World War II
The U.S. Army took over a site with few buildings or permanent structures: personnel were originally housed in tents. More permanent barracks were built as the first soldiers started to arrive.
Initially, Camp Toccoa used the Toccoa municipal airport for jump training, but following to a transport accident, it was abandoned for having too short a runway for safe C-39 and C-47 operations. All further jump training occurred at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Camp Toccoa also lacked a rifle range, so airborne trainees would march 30 miles (48 km) to Clemson Agricultural College, a military school in South Carolina, to practice on the college's shooting range.
The most prominent local landmark is Currahee Mountain. Paratroopers in training ran from the camp up the mountain and back, memorialized in the HBO series, Band of Brothers, with the shout "three miles up, three miles down." Members of the 506th refer to themselves as "Currahees", derived from the Cherokee word gurahiyi, which means "stand alone, together". The crest is surmounted by a group of telecommunications towers.
Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone, started his military career here in 1943.
Read more about this topic: Camp Toccoa
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“The greatest impediments to changes in our traditional roles seem to lie not in the visible world of conscious intent, but in the murky realm of the unconscious mind.”
—Augustus Y. Napier (20th century)
“... the ... radio station played a Chopin polonaise. On all the following days news bulletins were prefaced by Chopin—preludes, etudes, waltzes, mazurkas. The war became for me a victory, known in advance, Chopin over Hitler.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)