Camp Fannin Veterans Memorial, Texas, United States

5vdwagg 5:00 PM Feb 9, 2019

Quite informative.
Being a veteran myself, I am always interested in visiting any memorials that have been established. I knew nothing about Camp Fannin but the informational markers were very informative. It is a shame that the government has never really taken any real action to reciprocate families affected by procurement of the land necessary for Camp Fannin.

4TallTexWally 5:00 PM Jan 11, 2018

Camp Fanning Trained 250,000 Soldiers
I visited the Camp Fannin Memorial again during a recent trip to Tyler. There are a series of historical plaques, and park benches honoring various men and units from World War II. Camp Fannin was one of the main army bases in the USA for training infantry soldiers for battle in World War II. It didn't exist for too long, only from early in 1943 until the end of the war in 1945. There's little left to see of the army base itself. You have to use your imagination to realize how big the base was, and the hundreds of thousands of men who trained here. It is something to think about that after completing their training these men went off to the battlefields in Europe and the Pacific. Many fought in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium in 1944, and some lost their lives there. Their sacrifice should not be forgotten. As President Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address they gave their last full devotion of duty in service to their country. The hospital complex, UT Health Northeast, is just to the north of the Memorial. It's there because it was the base hospital, and then it became a tuberculosis hospital, before becoming part of the University of Texas hospital system. The hospital keeps growing and expanding. A new building is currently under construction just to the west of the Camp Fannin Memorial. The Memorial itself is fairly new, since it was dedicated just 14 years ago in 2004. Many veterans wanted a place in the heart of what was once Camp Fannin to remember all the soldiers who were at this location during World War II. I mentioned in my previous post that you can obtain more information about the history of Camp Fannin at the historical museum in downtown Tyler. I want to clarifiy that Tyler is the county seat of Smith County, not Tyler County, which is in southeast Texas, near Beaumont. I also want to point out that Camp Ford, which is just about 3 miles down US Highway 271 from the Camp Fannin site, was the largest Confederate Civil War Prison west of the Mississippi. It is also worth a visit. It's interesting that Camp Ford, from the Civil War Era, and Camp Fannin, from the World War II Era, were located so close together.