HIST-ARCHers,

This past summer, as part of our cooperative agreement with
Shenandoah National Park, our students and faculty documented a WWII
camp at Big Meadows.  Constructed in October 1943 by the Army Corps
of Engineers out of Fort Belvoir ("Fighting Fifth"), this was an
Engineer Replacement Training Camp (ERTC) where recruits with limited
training came to learn construction and demolition skills.  After two
weeks, they were shipped out to the European theatre where they were
engaged in building and/or demolishing roads and bridges.  Our
reading of WWII ACE history tells us that many of these young men
were involved in D-Day.

We are still not certain why the Big Meadows location was chosen for
this ERTC, although we have learned that the US military regularly
used public lands for training during this era.  The Big Meadows
"tent city" covered approximately 30 acres and included a few modular
structures used for equipment storage and mess.   Living quarters
were various types and sizes of canvas tents (not a lot of fun during
the winter of 1943-1944 -- photos depict ice-encrusted tents). Every
two weeks a new group of 2000 soldiers came to the ERTC; they stayed
at the base camp only one night, spending the bulk of their time
training at bivouacs through the Park.

We've been lucky enough to find several veterans who are helping us
understand the camp layout.  We have a few photos and camp newspaper
articles, and only recently found a map of the camp, so the
archaeological study has been challenging.  We have worked with Fort
Belvoir historians, National Archives, as well as the folks at the
ACE Archives and have had very little luck finding military documents
pertaining to the camp.  This was *intended* as a temporary camp, and
all buildings/tents were removed by late 1944, so surface signatures
of the tents or buildings are extremely limited.

We are currently in the process of analyzing our GPS mapping and
repeat photography projects for the site.  While in the field, we
mapped approx. 20 different types of features, ranging from latrines
to tent platforms to depressions for stoves associated with tents.
We have not developed an excavation design for the camp, but we test
pitted at 25' intervals in one section -- not a single historic
artifact.  This mirrors our finding at the Big Meadows CCC camp (just
upslope), where the only historic artifacts were window pane glass,
tar paper fragments,  and roofing nails from the removal of the
buildings.  We attribute this to maniacal KP.

Several of my students at I will be presenting on this at the Uplands
Archaeology in the East conference in Feb. 2004.

Carole Nash
Dept. of Soc/Anth
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA