In The Desert Cities of Coachella Valley
Coachella Valley
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Photo by Crystle Photography
In 1942, with North Africa's desert warfare still dominated by Hitler's General Rommel, our War Department made an announcement. The US Army would undertake a large scale training program to prepare troops for action in the African desert. The site chosen was a desert expanse east of Indio and the Coachella Valley, an area that in time would also include parts of Arizona and Nevada. Eight thousand officers and men were to constitute a development force under the command of Major General George S. Patton Jr.
Patton's battle experience in World War I had given him positive thoughts on how to successfully fight a war - with armored tanks, considered then, in military history, the cardinal weapon in modern war strategy.
Autumn of 1941 saw thousands of troops marching over Louisiana and the Carolinas in the nation's largest maneuvers. Patton's swift tank corps thrusts won for him and his men the coveted pennant. So Patton began to symbolize, in the beginning of World War II, what General Montgomery symbolized to the British - the "Man of the Hour," the leader to carry us to victory.
James Wellard, in his book on Patton, relates, "Fortunately the War Department saw in Patton a field commander of potential genius, an experienced soldier with imagination."
So in the spring of 1942, Patton and his 8,000 officers and men arrived at Camp Young, the future headquarters of the Desert Training Center. Their task was to put into shape the nucleus of an American "panzer" army, approximating actual desert warfare conditions.
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The 162,000 square mile area was Patton's own choice. He had flown over it, tracked it by car and on foot, surveying it under simulated combat conditions, allowing himself minimum rations, including but one gallon of water per day. It was also "people-less", one reason he decided on it. The other reason - its contours made possible 100 mile marches without opposing troops sighting each other.
He also chose the site of the training center's heart, Camp Young, to be near enough for supplies to arrive at the Southern Pacific Railroad's railheads at Coachella and Indio. At his orders the first beginnings of a camp were made in February 1942. That included 21 year-old Stan Shacklett, then an employee of Kemper Construction Company in Los Angeles.
An early morning call came to the construction company's office from an army officer in Indio. Within minutes Stan's boss directed him to load a Caterpillar D-4 on a truck and drive 30 miles east of Indio. The boss continued, "An army officer will be there to meet you, north side of the highway. There's to be a military base built out there."
Six hours later, Stan met the officer at the designated spot, received directives, and an hour later headed the D-4 north toward the mountains, its steel blades moving rocks and bushes, biting desert earth that would soon echo to the sound of thousands of troops, the roar of half-tracks and tanks. That first road would eventually become the main artery into Patton's Desert Training Center. The immense tent city that mushroomed alon Stan's gravel streets in time had at its heart permanent buildings, a chapel, hospital, theater and commissaries, machine shops and headquarters and regimental offices.
Four months after Patton's arrival, with a "nucleus" of men ready for war action, consisting of units of the 1st Armored Corps, and elements of Second and Third Armies, a call came from General Marshall in Washington DC.
L. Farago, in his book, 'Patton', reports that significant phone call. "It was 10:45 a.m., July 30, 1942. Patton was alone in his office, its stillness mellowed by the purring of the air conditioner. With his acute sense of destiny, the General recognized that the call was one of the turning points of his life. He later told staff members that the first thing he did after that call was to fall on his knees and pray."
Within hours, the General was airborne toward Washington. There he took command of the first American troops that would go into action in a project called "Torch." Its primary objective was the capture of Casablanca, key port of North Africa.
On the night of November 8, 1942, Patton's Western Task Force, consisting of three divisions landed on the French Moroccan coast.
The Indio Daily News, August 31, 1974
After General Patton left the Desert Training Center in August 1942, moving in November on his invasion of North Aftrica, later to chase Rommel across Tunisia and Libya, Major General Alvin C. Gillen Jr. completed the training of those first units left in the thraining center.
But it was General Walton H. Walker who expanded the training program and the area after taking over command of the center in the fall of 1942. If one can say that Patton opened the center for the training of troops, then Walker commanded the center during its most active period. In the years between 1942 and 1944 over a million men were trained here for combat readiness.
After Walker's Third Armored Division arrived at the center, other troops followed in divisions that included quartermaster, artillery and medical. In those months of maneuvers uner command of Walker, the first coordinated battle training was put into operation involving 250,000 men.
General Walker's own division, what was to become the nucleus of the Fourth Armored Corps, later would be known as the famous "Ghost Corps," - the XX under Patton's Third Army - that would pulverize the Germans on a sweep across Europe, through France and into southern Germany and Austria.
General Walker left the then-called Desert Training Theater of Operations in the spring of 1943. Yet another 750,000 men were sent to the center. Out of these troops were formed several divisions that later would join Patton and Walker in Europe.
The training center slowly phased out to a maneuver area in late 1944. During conversations with people who were there during the operations of the Desert Training Center and Camp Young, the following notes were taken.
Along the Colorado River were sites used for pontoon-bridge training. One of the tragedies of those years was when a pontoon bridge gave way, just between Earp and the Parker Dam. The waters of the river were too swift. When the bridge collapsed, over 20 men of several tank crews were plunged into the river, perishing in their buttoned-up machines.
Out at Joseph Chiriaco's Chiriaco Summit - a good place for big home-cooked meals for many a man at the training center - you can still see white frame iron skeletons painted white all stacked in a row that were used to hang over jeeps. In the beginning of the training center hardly a man had a weapon, and heavy combat vehicles came in later. Those frames were placed over jeeps, then draped with canvas painted olive color and simulated tanks were there for the trainee.
On every big tank maneuver, B17 and B24 bombers simulated attack practices over our tank battalions. Those planes were located at Army Air Force fields like at Yuma and Blythe and the crews trained at March Field.
Mrs. S.L. Abersold remembers a flash flood in Indio. "Those days the Indio Hotel had an obliging manager by the name of Haas. He made it possible for army officer groups, their wives and friends, to use the big dining room where real home-cooked meals were served. One night during dinner, a flash flood hit Indio. All the lights in town went out. Haas supplied the candles and our dinner was eaten by candlelight. After dinner there was no let-up in the big rain; all streets in town were running deep with water. There was no other way to get us wives home safely but for our husbands to carry us - which they did, all of us drenched to the skin and our husbands wading through knee-deep rushing water."
I've often wondered after whom Camp Young was named. F.David Hunter remembers the man and the song-saga written about him. The first time I became aware of Camp Young was when I was a patrolman on the natural gas pipeline through the valley back in 1947. In this particular area near Chiriaco Summit, whitewashed rocks were laid out in squares. I asked what the place had been and was told that it had been Camp Young during World War II and that the squares had designated company unit locations. To the best of my knowledge, I recalled then of having read of Roger Young, the first, or one of the first Marines killed in the South Pacific Theater of War, and that a camp east of Indio had been named after him. I remembered too, the song about Roger Young, a saga about 'The Death of Roger Young.' Also in Los Angeles during those years, a Roger Young Public Auditorium was named after this Marine, perhaps the first to give his life in the South Pacific operation.
The Indio Daily News, August 31, 1974
Lt. S.L. Abersold was one of the first army officers to set foot on future Camp Young's desert expanse, an army base that would not only become the busiest square mile in Southern California's southeastern desert, but the center for four army divisions, later to be located at Pilot Knob, Coxcomb Mountains, Rice and Heider, in Arizona.
Abe Abersold, today (2001) the owner of the Little Brown Jug on Indio Boulevard, spent his first army duty at Cheyenne, Wyoming, training infantry. He says, "Then one day I received orders to report to a place called Camp Young, east of Indio. On the day I arrived, April 10, 1942, there was no camp, there was nothing but a few roads bulldozed in and 15 enlisted men dispersed under some desert bushes over which they'd thrown blankets for shade. They didn't know why they were there."
Abersold was surprised no officer was in command. When an army vehicle did show up, neither Captain Smith nor Lieutenant Green offered to take command.
Despite his fellow officers' disillusionment, Abersold knew something had to be done, enlisted men to be fed. This meant a distribution point along the railroad in the Coachella Valley. But most important, his orders said, 'Camp Young.' The lieutenant set out to establish the authenticity of his orders and of an army base that, as far as he could see, didn't exist.
Into his vehicle, Abersold loaded a few enlisted men and Green. They drove to Indio and hunted down a phone. Abersold called Camp Hahn, near Riverside, and top brass at Hahn admitted, "We never heard of Camp Young." The lieutenant insisted that his orders were genuine. "From where did those orders come?" "Salt Lake City," the lieutenant replied. He was told to wait at Hotel Indio until further orders.
"It wasn't but a few minutes before a deputy sheriff approached me. He told me that I was under arrest. But about that time, after quick communication between Camp Hahn and Salt Lake City, the hotel phone rang. It was top brass at Hahn. My orders were verified and for the first time it became official news that Camp Young was to be the heart of a Desert Training Center, whose location had been chosen by Major General George S. Patton, Jr."
After that, things moved fast. Camp Hahn sent down an equipped kitchen for enlisted men. On his own, Abersold commandeered two trucks with drivers. And word came that he could now consider himself an officer of the Quartermaster Corps, which went hand-in-hand with Abersold's former military training before the war, plus experience in organizing army bases and beginning camps.
He immediately established a railhead at Coachella for all incoming and outgoing equipment for the growing number of troops at Camp Young. He selected men to operate the railhead and establish a distribution point at the camp. When he saw the need for a freight center in Indio, Sgt. Louis Petroczelli volunteered for the job. The freight center was set up at the present site of the Denny's restaurant, near the overpass. Sgt. Petroczelli signed for the incoming freight, brought it by truck to the railhead in Coachella and from there it was hauled to Camp Young.
With the expanding desert camp filling daily with fresh troops, all of them housed in tents along gravel streets, Abersold appointed enlisted men to special duties - policing desert towns, inspecting sanitation conditions in valley eating places and setting up the camp's first PX.
Abe Abersold remembers the day he and Ballard Jenkins solved the problem of troop transportation from Camp Young to Indio. Jenkins had an old bus that wouldn't run. On the theory of make-do with what you've got, an army truck towed the old bus up to Camp Young. There it was filled with men and towed back to Indio. The process continued until Jenkins was sent to Washington D.C. with a special order. There he received 20 busses, brought them back to Camp Young and from then on, the transportation problem was solved.
During those restricted years, food was scarce in the valley. At the Quartermaster's base at camp, food was in abundance. If a soldier wanted a meal away from camp, he signed for a sufficient supply of uncooked and canned food, brought it to his favorite Indio cafe and a meal was prepared for him on the spot.
The Indio Daily News, September 7, 1974
Photo from cover of The Periscope 2001
courtesy of Palm Springs Historical Society
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