History
Originally named Camp Hoffman, on February 8, 1943, General Order Number 6 renamed the facility Camp Mackall in honor of Private John Thomas (Tommy) Mackall. He was born May 17, 1920 in Ohio and grew up in Wellsville, Ohio. He served in Company E, 2nd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment. During the Allied invasion of North Africa in the airborne segment called Operation Torch, he was mortally wounded in an attack by French Vichy aircraft on his aircraft as the aircraft landed near Oran. Seven paratroopers died at the scene and several were wounded, including Mackall. He was evacuated by air to a British hospital at Gibraltar where he died on November 12, 1942. He had been wounded on November 8, the day that construction began at the camp. He is buried in Glenview Cemetery in East Palestine, Ohio. Historian Stephen E. Ambrose described the camp as a "marvel of wartime construction", having been converted from 62,000 acres of wilderness to a camp "with 65 miles of paved roads, a 1,200-bed hospital, five movie theaters, six huge beer gardens, a complete all-weather airfield with three 5,000-foot runways, and 1,750 buildings" in just four months.
Read more about this topic: Camp Mackall
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (17921873)
“Its a very delicate surgical operationto cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and well do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)