Living in Tullahoma during WWII
By Jim Bridges
Smoke Signals Feature Writer
James Bridges jantan@frontiernet.net

My first recollection of WWII goes back before the attack on Pearl Harbor, to the day my father drove to a construction site just outside Tullahoma to show my mother, sister and me where an Army camp was being built. It would be named Camp Forrest and would become one of the largest Army training bases during WWII. It had a tremendous effect on the town. How much? You had to have been there to fully appreciate it pretty much tells the story.

Residents Welcome Workers and Troops Into Their Homes
Prior to the beginning of construction of Camp Forrest, Tullahoma was a sleepy little town of 4,500 residents. No one dreamed that in a matter of a few years there would be 75,000 people in and around Tullahoma. Residents were asked to make rooms and other living spaces available to construction workers and those who came in and opened businesses to support the growing population. When troops were assigned to the post residents made even more space available for wives, girl friends, parents and others. My parents rented a room and we had some very nice and very interesting occupants. There was the wife (school teacher) of a band director from Moline, Illinois. He was a warrant officer in a national guard unit that had been called to active duty. Then there was an artist who came to visit her husband. My sister, who was four or five at the time, still has several watercolor renderings the woman did of her. The woman who served as director of the Women’s USO roomed with us for quite some time and we spent many hours at the building, a former residence. An interesting experience one night at our house involving a roomer came as we were sitting in the living room talking. She looked at my father and calmly said, “There’s a man peeking in the side window.” Dad arose and slowly walked towards the back of the house. He slipped out the back door and went around the house behind the shrubbery to where he could see the man. It was a soldier. Dad was on him before he knew what was happening. He reached up with his right hand and got hold of the man’s collar and twisted it along with his tie. His Mason’s ring was putting pressure on the man’s Adams apple. He led him to the front door and asked mother to call the police. The call was monitored by the Military Police so they sent a vehicle to pick up the man. What made this so interesting was that my father, who was a WWI ammunition truck drive in France, was about five feet seven inches tall but quite fearless.

Like many towns and cities we had air raid drills conducted by wardens who were assisted by messengers. I was a messenger. When the warden I worked with saw lights during a drill he would instruct me to go up to the house, knock on the door and ask them to turn off the lights. We used flashlights with blue paper over the lens so the light could not be spotted from aircraft.

All across the United States people were asked to salvage a lot of items that had previously been thrown out, including newspapers and magazines. There was a competitive drive in Tullahoma and I don’t recall if it was through the Boy Scouts or just a general drive sponsored by the city but I was a participant. My father found a large heavy corrugated box and helped me tie it on my wagon. I went to friends and strangers alike and asked if they had newspapers and magazines I could pick up. In the process I was in attics, storerooms, basements, sheds and barns and handled hundreds of pounds of both dusty and damp paper. The best I remember I came in second, walking and using only my wagon.

Upcoming Invasion
Camp Forrest was huge, covering 85,000 acres. I believe every classification of Army personnel was trained there. From the day the United States declared war on Germany it was no secret that eventually there would be an invasion of Europe. In preparation for the invasion thousands of troops began arriving at the post for maneuvers. Middle Tennessee was chosen since the terrain more nearly resembled that of France. While a lot of the maneuvers took place in the country outside of towns, it was not uncommon to see vehicles, men and weapons set up inside Tullahoma. One morning I went out the front door and saw a soldier in a tree near the street. He told me to be quiet and move away so as not to give away his position. Another time an anti-tank gun and crew was set up in front of our house, watching traffic at an intersection on the main street.

William Northern Field, on the other side of town from the camp, was a B-24 heavy-bomber training base. Townspeople parked on a road known as “bombers lane” to watch the B-24’s do touch and go landings. But it was also a staging area for transport planes that took paratrooper trainees from the camp to a practice drop zone between Tullahoma and Manchester. We joined many other residents in watching the troopers jump. It was always exciting but on one occasion turned tragic as a man’s chute opened but failed to deploy. It was known as a “roman candle.” He did not survive the fall. Northern Field was also a staging area for transports that towed gliders loaded with troops and supplies to a landing area between Tullahoma and Shelbyville.

once I sold papers to some of them they would ask me to come by every day. If we missed Roy’s pickup we could catch a bus and ride back to Tullahoma. Right after lunch we went to the office and turned in money for the papers we sold that morning. Papers just received were loaded in the woody, we climbed in and the whole process began over again. Roy worked until 1944 when the camp closed. He entered the military shortly thereafter. There was at least one other paper distributing company. Their employees sold papers that were selected according to home states and hometowns of the troops in training. Their papers came from cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City.

Several things stand out in my mind regarding my summer of selling papers at Camp Forrest. One morning as I was going around picking up money prior to catching a bus for Tullahoma I got to the location under a PX and found a boy from another company had left a stack of his papers and taken the money soldiers had left when they bought one of my papers. The only thing for me to do was try to sell the other papers so I would have money to turn in for my papers. I went in a nearby barracks and a soldier asked me what I was doing back there so soon. After telling him what happened he said, “Here, give me those papers.” He went to other soldiers in the barracks and said, “Buy a paper!” When he came back he handed me money that represented a lot more than the printed sales price of the papers. My age and small size probably had something to do with it.

For several weeks I sold in the base hospital. There were a number of wards in separate buildings connected by a series of hallways. One morning I put a stack of papers in a hallway and since it was so early I sat down beside the papers. I went to sleep and slumped over where my head came to rest on the papers. When I awoke there was money in my tin can and several people told me some really cute nurses came along, saw me asleep and gently lifted my head so they could get papers. I took a lot of kidding about the incident. I didn’t remember anything about it. All I can say is there was money in the can.

Presidents Visit
Another memorable time was when President Franklin Roosevelt visited the camp. I watched his motorcade from in front of a service club building on the main road into the post.

Camp Peay
As if Camp Forrest and Northern Field weren’t enough, there was a third thing that made Tullahoma unique. In 1926, Tennessee built a national guard camp on the eastern outskirts and named it Camp Peay after 1920’s Governor Austin Peay. In 1943 a POW camp was established in what had been the Camp Peay/Camp Forrest area. The wife of a camp commander was a roomer at our house. We went to the camp with her several times to eat.

Many times I have thought about the men and women to whom I sold papers, those who stayed at our house or who visited us and all the others with whom we had contact during the days of Camp Forrest. Did they survive the invasion? Did they return home after the war? I will always have fond memories of them.