Acts of Conscience: World War II, Mental Institutions, and Religious Objectors

4. “A Significant Epoch in Your Life”

54 4 “A Significant Epoch in Your Life” Around the time COs received the order to report to the Civilian Public Service from the Selective Service, they received a letter welcoming them from the religious service committee sponsoring the camp to which they had been assigned. COs assigned to Brethren Service Committee camps received a letter from W. Harold Row, director of the Brethren CPS: “Your entrance into a Civilian Public Service Camp marks a significant epoch in your life—just how significant no one can tell at this moment.”1 The letter provided brief descriptions of the CPS and the philosophy of the BSC. Attached to the letter were a list of clothing men should bring to camp and a short summary of the camp. Shortly after the establishment of the AFSC–National Park Service camp in Patapsco, Maryland, in May 1941, CPS camps were opened in Grottoes, Virginia (MCC–Soil Conservation Service), and Largo, Indiana (BSC–Soil Conservation Service).2 The first ACCO or Catholic conscientious objector camp was opened in Stoddard, New Hampshire, in August of that year. By the end of 1941, twenty-one CPS Forest Service, National Park Service, and Soil Conservation Service work camps were in operation in California, Maryland, Virginia, Colorado, Indiana, Arkansas, Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan , Iowa, North Carolina, Oregon, and Illinois. The locations of the initial camps were generally based on the availability of former Civilian Conservation Corps facilities that could be refurbished. Work at the camps was supervised by project superintendents from the government agencies. Men typically worked eight to ten hours a day, including transportation time to work sites. Work at the camps varied greatly and included firefighting; erosion control; ditch digging; road construction; raising and planting seedlings; building dams and reservoirs; removing dead trees; maintaining parks; constructing roads, bridges, and truck trails; surveying; maintaining nurseries; building wood or stone fences; making firebreaks; constructing fire lookout towers, garages, and sanitary facilities; and similar kinds of outdoor labor. The CPS men occasionally also performed work such as emergency farm labor or searching for missing persons. On May 17, 1943, CPS men joined the “A Significant Epoch in Your Life”   |   55 search for Doris Dean, a four-year-old girl lost in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Grottoes, Virginia.3 They found her after she had spent five days and five nights lost in the forest. In April 1943, COs from the nearby Mennonite Denison Soil Conservation camp helped save Council Bluffs, Iowa, from being flooded by the Missouri River.4 One of the most challenging and interesting camps was based at Missoula, Montana, which opened in May 1943 under the Forest Service and the MCC.5 It was a “smoke jumpers” camp at which men were trained to parachute into remote wilderness areas to fight forest fires. COs at this camp were selected from existing AFSC, BSC, and MCC camps. In contrast to other work camps, the Forest Service provided food and housing and a maintenance fee to the men. After the men’s initial training, they were sent to locations in Montana, Oregon, and Idaho. The smoke jumpers unit brought welcomed positive publicity to the CPS. A January 25, 1943, article in Time announced the planned opening of the camp: “Conscientious objectors who want courageous, if noncombatant, wartime work learned last week 5. CPS Camp no. 21, Cascade Locks, Oregon. (Brethren Historical Library and Archives, Elgin, Illinois) 56   |   “We Won’t Murder” that they might get it. In June, Selective Service will start giving some 60 conchies the stiff Army and Marine parachute training course. The purpose: to fight forest fires. They will probably be stationed at Missoula, Mont., regional Forest Service headquarters, center of a rugged and remote fire area.”6 Before long, the Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service, Weather Bureau, and other federal agencies provided technical supervision at CPS work camps and projects. Like most things in the CPS, COs’ labor was carefully recorded and reported. Project superintendents filed monthly reports with the Selective Service. By the end of the CPS, the Selective Service could report, for example, that COs had contributed 1,213,000 man-days in thirty Forest Service camps and 1,112,000 mandays in nineteen Soil Conservation Service camps.7 The work was further broken down by jobs as well as number, mile, cubic yard, feet, acre, pound, and similar measurements.8 For instance, Selective...