History
After the onset of World War II, the US War Department decided to add a number of new bases. Fort Rucker (situated on 58,000 acres (235 km2) of sub-marginal farmland, and formerly a wildlife refuge) was opened the 1st of May in 1942 as "Camp Rucker", and had quarters for 3,280 Officers and 39,461 Enlisted Personnel. It was deactivated following the war, then reopened during the Korean War. After another short deactivation, it was again reopened and expanded when it became a helicopter training base. The name was changed to "Fort Rucker" in October 1955.
Hanchey Army Heliport became the home of the Department of Rotary Wing Training of the Army Aviation School on 5 October 1959, marking the first time the Department was centralized.
While serving in the Army, Al Gore was stationed at Fort Rucker before his five-month deployment in the Vietnam War.
The 81st Division (Wild Cat) was the first unit activated at Camp Rucker on June 15, 1942. The 81st received equipment, personnel and trained here before shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO) Other units passed through and called Camp Rucker home before shipping overseas, these included the 35th, 66th and 98th Infantry Divisions. The 91st and 94th Infantry Divisions were inactivated at Camp Rucker.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)