the western end of Long Island Sound. It is part of New Rochelle, New York. Currently uninhabited, in the past it was the site of Fort Slocum. The island was known to have been inhabited by Native Americans and then used by French settlers from New Rochelle as grazing land for farm animals. It began its military use during the American Civil War as a hospital center and detention site for Confederate prisoners of war. By 1876 it had earned the name Fort Slocum. During World War I Fort Slocum was the busiest recruiting station in the northeast, processing 100,000 soldiers per year. The island served as an embarkation point during World War II and was a home for Army chaplains. Later it became Slocum Air Force Base and finally a Nike missile site before it was deactivated in 1965 and sold to New Rochelle in 1967. Plans for Davids Island now include housing and parkland. It is not legal to land at the island.
First, the island in question is not correctly identified.   It is neither David Island nor David's Island but Davids' Island, named after its next-to-last civilian owner before the Army acquired it, the NYC ink manufacturer and Westchester County resident Thaddeus Davids.  It was first leased 1861-1867, then owned 1867-1965, by the U.S. Government, and was known as Davids' Island Military Reservation until it was named Fort Slocum 1 July 1896.  (Previously it had been named after other owners, and was called successively i.a. Bouteillier's, Rodman's, Myer's, Treadwell's, Hewlett's, Allen's, and Morse's Island.  Among recent owners, Donald Trump wished to rename it for himself, but this never happened.)
Thus it was not named Fort Slocum in 1876.  (Indeed it was temporarily abandoned by the Army in 1874, only to be reopened in 1878.)
The sequencing is partly wrong.  In 1946 Fort Slocum was taken over by the Army Air Corps (then in the process of becoming the USAF), served as HQ 1st AF, and was renamed Slocum AFB in 1949.  (It is sometimes said, mistakenly, that it was the only USAFB in history without a landing strip;  it had no room for a landing strip, true, though others e.g. Los Angeles AFB did not either.  It was the only USAFB that could be reached routinely only by boat.)  
Then the Army took it back in 1950.  From 1951-1962 it was the home of the U.S. Army Chaplain School;  from 1951-1965, of the Information School (known variously as the Armed Forces Information School until 1954, then the Army Information School until 1964, thereafter the Defense Information School), both of which relocated from Carlisle Barracks, and both of which continued in other locations.
Fort Slocum itself was never a "Nike missile base."  Rather, Nike site NY-15 was split between Davids' Island and Hart Island, 1955-61.  It would not have been safe either to store or to launch the missiles from densely-populated Davids' Island.  The launchers were on Hart, while the radar & integrated fire control (IFC) were on the south side of Davids' Island. In any event, despite the location, the Nike site was not under the control of the Ft. Slocum garrison but was controlled rather from Ft. Totten nearby.     
During WWII it was indeed an embarkation point for shipment to the ETO through the New York Port of Embarkation (NYPOE) (and as such was therefore the last bit of American soil on which many American soldiers ever stood).  It was other things too:  the site of a sub-school for cooks and bakers since before the war;  the site of the Atlantic Coast Transportation Corps Officers' Training School (ACTCOTS) 1942-44; the site of recruit training from 1942; the site of a Provisional Training Center (PTC) from 1943; and from 1945-46, as the war wound down, a controversial rehabilitation center for court-martialed American soldiers.  It was from the PTC that in March 1944 Pvt. Willie Lee Duckworth Sr. devised The Duckworth Chant, aka Sound Off aka the Jody Call, the marching and now jogging cadence still used in the U.S. Army and elsewhere.
The figure of 100,000 recruits per year for WWI is sometimes reported but, I think, not firmly established.  Davids' Island was a recruiting depot for many years (though Army recruitment practices changed over the years as well).  In 1869 it became a subdepot of the General Recruiting Service.  When the post was reopened in 1878 it became the Principal Depot for recruitment east of the Mississippi, and continued as such until 1894 when the Army abolished the depot system.  Thereafter on and off the island was involved with recruiting and shipment of troops up to and including WWII.
What the article neglects entirely to mention is the island's role as a coast artillery site.  From 1891 durable concrete batteries were installed as part of the Endicott Board reforms.  They included sixteen 12" mortars deployed in 2 batteries in an Abbot Quad arrangement, plus 2 batteries of two fixed rifled guns each (various sizes).  In addition there was a battery deploying at first one 15" smoothbore Rodman gun plus one 10" Rodman converted to 8" rifle;  the 15" Rodman was replaced in 1899 by a modern rifle.  But due to rapidly obsolescent technology, these batteries were removed in 1907 from the Artillery District of New York, and the guns were gone by 1920, except for the 15" Rodman which remains today on the island in a display location.
Plans?  Since the Army left in 1965 there have been many development plans, none of which came to fruition.  Real estate interests still dream of housing, commercial, or retail development.  Currently the island is owned by New Rochelle.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is funded to abate hazardous materials, which may include demolition of some or all remaining structures, a process projected until at least 2013.   Upon completion, Westchester County intends to buy the island for use as a public park.
The main website for Fort Slocum and Davids' Island is www.home.earthlink.net/~michaelacavanaugh (the site of the Fort Slocum Alumni & Friends).  It has links to other websites and a chat room.   USACE intends to put up another website on the topic.
Michael A Cavanaugh 18:47, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
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