Taking time to relax at Camp MacArthur
By Terri Jo Ryan - Tribune-Herald staff writer
From 1917 through 1919, Waco’s World War I military installation, Camp MacArthur, was home to thousands of young men thousands of miles from home. These fellows, mostly from Michigan and Wisconsin, were engaged in the serious business of preparing for war.
But in their time off, the men also engaged in the pastimes of civilian life, such as baseball, football, wrestling, boxing and basketball.
According to Baseball: The People’s Game, by Harold Seymour, the New York Giants decided to play some of the local military teams while the ballplayers were in spring training in Marlin in early 1918. More than 100,000 soldiers were in various stages of training at several forts and temporary installations throughout Central Texas.
At Camp MacArthur, Seymour wrote, the Giants played two games against a team of officers from the Aviation Corps, “which afterwards recklessly tried to out drink the baseball writers accompanying the Giants on their tour; ‘They lost both engagements,’ recalled reporter Frank Graham.”
Sources: The War to End All Wars: the American Military Experience in World War I by Edward M. Coffman (1998); Handbook of Texas Online.
MORE IN WACO HISTORY: BRAZOS PAST »
Waco History ProjectIn My Opinion
Magazine
New issue!
- Check out June's issue
- Summer swimwear, great teachers, El Conquistador & more
- Link: View the magazine as a virtual flipbook
