4/5/2011 Fort WA-CHEW-KA

Here we are in Fort Huachuca for the next week while we’re waiting to get in for warranty repairs at a nearby dealership.

This is a nice FamCamp we’re in. Here’s a view from our door facing the back of the rig.

We have a good sized pavilion in the lot next to us.

We decided to go for a ride around the post to get our bearings. This is good sized post and there is lots of construction going on building new houses for the soldiers and their families.

This is the post that all branches come to to learn “intelligence”. This base is home for the US Army Intelligence Center. I think its pretty secret stuff because I was talking to one woman and asked her what her husband did here and she answered me with “I wish I knew”. I must have looked pretty puzzled because she followed up with, “This is an intelligence post, I think the less we know the better”. I let just let the conversation stop there.

This base has been used in several movies and books.

• Captain Newman, MD (1963), starring Gregory Peck as the title character, was filmed at Fort Huachuca.

• The opening sequence of Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came (1969) was filmed at Ft. Huachuca.

• Clear and Present Danger (1994), starring Harrison Ford and James Earl Jones, shows Ft. Huachuca equipment being used to intercept a cell-phone conversation of a drug dealer.

• In Scent Of A Woman, Al Pacino's character, an Army officer, refers to having been stationed at Fort Huachuca.

• In the novel "A Prayer For Owen Meany" (1989) by John Irving, Owen Meany is stationed as a casualty assistance officer at Fort Huachuca during the Vietnam War.

• The novel Ulterior Motives (2009) by Mark Andrew Olsen features Ft. Huachuca as the site where terrorist Omar Nirubi is imprisoned under military control in the United States.

Thanks Wikipiedia!

There are three museums on base and today we went to see the….

The view from the porch.

This base has been declared a National Landmark.

High ranking officer housing.

It was time to go in and learn something. The very first thing I learned was that I needed to hold the camera steadier.

This museum took us on a tour of uniforms worn through the years.

It taught us about life on post back in the day.

The signs in the picture? They gave examples and excerpts of letters from soldiers to loved ones, complaints to Congress, an accounting of an attack and several other interesting things.

The following was written in 1878 from a soldier to the United States Congress.

We first enlisted with the usual ideas of a life of a soldier; …. but we find service that we are obliged to perform all kinds of labor, such as all the operations of building quarters, stables, storehouses, bridges, roads and telegraph lines; involving logging lumbering, quarrying, adobe and brick making, lime burning, mason work, plastering, carpentering, painting etc.. We are also put teaming, repairing wagons, harness etc. blacksmithing and sometimes wood chopping and haymaking. This is in addition to guard duty, care of horses, arms and equipment, cooking, baking, police of quarters and stables, moving stores etc. - as well as drilling and frequently to the exclusion of the latter.

Welcome to the Army pal!

Guard duty

Leisure time

Short Timer….

“I have just one year from tomorrow to serve, and thank God, I am then done soldiering in the regular Army. I don’t believe if there is anything worse than being in the regular army and out of civilization, but I have got use to it and don’t mind it so much as I used to…”

Private Charles Lester (in an 1869 letter to his sister)

Reminisces

“With the strange contradictoriness of the human mind, I felt sorry that the old days had come to an end. For somehow, the hardships and deprivations we have endured, lose their bitterness when have become a memory.

Martha Summerhayes, a military wife

Payday Celebration

“The next day was payday and a hilarious time was had. The saloon and gambling houses were wide open and in Kelley and Beatty’s Saloon the Officer of the Day came in and ordered the men back to camp. One of the men full of liquor and beer grabbed the Officer of the Day, took off his belt and threw him under the billiard table.

Private H Hasbers, 1871

We thoroughly enjoyed this small museum and there’s more to it but that another post, coming soon.

From here we went to the Commissary to do some food shopping. The cupboards were almost bare so it was time to stock up again.