The “Greatest Generation” in

Tennessee E. Thomas Wood

Tuesday, June 9, 20153:30 p.m.Main auditorium, NPL

The Volunteer State’s experience during the Second World War

Large-scale Army training maneuversThe housing of large numbers of prisoners of war

captured by Allied forces in EuropeThe state’s role in manufacturing items essential

to the war effortThree Tennesseans who played significant roles in

the conflict

The Volunteer State’s 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 Tennessee.”

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.

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

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

850,000 soldiers took part, the majority passing through Nashville’s 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 child’s 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 child’s experiencesLewis 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, ‘He’s 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 child’s experiencesStephen 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.”

Life, Aug. 4, 1941

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

(The building was Bell Buckle’s 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 Company—Sidco.

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Most important lessons learned: Defending against armored attackBackground:

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

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 maneuversTennessee chosen largely on Patton’s recommendation

Had spent time at grandmother’s 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 Armored’s 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 didn’t 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 TennesseeJuly 4th, 1943“I expect to be in Tennessee till some time in September. These maneuvers are pretty tough. In fact it’s 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 I’ve 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 wouldn’t 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)

Army maneuvers, 1941-1944

Prisoners of War held in TennesseeMajor camps in Tullahoma, Crossville, Memphis,

Paris and Lawrenceburg; also several smaller facilities

Largest, Camp Forrest in Tullahoma, held more than 20,000 at times

Escapees—rare but memorable (Schwanbeck story)

Source: Jeff Roberts, “POW Camps in World War II.” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture.  

Nonchalance as an Art Form

by E. Thomas Wood (Nashville Scene, Feb. 18, 1993)

Nashville, February 19, 1945—After 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 doesn’t look quite right to J.E. Griggs.

“His boots weren’t 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. He’s 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.

Prisoners of War held in Tennessee

The war’s economic and commercial impact on Tennessee

NashvilleConsolidated 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 footwearDupont - parachutesWerthan Bag - sandbags

“Operating a hand drill at Vultee-Nashville, woman is working on a ‘Vengeance’ dive bomber.” (Library of Congress)

The war’s economic and commercial impact on Tennessee

Kingsport: Eastman Chemical - explosivesMemphis: Firestone - tiresCleveland: Cleveland Casket Co.Roane and Anderson Counties: Oak Ridge Reservation

58,575 acres acquired starting late 1942About 1,000 families displacedK-25 plant: Two million square feet, then the largest building in

the worldEnriched 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.”

The war’s economic and commercial impact on Tennessee

Three Tennesseans in the WarCornelia Fort

From wealthy and prominent Nashville family

As a flight instructor in the air over Hawaii the morning of December 7, 1941, had near-collision with a Zero on its way to attack Pearl Harbor

Joined Women’s 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 Twilight’s Last Gleaming.” Woman’s Home Companion, July 1943.

Cordell HullLongtime 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 AndrewsBorn 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 Army’s 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 president’s personal airport, is named for him

Three Tennesseans in the War

Three Tennesseans in the War

Bonus image

Ben Carey, outside the former hospital of a P.O.W. camp at Crossville, Tenn., 2015