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Atterbury Museum Part
of Dream
The Republic, Columbus, Ind.,
Thursday, February 27, 1997
by Harry McCawley
It's been a lot of
years since members of the 83rd Infantry Division trooped through the
streets of Camp Atterbury.
For some who will
return there the morning of August 21, it will have been an absence of
more than a half century.
The old Army base north
of Columbus will look a lot different than it did when it was a Mud
City back in the early 1940s, but if people like Jorg Stachel and Ames
and Helen Miller have their way, there will always be reminders of the
base when it was home to thousands of young men preparing for war.
Ames and Helen will be
the official hosts for the visit by the old soldiers on August 21.
The Columbus residents and other volunteers will provide guided tours
of the deactivated Army base when a group of the veterans leaves the
national division reunion which will be held August 20-23 at the Adams
Mark Hotel in Indianapolis.
It'll be the first time
the 83rd has selected Indiana as a reunion site for several years,
although an important chunk of the division's history in World War II
originated at Camp Atterbury. When the base was opened in 1942,
it was the 83rd Division that provided he christening.
Ames Miller had been
part of the permanent cadre that welcomed the new recruits o the basic
training facility. After several months of training young
soldiers, Ames shipped out with one of the the units as part of the
D-Day invasion. He was wounded in France and returned to the
United States where he decided to settle near the base where he had
helped train so many.
Today, he and Helen
still are part of Camp Atterbury, and those ties involve much more
that serving as tour guides for a division reunion.
In fact, Camp Atterbury
seems to have a strange hold over a lot of people.
It's been several years
since Jorg Stachel was base commander, but he's still an active player
in the development of the old base as a tourist attraction.
Stachel, who retired
from active duty several years ago, is coordinating a drive to
establish a museum on camp property to highlight the history of the
base.
Earlier this week, he
met with officials of the Columbus-based Custer Foundation which
donated $10,000 to the establishment of an Atterbury museum.
"We look upon this
as seed money," said Dick Willmore of Columbus, president of the
local foundation established in the name of Clarence and Inez Custer.
"We hope that other foundations and groups will follow our lead
in helping make this a reality."
Stachel estimates that
the vision of an indoor museum, tracing the development of the base
from Indiana farmland through its various lives as a government
installation, will require an investment of $90,000. The Custer
gift and other contributions have left a goal of $40,000 still to be
realized.
"We've already got
a building selected for the facility," he said. "It's one of
the old World War II wooden buildings that served as a warehouse.
We'll divide it into sections, which will include administrative
offices, a visitor's center and a large display space for the various
stages of the camp's development.
There'll even be a
display dealing with the land and people as they were before the camp
was developed. In fact, many of the families who were displaced
as a result of the base construction are actively involved in this
project.
So are the present
users of the property. Stachel has maintained the
"can-do" reputation by forging links with military units,
Job Corps personnel, officials with the Indiana Department of
Correction and other volunteers in planning the actual construction of
the facility.
The museum is actually
the third stage in a four-stage project which Stachel and other
interested parties launched in the late 1980s.
The first step was in
the restoration of the Chapel in the Meadows - the small church which
was built by Italian prisoners of war when they were detained here
during World War II.
Stage 2 was the
construction of the Camp Atterbury Memorial to the south of Hospital
Road near the entrance to the military reservation. The memorial
was dedicated several years ago to the various units which were
quartered at the camp over the years and contains several major pieces
of military armament.
While Stachel and his
committee are looking to 1998 as a completion target for the museum,
they also are laying the groundwork for the fourth and final stage in
the process - a living history World War II barracks which hopefully
will be completed in time for the 21st century.
"We have set aside
a couple of the old barracks buildings for this project," Stachel
said. "We hope to restore them to just how they would have
looked as far back as World War II."
The Project certainly
will be evocative for anyone who ever lived in one of these wooden
cream-colored barracks from World War II into the Vietnam conflict.
People who have had the
experience will find themselves transported back in time through the
open shower facilities, the double-decker cots, the foot lockers and
the three-sided coal bin outside the building.
While all that is a
pretty impressive resume-agenda combination, Stachel is especially
delighted with a singular achievement.
"We managed to
finally get Camp Atterbury put on the Indiana Tourism map," he
said.
Perhaps some from the
old brown boot army might shudder at the transformation of a part of
their military upbringing into a tourist attraction, but it is a
natural because of the market for this type of display.
A lot of men and women
have lived the military experience that is being evoked in the
restoration process and, when finally told about it, will want to
relive it.
That's why Jorg Stachel
wants to make his living history barracks as realistic as possible.
"We even plan to
have butt cans nailed to the center posts," the Army veteran
laughed. He paused then and added, "I suppose though,
we'll probably have to put No Smoking signs above them,"
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