By Terri Jo Ryan

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Before they went to Europe to fight in World War I, thousands of American doughboys trained here in the heart of Texas. And many of them sent penny postcards to their loved ones to commemorate their training and share some of the sights of Waco.

Construction of Camp MacArthur, a World War I training camp named for Gen. Arthur MacArthur (father of World War II’s Gen. Douglas MacArthur), began on July 20, 1917.

In September of that year, some 18,000 troops arrived from Michigan and Wisconsin to begin their drills. Later, troops came from Arkansas, Missouri and New Mexico, as well as Texas.

The “tent city” site and military buildings covered almost 1,400 acres in northwest Waco. But the entire reservation — including obstacle courses, artillery practice fields, marching grounds and the like — encompassed almost 10,700 acres. The facilities included a base hospital, administrative offices and the tent camp, supplemented by 1,284 buildings.

The YMCA branch on base collected mail from the soldiers, and the airmen of nearby Rich Field, for cancellation at the most convenient post office. The MacArthur Branch post office opened Aug. 6, 1917, and formally closed April 30, 1919.

Stamps for those penny postcards, by the way, only cost 2 cents each.

Camp MacArthur served as a training camp for infantry replacement and an officers’ training school. After Armistice Day ended the war 90 years ago — the guns in Europe fell silent on Nov. 11, 1918 — the camp became a facility for disbanding military units, disposing of their equipment and returning the men to civilian life.

At war’s end, the camp was ordered salvaged on Jan. 3, 1919, and materials from it were used to construct crossing stations on the United States-Mexico border.

The camp was officially closed on March 7, 1919, and the grounds became part of the city of Waco. Some of the site is now home to the Waco Center for Youth at 3501 N. 19th St.

Sources: Handbook of Texas Online; Domestic United States Military Facilities of the First World War 1917-1919: A Postal History, by Robert Swanson (2000); Waco, Texas: A Postcard Journey, by Agnes Barnes; WacoHistoryProject.org.