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Camp Hancock
The Declaration of War and the Selective Service Act
On April 6,
1917, the United States declared war on Germany, thereby entering World
War I. For about two years, Georgia's newspapers had been writing
against the war because of its negative impact on the state's economy.
Yet almost overnight the media changed their tune, becoming anti-German
and strongly patriotic.
Federal Installations and War Camps
The state had
five major federal military installations when the United States
entered the war in 1917. The oldest garrison was
Atlanta, which opened in 1889; the newest was Fort Oglethorpe,
constructed near the Tennessee border just a few years after the
Tybee Island, guarded the entrance to the
Camp Hancock.
Georgia had
many war-training camps as well. The large national army cantonment at
Camp Gordon, which opened in July 1917, was located in Chamblee,
northeast of Atlanta, and was the training site of the famous
Eighty-second All-American Division. The division included men from
several different states, but Georgians made up almost half its number.
National Guard training camps were based in Augusta and
Souther Field, located northeast of
The
Otranto Disaster
On the morning
of September 25, 1918, about 690 doughboys (infantrymen), mostly
Georgians from Fort Screven, boarded the old British liner Otranto,
which set sail with a large Allied convoy bound for England. The
Otranto was a medium-sized, prewar passenger liner that, like so
many others, had been pressed into military service by the British
Royal Navy. As the convoy entered the Irish Sea on October 6, still a
day from port, the storm became worse, with gale-force winds. A
tremendous wave struck the Kashmir, a converted troopship within
the convoy, causing it to break ranks and veer hard. It rammed at full
steam into the unsuspecting Otranto and caused severe damage to
the liner. With a gaping hole in her side and a loss of power, the
Otranto was helpless against the strong, storm-driven current, and
she began to drift toward the nearby Scottish island of Islay and its
rocky coast. The Otranto began to sink slowly before a huge wave
pushed the ship onto Islay's rocks. The ship broke apart and quickly
sank. Approximately 370 men were killed, an estimated 130 of whom were
Georgians.
In late
September 1918, new draftee replacements for the Fort Screven Coast
Artillery units began reporting to the infirmary seriously ill. Within
a few days, it became clear that the men had contracted the dreaded
Spanish influenza. On October 1 the number of ill at Augusta's Camp
Hancock jumped from 2 to 716 in just a few hours. The next day, Camp
Gordon near Atlanta reported that 138 soldiers had contracted the
virus. On October 5 Camp Hancock was quarantined with 3,000 cases of
flu, but the quarantine came too late, as 47 cases had already reached
the nearby city; by evening, more than 50 soldiers were dead, while
many more had contracted pneumonia. Though seriously affected by the
Spanish flu epidemic, Georgia escaped the massive numbers of sick and
dying counted in other states along the East Coast.
World War I
officially ended on November 11, 1918, known as Armistice Day. Most
Americans wanted to remember the war and the sacrifice of the men who
had fought in it. This spirit of remembrance led to Armistice Day being
recognized as a new national holiday. The tragic sinking of the HMS
Otranto had stunned many Georgia communities, perhaps none more
than the small town of Nashville. The seat of a sparsely populated and
agricultural.
In 1922 two of
America's war dead received special recognition and a large memorial
site in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. These
fallen young men represented America's Unknown and Known Soldiers,
comprising the nation's unknown or missing dead and all of the known
troops killed during World War I. Congress chose
Floyd County's lost lives.
Suggested
Reading:
Bert E. Boss,
The Georgia State Memorial Book (N.p.: [American
Memorial], 1921).
Milton R.
Ready, "Georgia's Entry into World War I," Georgia Historical
Quarterly 52 (September 1968): 256-64.
Gerald E. Shenk,
"Race, Manhood, and Manpower: Mobilizing Rural Georgia for World War
I," Georgia Historical Quarterly 81 (fall 1997): 622-62.
Joseph M.
Toomey, Georgia's Participation in the World War and the History
of the Department of Georgia, the American Legion (Macon, Ga.:
J. W. Burke, 1936).
Todd Womack, Wiregrass Historical Society |
