The crating of trucks saved 75 per cent of the ship space formerly required. The crating crews became so facile that they could take down and pack in a single day from a mile and a half to two miles of trucks. This unique shop cost $500,000.
The construction at Camp Holabird started February 4, 1918. The camp now occupies 144 acres and has a cantonment for 7,000 men. The 22 buildings of an abandoned distillery on the ground were remodeled to serve as permanent storehouses for the millions of dollars' worth of tools and motor-vehicle parts which the Government acquired in the war.
ARMY HOSPITALS.
For the Surgeon General's Department the Construction Division constructed hospitals in this country providing accommodations for a total of 121,000 patients, 12,000 nurses, 4,000 doctors, and 34,000 hospital operation and maintenance troops. There were 294 of these hospitals in all, built at a total cost of $127,725,000 and divided into three types: base hospitals located at the various training camps, departmental hospitals located at various other Army posts, and general hospitals for the reception of sick and wounded men returning from France. The construction of general hospitals did not cease with the signing of the armistice, and at a recent date it had provided 97,000 beds for patients.
The builders adopted a standardized type of hospital construction. The unit in this type was a single-story ward building of frame construction lined in the interior with gypsum board or some similar material. An open porch along the entire length of one side of the ward building provided opportunity for convalescents to be wheeled outdoors. Each ward had room for 34 beds and also had a diet kitchen, a nurses' room, a doctors' room, lavatories, and an inclosed solarium at the end. These buildings were connected with each other by inclosed corridors running through the clear. At the Fox Hills Hospital, Staten Island, N. Y., there was a mile and a quarter of this corridor construction. The corridors in each case fed in toward the central administration group of buildings in which were located the operating rooms and the various laboratories.
As crews developed their teamwork some marvelous instances of speed were shown in putting up the buildings. One crew of 566 men at Fox Hills erected a complete hospital wing in one working day. At 7 o'clock in the morning the ground of the site was untouched. That night at 6 o'clock a 40-bed ward was standing finished on the site—painted, equipped with heating and ventilating apparatus, all plumbing installed, the last electric bulb screwed in, and in every respect ready for occupancy. It was like magic; yet soon thereafter the Construction Division had set the period of 10 hours as the standard time for building one of these wings.
General Hospital No. 3 located at Otisville, N. Y., has a capacity of 579 beds and is a complete military hospital plant designed for the treatment of tubercular cases. A short summary of the work done upon it will give an idea of the general nature of the construction problems incident to the building of the military hospitals during the winter and spring of 1918.
On February 2, 1918, the Constructing Quartermaster with a few officers and clerks arrived at the site of the hospital, about 37 acres of land, near the village of Otisville, Orange County, N. Y., on the southern slope of Shawangunk Mountain. The contractor and his organization came on the same day. They found the site covered with snow and with no accommodations even for the office force of the Constructing Quartermaster or the contractor, except an old creamery building, which was promptly rented and into which the two organizations moved the next day.
Actual work was started February 5 and continued through every severity of weather until the project was completed in the early part of July. The work was interrupted, hindered, and hampered by snow and mud, by transportation congestion preventing the delivery of materials on time, by the absence of local labor and the necessity for importing labor from near-by markets wherever it could be procured, and by the consequent necessity for running special trains to transport laborers to and from the job. No local facilities existed for housing any of the workmen, and temporary accommodations had to be built to accommodate 200 Italian laborers both in the matter of shelter and food.
The average height above sea level of the site of this hospital is a little over 1,000 feet. It was found after construction began that the site was full of springs, which caused further trouble and difficulty in developing the building operations.