CHAPTER II.
A CAMP BELCHED FORTH.
On that eventful day in 1914, when the war clouds broke over Europe, the farmers of Anne Arundel county, Maryland, in the then peaceful land of the United States, toiled with their ploughshares under the glisten of the bright sun; content with their lot of producing more than half of the tomato crop of the country; content to harvest their abundant crops of strawberries and cucumbers and corn, to say nothing of the wonderful orchards of apples and pears, and not forgetting the wild vegetation of sweet potatoes.
The peaceful, pastoral life in the heart of Maryland, however, was destined to be disturbed. A vast American army was needed and the vast army, then in the process of organization, needed an abode for training. Battery D and the 311th Field Artillery was organized on paper soon after the call for 678,000 selected service men was decided upon. The personnel of the new organization was being determined by the selective service boards. Officers to command the organization were under intensive instruction at Fort Niagara, New York. All that was needed to bring the organization into official military being was a point of concentration.
The task of locating sites for the sixteen army cantonments, decreed to birth throughout the United States, presented many difficulties. What could be more natural, however, than the fertile farm lands of Anne Arundel county, almost within shadow of the National Capital, to be selected as the site of a cantonment to be named after General George Gordon Meade?
Territory in the immediate vicinity of Admiral and Disney was the ideal selection: ideal because the territory is only eighteen miles from Baltimore, the metropolis of the South; one hundred miles from Philadelphia, the principal city of the State which was to furnish most of the recruits; and twenty-two miles from Washington, the Capital of the Nation.
Situated between the heart of the South and the heart of the Nation, Camp Meade is easily accessible by rail. Ease of access through mail-line facilities, was a necessity for transportation of building materials and supplies before and during construction. The same facilities furnished the transportation for the large bodies of troops that were sent to and from the camp; also assured the cantonment its daily supply of rations.
Admiral Junction furnished adequate railroad yard for the camp. The Baltimore and Ohio railroad station is at Disney, about one-half mile west of Admiral; while the Pennsylvania Railroad junction on the main line between Baltimore and Washington is at Odenton, about one and one-half miles east of Admiral. Naval Academy Junction is near Odenton and is the changing point on the electric line between the two chief cities. The magic-like upbuild of the cantonment, moreover, was the signal for the extension of the electric line to encircle the very center of the big military city, thus adding an additional link of convenience.
Camp Meade having been officially decided upon as the home of the 79th Division, a sanitary engineer, a town planner, and an army officer, representing the commanding general, were named to meet on the ground, where they inspected the location, estimated its difficulties, and then proceeded to make a survey in the quickest way possible, calling upon local engineers for assistance and asking for several railroad engineering corps.
The town-planner, or landscape architect, then drew the plans for the cantonment, laying it out to conform with the topography of the location and taking into consideration railroad trackage, roads, drainage, and the like. Given the site it was the job of the town-planner to distribute the necessary buildings and grounds of a typical cantonment as shown in type plans.