EMBARKATION AT BORDEAUX
Photo by Signal Corps
LEFT BEHIND
Upon the debarkation camps at the Atlantic ports fell the chief work of splitting up the returning expedition into demobilization units. There were five major debarkation camps—Merritt, Mills, and Upton at New York, and Stuart and Hill at Newport News—besides numerous smaller centers at both ports. At the height of the return movement these camps were insufficient to accommodate the incoming thousands, and the Transportation Service used former training camps as debarkation camps, in both the Hoboken and Chesapeake districts. As long as Boston and Charleston acted as ports of debarkation they, too, made use of neighboring training camps.
Of all of the debarkation camps, Camp Merritt was the largest. In it were to be observed some of the most interesting processes of troop demobilization. It was the principal camp both for reception of overseas casual companies and for the breaking-up of organized units and the formation of casual detachments for distribution among the thirty-three demobilization centers.
During demobilization Camp Merritt was like a great terminal post office. The mail consisted of bulk consignments of soldier members of the disintegrating American Expeditionary Forces. It was the task of the post office to sort the mail for thirty-three principal destinations. The individual soldiers were thrown into receptacles called Hoboken Casual Companies, each, when filled up, consisting of two officers and 150 men, and each addressed to one or another of the demobilization centers. Each bore an identifying number, and the numbers ran consecutively, reaching well into four figures before the work came to an end.
Special trains frequently left the two railroad stations which served Camp Merritt. Sometimes an entire train would be loaded with casual companies bound for the same center. Other trains were made up of special cars destined for different terminals. In the camp new casual companies in skeletal form were constantly being organized. Those scheduled to travel to the less populous sections of the country might be several days in filling up to standard strength. Others reached full size in a few hours. As soon as a casual company was complete, it was dispatched immediately to its proper demobilization camp. For several months in the spring and summer of 1919 the average interval between the time a skeleton company was formed and the time it was dispatched from camp was less than twenty-four hours.
Before the armistice, troops which had been inspected, equipped for the overseas voyage, and otherwise prepared at Camp Merritt, marched east from the camp over three miles of macadamized highway and then down the old Cornwallis trail descending the Palisades, until they reached the little landing on the Hudson River known as Alpine, several miles north of the metropolitan limits of New York. There they boarded ferry-boats and rode on them directly to the transport piers in the North River. After the armistice, soldiers debarking at the piers boarded ferry-boats at the pier ends, rode up the river to Alpine, climbed the Palisades, and marched to Camp Merritt. Those bound for Camp Mills or Camp Upton took ferry to the Long Island Railroad terminal at Long Island City on the East River. Those ticketed for Camp Dix boarded trains which had been run into the Hoboken yard on the spur track constructed there by the Government after it seized the pier property from Germany.
At the debarkation camps the Army applied its final precautions against the importation of European diseases and insect pests. There was a thorough disinfection of all clothing and equipment, and each principal camp maintained a delousing plant. However clean the soldiers might have been when they embarked in France, it was always possible for a few of them to become infested on the transports. So far as is known, not a cootie got through the barrage of steam, superheated air, soap, and hot water laid down by the Army at both ends of the transatlantic ferry route.