As World War II raged across Europe in 1941, Centreville Mayor Lee B. Robinson knew the United States had a pressing need to train up as many fighting men as possible and saw his town in southwestern Mississippi as an ideal location for a U.S. Army training camp.
In February that year Robinson gathered together a delegation to go before the Board of Army officers at Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg, Miss., and promote Centreville for a camp. Within a week of Robinson’s visit, members of the board toured the site. By March, Robinson was one of the heads of the Southwest Mississippi Cantonment Association responsible for leasing and purchasing some 42,000 acres of land outside Centreville for the camp’s construction.
Camp Van Dorn, named for Confederate General Earl Van Dorn, officially underwent construction in June 1942 with workers first building roads, railroad spurs and warehouses before putting up barracks with tarpaper walls and coal burning stoves for heat. Camp Van Dorn officially opened for troop training in November 1942.
Today, 83 years after the camp’s construction, a series of concrete slabs roughly a mile outside of Centreville marking the foundations where barracks buildings once stood are all that remains of Camp Van Dorn after local residents and veterans repurchased the surrounding land over the decades that followed the end of World War II.
With only 1% of the 16.4 million Americans who served during World War II still alive today, the National World War II Museum estimates, nearly all the men who trained at Camp Van Dorn are also gone along with the camp. Their families, however, are keeping their memories alive by telling their stories through the Camp Van Dorn Museum in Centreville.
Camp Van Dorn Museum
The Camp Van Dorn Museum stands inside a building that was previously the site of the first bank constructed in Centreville, a town located in both Amite and Wilkinson counties. Museum Director Ginny Randall said that when Centreville residents purchased the building in the early 2000s with a grant from the National Historical Society, only the walls were left standing after decades of neglect. Following extensive renovations, the building doubled in size by the time of its dedication ceremony in 2005.
Today, the museum contains displays of artifacts such as foot lockers, helmets, rifles, uniforms, photographs and even decommissioned bombs, as well as dioramas recreating Camp Van Dorn’s barracks and other buildings along with the Siegfried Line wall in Germany where many veterans from the camp fought during World War II. Camp Van Dorn’s website also gathers stories from the families of veterans and shares them in the form of written accounts and videos.
“Since the camp was only a mile outside of Centreville, close enough for soldiers to walk there whenever they had leave, the town became an important place to them,” Randall told the Mississippi Free Press. “The people of Centreville would feed them and listen to their stories, and it was apparent that the camp meant a lot to them even though many of them fussed while they were there, calling the barracks shacks and telling everyone how drafty they were.”
“When surviving veterans met up for reunions years after the war, they wanted to come back to Centreville,” she continued. “A lot of those veterans even helped to pay back the loan from the National Historical Society to build the museum out of gratitude for the people of Centreville who wanted to honor them.”
Mississippians Breaking Through the Siegfried Line
During its time as an active army training camp, Camp Van Dorn hosted the U.S. Army’s 99th Infantry Division and the 63rd Infantry Division. The 99th, known as the “Checkerboard Division” for the design that adorned the shoulder patches of its members, came first, beginning the group’s service at the camp in November 1942 and working to finish the camp’s construction so that it could begin holding training exercises by January 1943.
After the 99th completed their training at Camp Van Dorn, they transferred to Louisiana in November 1943 before deploying to England in October 1944 and then to LeHarve, France, in November 1944. The 99th fought in battles across Central Europe and took part in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, the last major German offensive on the Western Front during the war.
The 63rd Infantry Division, whose insignia and slogan were both “Blood and Fire,” took the place of the 99th Division at Camp Van Dorn after the 99th left, arriving for basic training in August 1943. The U.S. Army divided up the division by the end of the year, sending some overseas while the rest stayed at Camp Van Dorn. The entire division transferred out to Camp Shanks in New York and then to France by November 1944. In their most famous battle, the 63rd broke through the Siegfried Line in Germany, also known as the Westwall.
“If you were to go out to somewhere like Camp Shelby today and compare what you saw there to Camp Van Dorn in its day, you’d see that, for those soldiers, things were done in much the same way,” Randall said. “A lot of soldiers that passed through Camp Van Dorn came from the city and didn’t know how to maintain a gun, how to shoot; they needed to get into shape. They were here learning to cross deep water, how to do construction for river crossings, how to survive in the field, running, shooting—things that haven’t changed much by today.”
Camp Van Dorn, along with other training sites such as Camp McCain in Grenada and Camp Shelby, allowed Mississippi and its citizens to play a pivotal role in World War II, Mississippi Armed Forces Museum Director Tommy Lofton said. In addition to training camps and air fields such as Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Lofton said an often overlooked element of the state’s contribution to the war effort was the Army Corps of Engineers Program in Vicksburg.
“Our state’s engineers were instrumental in testing equipment such as marston mats, perforated metal plates used as makeshift roads or runways in places like the Pacific Islands,” Lofton told the Mississippi Free Press. “They were designed, built and tested at the Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg.
“Of course, the men who trained at Camp Van Dorn had more than enough to be proud of themselves, being some of the first soldiers to engage the Germans at the Bulge,” he added. “I got to meet a number of them while they were alive who were happy to tell the stories of everything they went through amidst the Mississippi heat and humidity. Their museum, like ours, carries on the legacy of those who trained, served and made the ultimate sacrifice. Without institutions like these, we could forget a lot about what makes us unique as a state.
While the Camp Van Dorn Museum is much smaller in scope than operations such as the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, La., Randall said what makes it special is the local connection it represents to the families of Mississippi veterans who have since passed away.
“People come here to talk to each other, to share stories of soldiers they knew who were up on the Westwall, who won a Congressional Medal of Honor,” Randall said. “They want to come and see where their father or grandfather was stationed, to talk about kin that went through the service, the soldiers that are all gone now.”
“The Sons of Veterans come here and give us pictures of their fathers in uniform, pictures of the members of their company together,” she continued. “We hold onto all of it and preserve it because it’s part of our history. As an educational tool, it shows us all what can happen and how fast it can happen and reminds us that if you don’t study the past you’ll be doomed to repeat it.”
For more information on the Camp Van Dorn Museum, call 601-645-9000 or visit vandornmuseum.org. For more information on the 99th and 63rd Infantry Divisions, visit 99div.com and 63rdinfdiv.com.
