Currahee Mountain was selected as the site for the first Parachute Infantry Training Center.
The Camp Toccoa location was first established in 1938 as a training
camp for the Georgia National Guard. It was named Camp General Robert
Toombs in honor of the Confederate general from the War between the
States. It was just a wilderness camp with no facilities until the War
Department chose the location for a paratrooper basic training site
shortly after WWII was declared.
Cadre personnel arrived at Toccoa June 1942 for the purposes of
organizing and training paratroopers at Camp General Robert Toombs. The
story goes that Colonel Robert F. Sink, 506th Regimental Commander,
thought that it was bad psychology to have young men arrive at Toccoa,
travel Route 13 past a casket factory to learn to jump at Camp "Tombs",
so he persuaded the Department of the Army to change the name to Camp
Toccoa.
Original plans were for a camp that would accommodate 20,000 or more
men. Two regiments with their supporting units were the maximum there
at any one time, but this only occurred when the training of one
regiment overlapped the training of the previous regiment. The four
regiments organized at Camp Toccoa were the 506th, 501st, 511th, and
517th in that order.
As a Georgia National Guard summer wilderness camp, the area had no
barracks, so tents were used from the beginning. This area was
originally designated as W Company (for "washed out"). If someone could
not make the 3-mile run up Currahee Mountain, they were sent to W
Company and were gone from Camp Toccoa by the end of the next day.
This motley array of seive-like tents was also used to house the new
men who had yet to pass their physical exam. Cow Company was an
unforgettable experience. Running water was available in every tent
from the little streams that always ran through them. The beds would
settle in the mud, and soon men would be sleeping at ground level with
the water running by their ears!
The first barracks were small tar-papered buildings from a Franklin
County CCC camp, which were dismantled, hauled to Camp Toombs, and
reassembled.
Source:
506th Airborne Infantry Regiment. Camp Toccoa, Georgia, 1942.
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