The Greatest

Generation in
Tennessee
E. Thomas Wood
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
3:30 p.m.
Main auditorium, NPL

The Volunteer States experience

during the Second World War
Large-scale Army training maneuvers
The housing of large numbers of prisoners of war
captured by Allied forces in Europe
The states role in manufacturing items essential
to the war effort
Three Tennesseans who played significant roles in
the conflict

The Volunteer States experience

during the Second World War
Key sources:
Tennessee State Library and Archives
Tennessee in the Second World War.
The Volunteer State Goes to War: A Salute to Tennessee
Veterans - World War II

Tennessee Department of Environment &

Conservation
An
Archaeological Survey of World War II Military Sites in Te
nnessee
.

Lesson plans:
World War II - The American Home Front: Tennessee,
by Brigitte Eubank

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Seven large-scale maneuvers, involving 21
counties in Middle Tennessee
Operations mainly took place in an area bounded
by Murfreesboro to the north, Tullahoma to the
south, Manchester to the east and Shelbyville to
the west, but some exercises took the troops well
outside that zone.

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

An armored half-track vehicle belonging to a medical unit
fording the river during the Second Armys Middle Tennessee
maneuvers (Library of Congress)

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

850,000 soldiers took part, the majority passing
through Nashvilles Union Station.
The forces were divided into opposing red and
blue armies for their exercises.
Not just playing army: 268 soldiers and civilians
killed in accidents; +$4 million in property damage
claims from civilians and local governments

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Maneuvers: One childs

experiences
Stephen F. Wood Sr., born 1936:
I remember being caught up in night maneuvers on
several occasions. Most of these probably occurred
while returning from Camp Hy-Lake [a summer camp in
White County]. We were required to turn off all vehicle
lights except parking lights, and we fell in line with the
army vehicles (including tanks and armored vehicles)
that also had only dim little lights that were difficult to
see. Naturally, we crept along very slowly.

Maneuvers: One childs experiences

Lewis F. Wood Jr., born 1931:
We were on Murfreesboro Road, passing the Smyrna
Air Force Base, when a bomber came in right in front of
us. My Dad said, Hes coming in too low. Just then, a
huge fireball went up. Dad drove around to a side street
overlooking the crash site. The aircraft had hit below
the elevation of the runway. It was a terrible sight.
[Note: The aggregation site Accident-Report.com lists
40 accidents involving B-24s at the Smyrna Army
Airfield between 1942 and 1945.]

Maneuvers: One childs experiences

Stephen Wood:
Another memory is from when we visited Castle
Heights [Military School] in Lebanon on a Sunday
afternoon to watch the cadets parade. On the way
home, we stopped for gas. While we were stopped,
some soldiers ran up with a machine gun on a tripod
and commenced firing (blanks, of course) at another
group of soldiers on the other side of the road. The
gunfight was noisy and lasted several minutes. It was,
of course, the red army against the blue army. When I
used to play soldier with neighborhood kids, we would
divide up into red army and blue army.

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Life, Aug. 4, 1941

(The building was Bell Buckles city

hall.)

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

The damned city hall was not on the map!

General George S. Patton Jr.

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Major facilities:
Bases in Tullahoma (Camp Forrest), Clarksville (Camp
Campbell), Dyersburg Army Air Field, Smyrna Army Airfield
(later Sewart Air Force Base)

In Nashville:
State Fairgrounds used as headquarters for Quartermaster
Corps

Recreation camp on north side of Centennial Park

Thayer Hospital: 1,600 beds, 140 buildings on White Bridge
Road

U.S. Army Air Forces Classification Center: 560-acre complex

south of Thompson Lane, eventually redeveloped by Suburban
Industrial Development CompanySidco.

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Most important lessons learned: Defending against
armored attack
Background:
Blitzkrieg in Western Europe, May 1940, alarmed U.S.
generals

Alexandria (La.) schoolhouse meeting, late May 1940

with a Nashville connection

The centurions revolt that birthed armored divisions in

the U.S. Army

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Officers and enlisted men gathered for Sunday worship
somewhere in Tennessee at a field service during maneuvers
(Library of Congress)

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

June 1941: First maneuvers
Tennessee chosen largely on Pattons recommendation
Had spent time at grandmothers home in Watertown; knew
the terrain

From WWI experience, Patton knew Tenn. topography

resembles Western Europe

Maneuvers begin with arrival of 55,000 troops in late

May and early June

Patton attacks from Cookeville, June 17: Second

Armoreds dash down U.S. 70 to Lebanon, then south on
S.R. 10 to outflank 30th Infantry in surprise attack
outside Murfreesboro

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Maneuvers had social impact on troops and civilians
Exposed soldiers from outside the South to an unfamiliar
culture (Dabrowski ltr.)
Soldiers on leave mobbed Nashville
Sleeping in parks or at homes of volunteer civilians for $1 a night
Not all on best behavior:
Nashville police arrested 10 to 50 soldiers a week
In a six-week period in late 1942, Second Army tallied 45 cases of venereal
disease that troops had picked up in Nashville alone. Commanding general
threatened to declare the city off-limits to soldiers if local authorities didnt
take action to decrease infection rate.

Tullahoma: 1940 population = 4,500. 1945: 75,000. Camp

Forrest became AEDC.
Clarksville: Doubled in size. Camp Campbell became Fort
Campbell.

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Pfc. Mitchell J. Dabrowski of Wilbraham, Mass.
Somewhere in Tennessee
July 4th, 1943
I expect to be in Tennessee till some time in September. These
maneuvers are pretty tough. In fact its about the toughest thing I
ever had in the Army. Yesterday we were camping in some woods and
got an idea to go to one of the farm houses and ask them if they
could fry us some chickens. The lady said she would. We told her to
fry six. We came back at night and had the swellest feed Ive had in a
long time. Fried chicken, hot biscuits, milk, and raspberry pie. The
whole works cost us $8.00 but it was sure worth it. If we ever come
back, we are going to have her roast us some ducks. The way they
live in the shacks around here is a crime. They are nothing but rough
boards with clay pasted between the boards. I wouldnt live here for
anything. But the people here seem to be very accommodating.

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

(Pfc. Dabrowski was killed in action in Belgium on October 6,
1944, while serving with the 4th Infantry Division.)
Source: Excerpts from letters home written by Pfc. Mitchell
J. Dabrowski of Wilbraham, Mass.

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Soldiers of a reconnaissance squad on maneuvers with
the Second Army in Middle Tennessee cutting across
the country in a scout car. (Library of Congress)

Prisoners of War held in Tennessee

Major camps in Tullahoma, Crossville, Memphis,
Paris and Lawrenceburg; also several smaller
facilities
Largest, Camp Forrest in Tullahoma, held more
than 20,000 at times
Escapeesrare but memorable (Schwanbeck
story)
Source: Jeff Roberts, POW Camps in World War II.
Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture.

Prisoners of War held in Tennessee

Nonchalance as an Art Form
by E. Thomas Wood (Nashville Scene, Feb. 18, 1993)
Nashville, February 19, 1945After dinner, Mr. and Mrs. J.E.
Griggs board a city bus downtown. They pay their fare and
walk down the aisle, passing a young man who sits alone at
the front of the bus. Something doesnt look quite right to
J.E. Griggs.
His boots werent American-made, Griggs later told The
Tennessean, explaining what had set him to wondering about
the rider. It does not appear to have registered on Griggs,
the bus driver or any other passengers that the young man
was dressed in full German uniform, adorned with the
inverted chevron of a private first class in the Wehrmacht.

Prisoners of War held in Tennessee

The bus lurches on, making its way out Franklin Road. After a
while, Griggs gets curious enough to strike up a conversation
with the mysterious rider. In broken English, the man gets
the point across: He is a prisoner of war, escaped from Fort
Knox, Ky., and abandoned by his fellow escapees. Hes
hungry, tired and lost, and he just wants to go back to the
POW camp.
Griggs apprehends the prisoner, taking him off the bus and
turning him over to the police. The Nazi invasion of Nashville,
as carried out by 19-year-old Werner Schwanbeck, is over.
Sources: Arnold Krammer, Nazi Prisoners of War in America (Stein and
Day, 1979); Nashville Tennessean, Feb. 20, 1945.

The wars economic and commercial

impact on Tennessee
Nashville
Consolidated Vultee aircraft plant (later Avco, now
Vought)
City bought 96 acres, enhanced Berry Field, passed
$100k bond issue

Opened November 1939

Employed 3,000

General Shoe (later Genesco) - military footwear

Dupont - parachutes
Werthan Bag - sandbags

The wars economic and commercial

impact on Tennessee
Operating a hand drill at Vultee-Nashville, woman is working on
a Vengeance dive bomber. (Library of Congress)

The wars economic and commercial

impact on Tennessee
Kingsport: Eastman Chemical - explosives
Memphis: Firestone - tires
Cleveland: Cleveland Casket Co.
Roane and Anderson Counties: Oak Ridge Reservation
58,575 acres acquired starting late 1942
About 1,000 families displaced
K-25 plant: Two million square feet, then the largest building in
the world

Enriched uranium and plutonium produced at Oak Ridge fueled

the nuclear weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Energy
Department Completes K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Building Demolition .

Three Tennesseans in the War

Cornelia Fort
From wealthy and prominent Nashville
family

As a flight instructor in the air over Hawaii

the morning of December 7, 1941, had nearcollision with a Zero on its way to attack
Pearl Harbor

Joined Womens Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron

In March 1943 mid-air collision, became the
first American woman to die on active
military duty
Sources: PBS, People & Events: Cornelia Fort (1919-1943 );
Cornelia Fort, At the Twilights Last Gleaming . Womans
Home Companion, July 1943.

Three Tennesseans in the War

Cordell Hull
Longtime congressman in same 4th
District seat later held by Albert Gore Sr.
and Jr.

Longest-serving U.S. Secretary of State

(1933-1944)

Received two Japanese emissaries just

after he learned of the Pearl Harbor
attack

Played pivotal role in establishing the

United Nations (Nobel Peace Prize)
Nobel Peace Prize, 1945 Source: U.S. Department of State,
Biographies of the Secretaries of State: Cordell Hull.

Three Tennesseans in the War

Lieutenant General Frank Maxwell Andrews
Born in Nashville; kin to Tennessee governors John C. Brown and
Neill S. Brown, as well as Harriet Maxwell Overton, for whom the
Maxwell House Hotel was named

First head of a centralized American air force and first air officer to
serve on the Armys general staff (convened Alexandria
Schoolhouse conference)

Chief advocate of the B-17 bomber in 1930s, when Army leaders

strongly opposed

Named commander of European Theater of Operations in early

1943, replacing Eisenhower in London; was widely expected to
command invasion of Europe

Killed in air crash, May 1943

Joint Base Andrews in Maryland (formerly Andrews Air Force Base),
the American presidents personal airport, is named for him

Three Tennesseans in the War

Bonus image

Ben Carey, outside the former hospital of a P.O.W.

camp at Crossville, Tenn., 2015