Extent of a typical National Army cantonment.
Roads constructed and improvements installed.
A typical cantonment city will house 40,000 men. Each barrack building will house 150 men and provide 500 cubic feet of air space per man. Such a cantonment complete contains between 1,000 and 1,200 buildings and covers about 2,000 acres. In addition, each cantonment has a rifle range, drill, parade, and maneuver grounds of about 2,000 acres. In many cases all or a large part of the entire site had to be cleared of woods and stumps. The various military units were located on principal or primary roads—a regiment being treated as a primary unit. About 25 miles of roads were constructed at each cantonment, and sewers, water supply, lighting facilities, and other improvements installed.
The special buildings required.
An infantry regiment requires 22 barrack buildings, 6 for officers' quarters, 2 storehouses, 1 infirmary building, 28 lavatories, with hot and cold shower baths, or a total of 59 buildings. In addition to the buildings necessary for the regimental units, each cantonment has buildings for divisional headquarters, quartermaster depots, laundry receiving and distributing stations, base hospitals having 1,000 beds, post exchanges, and other buildings for general use.
Remount stations.
At several of the cantonments remount stations have been provided, some of them having a capacity to maintain 12,000 horses.
Other necessary camps.
In addition to the National Army camps, plans were made for the construction of 16 National Guard, two embarkation and one quartermaster training camp, but the construction of these items did not involve so large an expenditure as the National Army camps, as provision was made for fewer units and only tentage quarters for the men in the National Guard camps was provided. Modern storehouses, kitchens, mess shelters, lavatories, shower baths, base hospitals, and remount depots were built, and water, sewerage, heating, and light systems installed at an expenditure of about $1,900,000 for each camp.
The demand for construction and supplies.