In the flurry of January 1942, weeks after the U.S. declared war on Japan, the first building went up on what was then called Camp Carson, just south of Colorado Springs.

During construction a sign on base read: “Work boys — We’ll drown them in our sweat,” according to a book the Army gifted to Penrose Library about the early days of Fort Carson.

During World War II, the camp trained over 100,000 soldiers and housed thousands of prisoners of war from Italy, Germany and Japan.

The 89th was the first division activated at the base and went on to play a key role in the war. The troops with the “Rolling W” liberated the first concentration camp of the war, Ohrdruf, and over 59 days of battle the division took over 40,000 prisoners, according to an account on the division’s website.

After World War II, the division was inactivated and Camp Carson’s population plummeted, but despite a fire that destroyed 92 buildings on post in 1950, the installation was repurposed and designated a formal fort in 1954. During the 1950s it hosted mountain warfare training and dog training where four-legged friends learned to carry food, ammunition and medical supplies, among other missions.

It’s colorful, early history of Camp Carson from 1942 to 1960 that fills in one small piece of the 250 years of Army history the country is honoring today and some of the most pivotal for the region.

Early days of camp

Right before WWII Colorado Springs leaders worked to attract an Army presence in town to supplement the tourism industry that suffered during the Great Depression. A survey in 1940 found that 1,500 homes in Colorado Springs were vacant, according to “Fort Carson, A Tradition of Victory,” a book the Army published.

Then, as now, growth was controversial and water was a central concern. The book states: “Squabbles arose among the town’s residents over whether the proposed camp would bring disaster to the town’s water supply. A few irate citizens protested that their peaceful town would never be the same.”

The contract for the camp was won before war was declared in 1941, as the Army was staffing up, and it appealed to the Army, in part, because its climate allowed for year-round training.

It was one of nearly 60 new training camps set up in 1941 and 1942, according to the National Parks Service.

“The Army explodes from a small frontier force that we had drawn down to post World War I, to hundreds of thousands,” explained Daniel Roberts, the Fort Carson museum’s curator.

The training at Fort Carson covered a huge range of skills including combat, logistics, nursing, cooking, mule packing, he said. Among those who came to train at the base included a Greek infantry battalion and an Italian ordinance company who fought with the allies.

The camp went up fast, but was not built to last because some buildings were built with pressed board and tarpaper. Some had an expected life of five years, according to an archeological report on the base.

Prisoners of war housed at Camp Carson

The prisoner of war camp that went up on base near Colorado Highway 115 and Academy Boulevard housed first Italians and then largely Germans. At the height of internment, 12,000 Germans were held at the camp, The Gazette reported in 1946. Other sources cite a lower top number around 9,000 prisoners.

Another 20 branch camps were established across the state, the report said.

Many were put to work in the community and on farms, some tending beets. Others attended classes on base such as German, English, history, geology, mathematics, chemistry, bookkeeping and trades.

They also put out a newspaper and produced a book called “Pikes Peak Laughs,” poking fun at camp conditions. The book was recently translated by the Pikes Peak Library District.

In one cartoon strip, a prisoner is frustrated with hair loss, goes to a barber and comes out totally bald “to the joy of his comrades.”

The archeological report quoted a letter from a camp prisoner describing the conditions.

“Dear Parents, If I only could hope that you are getting along as well as I am. During my whole time of military service I have not been able to do so much for myself as in the short time I am here. I am getting along first rate with my studies, although it costs me some hours of sleep.”

The camp also made national headlines when in 1943, the prisoners decorated their canteens to look like old fashioned beer gardens using decorations, chairs and tables made in the prisoners’ woodcraft shops, the report said.

After the war, the prisoners and remains of those who had died in America were returned home.

The report was authored in the 1990s and the authors found very little source material was left behind. Roberts explained that it was simply because the effort was over and the camp wasn’t needed anymore. No remnants of the camp remain, he said.

Exploits of the 89th Division

While Camp Carson’s prisoners were generally well fed and cared for, American soldiers trained at Carson were some of the first to see some of the horrors of concentration camps in Germany.

In a personal account published on the 89th Division’s website, Bruce Nichols recalled walking into Ohrdruf, a camp administratively associated with Buchenwald.

Nichols wrote the camp was unremarkable from the outside surrounded by a high barbed wire fence and located in the forest. Inside, the Americans found 60 to 70 prisoners had been killed with machine gun fire the previous day because they were too weak to leave.

In a shed, he found bodies stacked as you would stack cordwood and each layer was coated with quicklime, he wrote.

Nichols had trouble processing the experience and wrote about it in a letter to his parents. They took it to gatherings of businessmen, but it was widely disbelieved, he wrote.

Gens. Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton and Omar Bradley all visited the camp and Patton later threw up.

The division also fought in several key battles. The first was in 1945, as they crossed the Moselle River in Germany, catching the enemy by surprise and encountering fairly light resistance. The assault started in the middle of the night on March 15, with riflemen paddling across the river in boats. By noon, five infantry battalions had made it across the river, according to an account on the division’s website.

During the afternoon, Pvt. Harold Seehofer led the advance into the village of Zell, moving from building to building under heavy fire.

“By sacrificing his life in final charge of a strong point, he (enabled) the rest of his company to secure the town with minimum casualties,” division said.

At the end of the war, nearly 10,000 members of the division went home, while about 9,000 went back to Germany as part of the occupation or to France as part of a “closeout” force.

Mountain training at Carson post war

After World War II, Fort Carson was not home to any divisions, but it did host some specialized training at the Mountain and Cold Weather Training Command, among other units. The command helped prepare troops before they headed out to fight in the Korean War.

Some senior members of the 10th Mountain Division who fought in Italy and trained at Camp Hale helped lead the training, explained Lance Blyth, command historian for Northern Command and the North America Aerospace Defense Command. Blyth also recently finished a book on the 10th Mountain Division called “Ski, Climb, Fight.”

The command would send troops to North Cheyenne Canyon to practice rock climbing in the summer, where tourists could come watch. The command would also hold events to teach kids to climb, he said. In the winter, they would train at Camp Hale, he explained.

Jim Whittaker was among the instructors and he would later become the first American to summit Mount Everest. He worked at the command along with his brother, Lou Whittaker. The two were well suited for the work after working as guides on Mount Rainier, Blyth said.

The civilian world greatly informed techniques for training, decades before rock climbing became mainstream.

“It’s the civilian community that has the skills and the gear that’s really unique in military operations,” Blyth said about the training at the time.

Another famous alumni of the school was James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, who commissioned into the Army in 1953 and enjoyed the stark challenge of the training, Blyth said.

The training command moved to Alaska in 1957.

Uncertainty in 1960

In 1960, Fort Carson’s future was again in question, the official history reads. During 1958 and 1959, the camp had a flu outbreak and efficiency experts argued that Fort Carson was too far off the beaten path.

At the same time, the 9th Division that had been stationed at Fort Carson was preparing for inactivation and so when Brig. Gen. Ashton Manhart arrived to take command in 1960, the division included him, his aide and his driver.

Around that same time, the base was slated for closure. But then the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Berlin Blockade justified the reactivation of two divisions, the official history states.

Maj. Gen. John Heintges was assigned to look over Fort Carson and awoke one morning early at The Broadmoor hotel and took walk.

“In the beauty of a Colorado morning, he decided that Carson should remain open,” the official history stated.

Contact the writer at mary.shinn@gazettedev.gazette.com or (719) 429-9264.