Military encampment

“ The Homecroft Reserve plan contemplates that there shall be no expenditure for railroad transportation except in the event of actual warfare. The Reserves in California and in the Colorado River Valley would be marched with their full equipment to one great concentration camp in Nevada for their annual encampment and for field maneuvers. The whole military organization, officers, auxiliaries, and military machinery, for an army of two million men would thus be given actual training every year in the complicated work of handling a great army in the field. ”

“ The Christians pitched their tents about the hour of vespers, at a short league distant from the enemy, and remained gazing with anxiety and awe upon this barbaric host that had caused such terror and desolation in the land; for the first sight of a hostile encampment in a country disused to war is terrible to the newly enlisted soldier. ”

“ Some time was required to arrange the encampment, during which time the men were compelled to keep their places in the lines, and thus become so chilled as to be almost unfit for the necessary exertion of preparing a resting place for themselves. ”

“ By going we should take away nothing of value from the encampment, and it might be possible fortune would so favor us that we could render some signal assistance, even though it did not seem probable there was any force of the enemy in that vicinity. ”

“ No language can describe the wreck of a large encampment thus instantaneously destroyed and covered with water, amid the cries of old men and helpless women, terrified by the piercing shrieks of their expiring children, unable to afford them relief. ”

“ The advantages of such a position are obvious to a soldier's eye, as that part of the encampment inclosed by the stream is naturally secure, and leaves only one side to be defended. The concavity of the bend will enable the defending party to cross its fire in case of attack from the exposed side. ”

“ On all the heights around glisten the white tents of French or English, and here and there the eye rests upon their serrated lines on the slope of some pleasant valley, or lights on the encampment of some detached party posted in a recess of the hills. Faint clouds of dust, through which may be seen the glistening of steel and dark masses of uniform, blur the landscape here and there, and betray the march of troops along the sandy roads, which are exactly like those worn by the tramp of men and horses through Chobham-common, and had neither fence, boundary-metal, nor drainage. ”

“ At intervals of every one hundred yards, piles of ties surmounted by rails were upon fire. These were thrown down by our men. About half a mile beyond the road, in a finely sodded valley, the troops were halted for the night, pickets posted, and the men prepared their meals closely in the rear of their stacks. The night was a pleasant one. An open air encampment upon such a night is one of the finest phases of a soldier's life. ”

“ Often they Page 1444 are placed in long rows, which, when their inmates are warming themselves by the fire at night turn the dark mountain road into a romantic night encampment, and everywhere fresh crosses, ornamented at times in a manner suggestive of the work of children, remind us of our brothers now forever silenced, who, but a short time before went the same road, withstood just such weather and such hardships, talked perhaps in these same huts of the war, and dreamt of peace. ”

“ In the illustration referred to we have an example of an encampment on which the natives have bestowed rather more care than usual, and have actually taken the pains to form the branches into rude huts. The spears, shields, and other weapons of the natives are seen scattered about, while round the fire sit or lie the men who have satisfied their hunger. The reader will perceive that from a little distance such an encampment would be almost invisible; and, indeed, except by the thin smoke of the fire, the most practised eye can scarcely detect the spot where natives are encamping. ”

“ The last paragraph:
“So far, there are in Germany about 8,000 prisoners of war of the British and American Air Forces (without counting those in hospitals) . By evacuating the camps actually in existence, which might be used to house bombed-out people, we should immediately have at our disposal prisoners of war for a fairly large number of such camps.” ”

“ It will, however, be extremely difficult to reconcile the desires of the humanitarians and the military authorities with regard to camps within the area of hostilities, though it will probably be found possible to come to some agreement defining the nature of the work on which prisoners of war may not be employed, and an attempt should be made to make more clear than it is at present the obligation of the captors with regard to the feeding and clothing of the prisoners in their hands. ”

“ We then located a camp, got roasting-ears from a field to our right, an iron pot, and water at a house to our left, and in due time feasted, chatted, and retired for the night, not knowing how near we might be to enemies, or how far from friends. After midnight a terrible racket, to our front, awakened and frightened us. Imagining the commotion was produced by a dash of the enemy's cavalry, we arose in great haste, scattered our fire, gathered our traps, and hied us away to the brush. ”

“ The townsfolk can, if they choose, find almost absolute safety by spending their days in cool caverns beside the river, or bomb-proof shelters cleverly constructed near their own houses; and care has been taken by the military authorities to provide every defensive position round the open camp and town with shelter trenches and covered ways, where soldiers off duty may rest secure from the heaviest shell fire. ”

“ Those men who stood upon guard at various points of the hasty encampment, may have been faded and ragged in uniform, the arms they bore may have shown hard usage, and their discolored tents showed little of the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war;" but they had full warrant for all this in past services, for not a storm in all the long campaign that they had not breasted, and not a battle of all the long line on the Peninsula in which they had not sown the soil of freedom with sacred seed from their thinned ranks. ”

“ Moreover, with the tactics and mode of encampment of former times it was much easier than it is now to examine the position of the enemy. A line of tents is much easier to distinguish than a line of huts or a bivouac; and an encampment on a line of front, fully and regularly drawn out, also easier than one of Divisions formed in columns, the mode often used at present. ”

“ A camp is a resting-place for the victor, a shelter for the vanquished. How many armies to whom the fortune of battle has proved unkindly have been driven inside their ramparts and then at their own time, sometimes almost immediately, have made a sortie and repulsed their victorious foe? Here is the soldier's second fatherland, here is his abode, with the rampart for its walls; here each finds in his tent, his home and his household gods. Ought we to have fought as homeless wanderers with no place to receive us after our victory? ”

“ The attempt to depict camp-life, cannon, camp-fires, tents, stacked guns, sentries, etc., was utterly upset by the presence of hundreds of ladies and children, with the inevitable paraphernalia necessary to their comfort. "The front of grim-visaged war" was constantly being smoothed into beauty by baby fingers. Men, lured by siren voices, deserted the tented field, and were happy, in entire forgetfulness of duty (so called) . Soldiers who did not bring ladies enjoyed hugely living in tents and once more "messing" together. ”

“ Being carried is better than walking. The king rides from place to place, so why not we?”
At a word of command from their leader the soldiers seized the two, raised them to their shoulders and passed quickly out of the tent.
An encampment of great size had sprung up on the level floor of the valley. It was well laid out. The tents were placed in straight rows with wide streets between them, and there seemed to be armed guards and soldiers everywhere. ”

“ Yet slowly some sort of order was organized out of chaos, and when the Government was able to establish refugee camps through the military the worst conditions were moderated, and now, in tents and in vans on a fortunately situated piece of land, over 3,000 people live, so far as comforts are concerned, like Kaffirs in Karoo or aborigines in a camp in the back blocks of Australia. The tents are crammed with people, and life is reduced to its barest elements. ”

“ Another round from the fleet. Another from the fort. The air is calm, and the thunder of the cannonade rolls along the valley, reverberating from hill to hill. Louder and deeper and heavier is the booming, till it becomes almost an unbroken peal.
There is a commotion in the Rebel encampment. Men run to and fro. They curl down behind the stumps and the fallen trees, to avoid the shot. Their huts are blown to pieces by the shells. ”

“ I never saw a man so prepossessed with the idea of any mishap as he was. We fell back a little distance and made a stand: detached parties engaging in almost every direction. We did not come in contact with the enemy again that day, and just at night we fell back to our encampment. In the course of the afternoon the British took possession of a hill on the right of our encampment, which had in the early part of the day been occupied by some of the New-York troops. ”

“ The weight of large regulation tents and the consequent increase in the number of horses and vehicles in the transport service are, however, disadvantages so grave that the employment of canvas camps in European warfare is almost a thing of the past. If the military situation permits, all troops are put into quarters, only the outpost troops bivouacking. ”

“ All such subjects, his host reminded him, “enjoy full, or nearly full liberty, whereas in Great Britain and France Austro-German subjects have either been clapped into prison, or at any rate confined in a camp or barracks.”
Civilian and Military Prisoners Compared.
“Confinement in a camp or barracks” sounds a small thing. It is really, wherever it occurs, a rather terrible thing. The universal experience is that civilians suffer under this restraint more than soldiers, and consequently are more “difficult” to deal with. ”

“ Presently the horses are tied along the fences, riders are lounging under the trees, the kitchen-fires are lighted, guardsmen are scattered along the banks of the stream bathing, the wagons roll heavily over the prairie and are drawn up along the edge of the wood, tents are raised, tent-furniture is hastily arranged, and the camp looks as if it had been there a month. Before dark a regiment of infantry and two batteries of artillery come up. The men sleep in the open air without tents, and innumerable fires cover the hill-sides. ”

“ As to the effect of demobilization of veterans the Report states, p. 2: 'Heavy demobilization of members of our armed forces, particularly in late 1945 and the first half of 1946, made effective an important demand for housing accommodations. In 1945 an estimated 6,279,000 veterans of World War II were returned to civilian life, in 1946 the number so returned was 5,659,000, and in 1947 to February 28 an additional 212,000 veterans were demobilized. ”

“ An internment camp is a distressing place under the most favourable circumstances, but who, except a German or a Turk, ever conceived of establishing one right in the field of battle? Let us suppose that the English and the French should assemble all their enemy aliens, march them to the front, and place them in a camp in No Man’s Land, directly in the fire of both armies. ”

“ Several high officers had been observed to pass out of the city on their way to this camp, and it was evident that some fresh attack was projected. The 18th were therefore ordered down from the heights to reinforce the detachment of the 49th, together with a few marines, and Major-General Burrell was directed to carry the encampment, the only approach to which was along a narrow causeway. A heavy fire was opened upon them from guns and ginjals upon the north-eastern face of the city walls, to which the men were unavoidably exposed as they advanced. ”

“ I could go where I pleased and camp in the lines of the battalions when they came out of the trenches. This enabled me to get into closer touch with the men. One young western fellow said that my encampment consisted of a caboose, my tent, a cayouse, which was Dandy, and a papoose, which was my little dog, friend Philo. Now that I had a comfortable billet of my own I determined that Romarin was too far from the men, so I removed my settlement up to the Neuve Eglise road and planted it near some trees in the field just below the row of huts called Bulford Camp. ”

“ When we arrive in the evening at a suitable spot for an encampment, Captain W. rides round a space which he considers large enough to accommodate it, and directs where each mess shall pitch its tent. The men immediately unload their horses, and place their bales of goods in the direction indicated, and in such manner, as in case of need, to form a sort of fortification and defence. When all the messes are arranged in this way, the camp forms a hollow square, in the centre of which the horses are placed and staked firmly to the ground. ”

“ The camp commanders have forbidden the civilian population to put food at the disposal of the prisoners, and they have rather let them starve to death.
“In many cases, when prisoners of war could no longer keep up on the march because of hunger and exhaustion, they were shot before the eyes of the horrified population, and the corpses were left.
“In numerous camps, no shelter for the prisoners of war was provided at all. They lay under the open sky during rain or snow. ”