FORT CHAFFEE : History lost in barracks blaze
BY DAVE HUGHES
ItÕs never been a high-profile military installation.
But Fort Chaffee has had its moments.
Last week it made headlines in Arkansas when 150 shuttered World-War II-era barracks and warehouses went up in a spectacular fire fanned by high winds.
Many lamented the destruction of the 67-year-old barracks in an area scheduled for redevelopment, because they represented the contribution that western Arkansas made in the war and other historic events.
ÒThere was a 100 percent war effort,Ó former Fort Smith Mayor Jack Freeze said last week. ÒEveryone in town was trying to help. Everyone was on the same team. It was a good feeling.Ó
Sebastian County officials determined the fire was accidental, after investigators said the blaze probably started after high winds knocked down a power line.
First called Camp Chaffee, the installation got its name from Maj. Gen. Adna Romanzo Chaffee who used lessons he learned from World War I to pioneer the idea of integrating armored forces with infantry. Camp Chaffee was to be the conceptÕs first proving grounds.
Rumors circulated in the Fort Smith area in early 1941 that a military installation was going to go up southeast of Fort Smith. Ground was broken on the site on Sept. 20, 1941, records at the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority office show.
The 72, 000 acres set aside for the camp was home to about 1, 300 people and several farming communities, including Cornish, Auburn and Center Valley. The inhabitants were bought out and the communities leveled to make room for the camp.
The construction of the camp drew thousands of workers to the area. Freeze remembered people would rent extra rooms in their homes and many turned their garages into apartments.
Crews worked day and night eventually using 40 million board feet of lumber, 1 million pounds of nails and 15, 000 gallons of paint to build the 1, 187 buildings and 786 motor bays at Camp Chaffee.
Construction lasted from September 1941 to March 1942.
Whether they had buildings or not, the troops began arriving, the first reaching Camp Chaffee in the days following JapanÕs attack on Pearl Harbor of Dec. 7, 1941. At its peak, Camp Chaffee had room to house 30, 000 soldiers.
The Sixth Armored Division was the first to train at Camp Chaffee, using 50, 000 of its 72, 000 acres for maneuver grounds to hone its tactics and prepare for war.
The Sixth went to Europe, redevelopment authority records show, landing at Utah Beach in Normandy, France, on July 18, 1944, six weeks after D-Day.
Attached to Lt. Gen. George PattonÕs Third Army, the 69 th Tank Battalion of the Sixth Armored Division was one of the units that relieved forces surrounded at Bastogne, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.
CROWDED STREETS At home, Fort Smith prospered. Even though he was still in high school, Freeze got a job driving a cleanerÕs truck to and from Camp Chaffee. He said he was glad to have a job but later found better work at a local radio station. He recalled that soldiers from the base swarmed the towns surrounding the camp. A person could hardly walk down the sidewalks in downtown Fort Smith because they were crowded with soldiers, he said. His mother would take pity on soldiers at church and would routinely feed them lunch. Camp Chaffee also was a prisoner-of-war camp. The camp held about 3, 000 German prisoners from January 1943 to May 1946.
After World War II ended in 1945, the Army mothballed Camp Chaffee, placing it on inactive status on July 31, 1946. For the next 20 years, the camp, which became Fort Chaffee in 1956, would open and close as national or international events dictated.
It opened when the Korean War began in 1950 and again in 1961 during the Berlin Crisis when the Soviet Union walled off East Berlin.
FAMOUS HAIRCUT Fort Chaffee probably owed its greatest claim to fame to one man and one haircut. Elvis Presley spent three days at Fort Chaffee in March 1958 after he was inducted into the Army. It was there he received that famous haircut. Fred Kinslow of Greenwood was 24 and a barber at Fort Chaffee at the time. He was standing near the singer when the locks came off, but he was left out of the pictures circulated worldwide of Presley getting trimmed. He said the owner of the barbershop franchise at Chaffee, H. L. Sallee, told him he would be the one to cut PresleyÕs hair. But at the last minute, James ÒPeteÓ Peterson, supervisor of the barbers, decided he would do the cutting. Kinslow remembered it was so crowded in the shop with reporters and photographers it was difficult to move around. Presley was mobbed wherever he went on the installation. ÒI donÕt know whether he got any sleep with all the cameras on him all the time,Ó Kinslow said. After three days at Fort Chaffee, Presley was sent to Texas to complete his basic training.
REFUGEE CENTER In January 1965, Fort Chaffee was designated a base for National Guard and Army Reserve troops with the mission of providing annual training for 25, 000 soldiers each summer. It has retained that mission.
Five days before the fall of Saigon in Vietnam on April 25, 1975, Fort Chaffee was designated by the Department of the Army as a refugee center for Vietnamese and Laotians fleeing Southeast Asia.
The first refugees arrived at the Fort Smith airport on May 2, 1975. Freeze said he, then-Gov. David Pryor and refugee center commander Brig. Gen. James Cannon were at the airport to greet them. Then-President Ford also was there.
Freeze, who called Fort Chaffee the refugeesÕ ÒPlymouth Rock,Ó said the newcomers were happy to be at Fort Chaffee and in the United States.
After the first two weeks, 24, 000 southeast Asian refugees had arrived on 194 flights. They were housed in 237 barracks. The population peaked at 25, 055 in June 1975.
A total of 47, 280 refugees came through the fort by Dec. 11, 1975, and the processing center closed on Dec. 20. Most of the refugees moved away, but a number stayed, to this day.
Fort Chaffee made national headlines when Cuban refugees being held there rioted in June 1980.
Many of the 18, 000 refugees of the Mariel boatlift were angry because the processing was too slow, according to news accounts.
About 770 refugees broke through the fortÕs front gate and began running to nearby Barling.
Many of the refugees had been released from Cuban prisons and sent to the United States. Former Fort Smith Police Chief Henry Oliver remembers residents who were apprehensive about the Cubans because of the trouble they caused, and the danger to those who worked at the fort. The escaping Cubans outnumbered the Arkansas State Police and Sebastian County sheriffÕs deputies, but the officers, using night sticks and shotguns, beat back some of the mob before they broke through. Six refugees were shot and 56 were injured. Sixteen state troopers, three military police and two civilians were injured. ÒThey were trouble from the time they got here,Ó Oliver said. ÒEveryone was glad to see them go.Ó
The last of the Cuban refugees left Fort Chaffee on Feb. 4, 1982. A total of 25, 390 passed through the processing center there.
HOLLYWOOD CALLING The large number of World War II-era buildings at Fort Chaffee made perfect backdrops for war movies. Two studio pictures about World War II were filmed at Chaffee: A SoldierÕs Story in 1983, and Biloxi Blues in 1986. In the mid-1990 s, the HBO movie The Tuskegee Airmen was filmed there. In 1987, Army officials recognized Fort ChaffeeÕs 50, 000 acres of unbroken training ground as a good site for a Joint Readiness Training Center to train thousands of rapid-response light infantry soldiers, bringing in about 1, 000 to train every two weeks. The center was moved to Fort Polk, La., in 1993 and remains in operation there. The federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission slated Fort Chaffee for realignment in 1995. The Department of Defense retained possession of most of Fort Chaffee but leased some of the land to Arkansas, which operates the Fort Chaffee Maneuver Training Center.
About 7, 000 acres on the west side of the fort was declared surplus and was turned over for redevelopment to the civilian Fort Chaffee Public Trust. That area is now part of the cities of Fort Smith and Barling and of Sebastian County.
Since its release from the military, the areaÕs name has changed to Chaffee Crossing. It has become the site of the 100-acre Janet Huckabee Arkansas River Valley Nature Center, and Graphic Packaging moved its Fort Smith plant there.
In November, Mars Petcare US Inc. announced in November plans to build an $ 80 million dog food plant at Chaffee Crossing.
The fire started at Chaffee Crossing, and Sebastian County Judge David Hudson said last week his disaster declaration was made to determine if the area was eligible for state or federal funds to help pay for removing any hazardous material from the site, or for reimbursing tenants of destroyed buildings who lost property and the agencies that spent resources fighting the fire.
The destroyed World War II buildings contained asbestos and lead-based paint, but a Sebastian County official said the public wasnÕt in danger from the release of the asbestos and lead in the fire.
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