Courtesy Photo | Fort Hood has come a long way during its 70 years, from rolling Central Texas...... read more read more
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By Heather Graham-Ashley
III Corps and Fort Hood Public Affairs
FORT HOOD, Texas – Fort Hood has come a long way during its 70 years – from rolling Central Texas farmlands to the Army’s premier training facility of today’s soldiers – and that growth continues today.
Before Camp Hood was established here, the lands that are now Fort Hood provided homesteads for 25 rural communities.
When the government claimed imminent domain and seized the lands, first in the early 1940s and again in the 1950s, families moved, but many stayed in the surrounding areas.
Coinciding with the United States’ involvement in World War II, the Army purchased 108,000 acres of land in 1942 – an amount of space large enough to train and ready a force that would be able to counter Germany’s blitzkrieg attacks.
One local resident, Juanita Faucett, 89, whose father was a cotton and corn farmer, grew up on that land in her formative years. As the Army began acquiring land in the area, Faucett said residents thought it was only temporary at first.
“When they began taking the land, we just thought that we’d get the land back after Fort Hood or could buy it back or whatever,” she said. “Army life was so strange to all of us then. We had never been around the Army. It was absolutely foreign to us. It was something we knew nothing about.”
Although troops began arriving in the springtime, the official opening of Camp Hood, with the Tank Destroyer Center as its central focus, was Sept. 18, 1942.
Faucett and her family moved into Killeen that spring to find a city unprepared to handle the mass amount of people flooding into the small town. Juanita said they were fortunate to find a place to stay with the grandmother of her husband, Troy.
“We were lucky to get a bedroom, because a lot of people were living in tents, chicken houses and cow sheds,” Juanita said.
She also said that Troy’s grandmother even rented out the front porch that summer, because of the high demand.
“Workers would put a wagon sheet around the end of the porch to where they could put a cot in there, and that’s where they could sleep, dress and undress,” Juanita said.
Juanita, with her husband Troy by her side and their newborn baby in her arms, attended the opening ceremony on what she recalls as a hot September day.
Giving her attention mostly to her newborn that afternoon, Juanita said she doesn’t remember a whole lot about it, adding, “If I would have known Fort Hood would become the installation it is, I would have been all eyes and ears.”
What Faucett was seeing was the infancy of what would soon morph into one of the Army’s largest installations, as well as the go-to place to train Soldiers for mounted warfare.
The 1950s and 1960s saw continued growth as Fort Hood welcomed III Corps Headquarters and the 1954 arrival of the post’s second division when the 4th Armored Division joined the newly reactivated 1st Armored Division.
With the Korean War in the 1950s, followed in 1965 by the Vietnam War as well as the ongoing Cold War and its inherent threat of atomic weapons, Fort Hood’s massive range lands were ideal to conduct the heavy, mounted warfare training.
Training ramped up and the 1940’s considerations of Camp Hood being only a temporary post were abolished when Fort Hood was established as a permanent installation in 1950.
Former III Corps and Fort Hood Commanding General retired Lt. Gen. Paul Funk remembers the increase of soldiers in the 1960s. Funk was at Fort Hood in 1962 as a second lieutenant, and this was his first assignment in the Army.
“There were about 40,000 troops here,” he said. “That’s when Fort Hood really started to surge. This place was just bursting.”
Training on the post was constant.
“We were in the field all the time,” Funk said.
Among those troops here were several draftees, as Selective Service was used to augment and build the number of soldiers available for combat during Vietnam in the mid-1960s and early 1970s.
For infrastructure, there was not much on Fort Hood, Funk said, but that would soon change.
“There were a lot fewer married soldiers here in 1962,” he said.
Along with more troops, Families of those soldiers began moving onto the installation in the 1960s and 1970s. More housing was added, as well as a commissary and a new hospital to help support those families.
Business owners in areas surrounding the post were resistant to the new post facilities, Richard Powell, III Corps and Fort Hood historian, said.
“Initially, the community viewed it as direct competition to what they were doing,” Powell said. “It was a bit of an educational process to show the community that there was a need for both.”
That relationship with the community evolved into a close one and continues to this day with military and civilian personnel working together in many endeavors.
As Vietnam was winding down, divisions and smaller units moved in and out of Fort Hood, most notable was the 1st Cavalry Division’s assignment to the Great Place following most of the division’s return from Vietnam in 1971.
Throughout the remainder of the 1970s and into the 1980s, training was steady at Fort Hood and more facilities were constructed to accommodate that training.
St. Elijah Modern Operations on Urban Terrain, Fort Hood’s first MOUT site, was built in the 1980s as a mock European village, complete with buildings representing gas stations and retail facilities to train soldiers for missions within a city. Since that time, other MOUT sites have been added across the range areas to replicate Iraqi and Afghan villages for the current operating environments.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Fort Hood soldiers participated in operations in Bosnia, Somalia and the first gulf war.
Fort Hood soldiers deployed and played an active role in Desert Storm and Desert Shield in the early 1990s. After a seemingly easy victory in Iraq during the Gulf War, Fort Hood continued to build its strength.
Funk, who served as the top general at Fort Hood from October 1993 through December 1995 – commanded the 3rd Armored Infantry during Operation Desert Storm, recalled having an unmatched combat power while in command at III Corps.
“It was a tremendous time to get the corps in war-fighting shape. I was pretty darn proud,” he said. “In those days, under my command, we had four active divisions, a cavalry regiment, the corps artillery and four national guard divisions.”
This also was the Army’s age of digitization, first with the M1A2 Abrams tank, and later on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. That digitization continues to this day as the service adopts new vehicles and updates others.
As the 1990s gave way to the new millennium, Fort Hood and its soldiers and families would see dramatic changes in the fall of 2001.
When the Sept. 11 attacks happened, the U.S. military was immediately affected – soldiers and families at Fort Hood were immediately affected.
The soldiers left the motor pools and training areas behind, and focused on readiness for the imminent deployment to the Middle East. While most of the Army thought the 1st Cavalry Division would be deploying immediately, the 4th Infantry Division ended up deploying before 1st Cav. Div., being the first in an 11-year non-stop deployment in response to the GWOT to leave.
“The soldiers, their families and this community all responded wonderfully,” retired Col. Larry Phelps, a former brigade commander at Fort Hood, said. “The people have always been warm and supportive. The entire community just cranked it up even several notches higher when we started deploying.”
Initially, Fort Hood was very well-manned and prepared to deploy, but in the following years there would be an inflow of soldiers coming to the Great Place to answer the nation’s call and head not only to Iraq, but also Afghanistan.
Operation Iraqi Freedom ended when U.S. troops left Iraq in December of 2011; Operation Enduring Freedom refers to many branches of the war under the GWOT, including Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines and more; and Operation New Dawn began in September of 2012 when the end of OEF was in sight.
Fort Hood Soldiers and the rest of the U.S. military are still a part of Operations New Dawn and Enduring Freedom.
On post, Fort Hood is continually adapting and growing to meet the needs of those soldiers as they return home, and to support their families. That support has been visible in the new child development centers, the expanded financial, employment, social and supportive services, as well as the ongoing $1 billion in construction projects.
As the World War II-era buildings fall to make room for newer, updated facilities, the face of Fort Hood is changing as the new stadium is becoming visible near the Clear Creek Exchange and housing villages that were built decades ago are being remodeled.
Most notable among that construction is the new Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center facility that is building on the grounds that once held Hood Stadium.
As it has for 70 years now, Fort Hood continues to grow and evolve to train soldiers and care for their families, and establishes itself as the premier installation to carry out the Army’s mission.
Editor’s note: Erin Rogers and Daniel Cernero contributed to this article.
| Date Taken: | 09.17.2012 |
| Date Posted: | 09.17.2012 17:56 |
| Story ID: | 94855 |
| Location: | FORT HOOD, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 831 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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