The Legacy of a Lost City: Camp Ellis
Brenna Chatterton - The Forgottonia Times™
Lots of us have heard of Camp Ellis, yet, it remains a mystical and truly unknown place that sits just a few miles from many of our homes. But more than anything, the grandiosity of Camp Ellis stays a mystery to most Forgottonians. So what was Camp Ellis, you ask? It was a remarkable military camp, a magnificent anomaly of its time, and an unprecedented city that has been lost in history.
Camp Ellis, located between Table Grove and Ipava, was a World War II Prisoner of War camp and housed around 35,000 troops at its peak, making it the largest camp of its kind in the nation during WWII. It supplied thousands of trained men in quartermaster, engineering, and medical areas for the fight overseas. Camp Ellis not only developed highly skilled people, but also profoundly impacted the local rural area through the opportunities it provided. It became a center for economic growth and, at its greatest, was a city of its own. The magnificence of this camp is severely underrated as it supported our community economically, set precedents in medicine and engineering, and gave Forgottonia yet another legacy that cannot be forgotten.
Camp Ellis was named after Sergeant Michael B. Ellis (also known as The Lone Wolf, The Sgt. York of St. Louis, and Machine Gun Mike), a World War I Medal of Honor recipient from East Saint Louis, Illinois. They began construction of the camp in September 1942, in response to the ever-rising need for training grounds for the US Army. The first building of many one-story frame structures was transferred to the camp on March 24, 1943, and six months after construction began, Ellis was dedicated on July 4, 1943. Illinois Governor Dwight H. Green delivered an address at the ceremony, unveiling an honorary portrait of Sgt. Ellis. Nearly 70,000 visitors came for the dedication day of Camp Ellis, making it the largest event of its kind in the area. Under the command of Col. Basil D. Spaulding, Camp Ellis began its booming but brief existence.
On the approximately 17,445 acres of Camp Ellis, there were 2,200 buildings, including libraries, gymnasiums, seven chapels, an outdoor amphitheater, a baseball diamond, four movie theaters, a 220-acre "victory garden," a railroad, and a landing strip! Camp Ellis took advantage in many ways of the farm land they were placed on, using the Spoon River for a multitude of things. The Victory garden produced thirty varieties of vegetables worth an estimated $58,000 of food for the mess halls, and saved Camp Ellis more than $25,000. Around 95 tons of tomatoes, 38 tons of green beans, 36 tons of corn, 35 tons of squash, 21 tons of cucumbers, and 19 tons of sweet potatoes were grown on the fertile Spoon River Valley land in two years. The Spoon River provided water for the base and flowed into two large water towers, some of the only landmarks left standing today.
Throughout Camp Ellis's time, over 125,000 servicemen were trained, or 456 units in 58 different skills, of which 124 Quartermaster Corps units went directly into overseas duty. Medical personnel, engineers, and quartermasters were among the numerous occupations taught at the camp. However, each resident was also instructed in self-defense through shooting and throwing hand grenades. Camp Ellis had one of the best small arms ranges in the nation, with twenty-two courses for independent or simultaneous firing. Likewise, there were four one-thousand inch courses, a transition range, five squad-combat ranges, a close-combat range, a twenty-five target postal range, sub machine gun course, an anti-aircraft range, two infiltration courses, two bazooka and rifle grenade courses, two live hand grenade courses, and a simulated German village to teach land mine and booby trap detection.
The medical and engineering training at Camp Ellis was equally impressive. The Station Hospital, a state-of-the-art facility, covered over 160 acres of land and was "arguably the largest hospital in the country at the time," according to the Easley Pioneer Museum Curator. The people who worked there were highly skilled and instructed the medical units to perform feats of distinction overseas under the most dangerous wartime hazards. Most notably, they began to experiment with an early prototype of what is now called a "Mobile Army Surgical Hospital" or MASH, where a complete surgical unit was trained in airborne maneuvers done in a C-47 transport plane, so that they could be flown anywhere and set up a hospital tent within 24 hours. They also worked on a Continental type hospital train that would prepare them for overseas work. Camp Ellis training also included extensive engineering work through a construction school, a heavy equipment school, and a shop-working school. The engineers learned to build roads, put up communications, and build around 300 bridges across the Spoon River. The engineers in the bridge carpenter school at Ellis would build a bridge across the Spoon as quickly as they could, tear it down, and build another, practicing efficiency for battles overseas.
As Camp Ellis is historically a Prisoner of War camp, it is essential to note that it held around 5,000 Germans at its peak in 1944. However, this was not the intention for Camp Ellis at its conception, nor did the camp ever live up to the common conceptions of a POW camp. Marion Cornelius, curator of the Easley Pioneer Museum in Ipava, explains, "All those POWs knew how our guys were being treated over there, and it wasn't good. They expected to get the same treatment, but that wasn't true… They lived a life they weren't used to. They ended up in brand-new buildings in beds that had clean sheets and wool blankets to stay warm in the winter, and all the buildings had heat." Ellis was known for providing adequate living spaces for the prisoners, as well as jobs for them alongside the local citizens, and they were often paid for their labor. Most of the prisoners that Camp Ellis housed were not the hardcore Nazi's, as they were usually sent elsewhere. Ellis kept the regular soldiers, and thus did not have much security. Surprisingly, only one prisoner successfully escaped, but he did so by walking out and catching a ride to Peoria!
The primary goal of building Camp Ellis was to train up units of soldiers for overseas duty. However, it had an extraordinary effect on the local people who participated in the camp. Ella K. Bolon, in a 1985 article from the Astoria South Fulton Argus, noted that "Camp Ellis maintained a splendid working relationship between military and civilian personnel." And this was undoubtedly true. The camp needed countless people to keep it running, and over its existence, supplied thousands of jobs for local and non-local citizens. Camp Ellis especially made a lasting impact in this way, as the rural Spoon River area had not yet escaped from the depression. People were required to maintain the buildings and roads, work in the equipment shop, motor pool, carpenter, and plumbing shops. They needed grocers, bakers, meat packers, coal dealers, and laundry cleaners. There was a post theater that averaged 40,000 visitors weekly, a post library, and sixteen post exchanges with two restaurants, employing around 363 civilians, and making several million dollars in business. Camp Ellis News, the largest army newspaper published without advertising benefits in the nation, had a circulation of around 13,700. It was rated in the top six newspapers nationally. And if these were not enough, Camp Ellis was the only army post in the US with its very own radio network, raking up some 200,000 listeners weekly. The opportunities Camp Ellis provided for locals were incredible. It quickly became a booming city and an economic savior in the middle of Forgottonia.
Although the remains of this lost city are sparse, it was undoubtedly thriving in its time. From the Victory Garden to the Camp Ellis Radio Network, this place was an incredible feat in itself. It was not just its own city, but its own economic world. With barely three years of existence, Camp Ellis created opportunities for the US Army and the local community to prosper that they had never seen before. The training was quite literally unprecedented, and the advancements that Camp Ellis made in military medicine were unmatched. And even though it was known as a Prisoner of War camp, Ellis remained unique in its kinder treatment of its “prisoners”. It was an anomaly then, and remains an integral part of Forgottonia’s deeply astonishing history. Although it lived briefly and was quickly lost, Camp Ellis is a part of Forgottonia’s past that should never be forgotten. It left a national legacy of ingenuity, advancement, and magnificence that we can only admire as we look back on that lost city.
