A major Army Air Corps airfield in Apalachicola and the Amphibious Training Center (ATC) of the Army Ground Forces Command, assisted by the Navy and Marine Corps, at Camp Gordon Johnston in Franklin County provided training and housing for some 30,000 military personnel. Visit the Camp Gordon Johnston WWII Museum which trained over 250,000 men and women in preparation for D-Day.

Stretching for twenty miles along the Gulf Coast among St. George Island, Carrabelle, and Alligator Point, and covering 160,000 acres leased primarily from the St. Joe Paper Company, Camp Gordon Johnston included the villages of Lanark and St. Teresa, as well as Dog Island, in what was the second largest military installation in Florida.

The eponymous Colonel Gordon Johnston had been a distinguished cavalry officer of the late 29th and early 20th century, who had earned a Medal of Honor during the Philippine Insurrection, and who had later fought with the Allied Expeditionary Force in France during World War I. Four separate camps comprised the complex: three for regimental combat teams, and the fourth for the headquarters and support facilities centered on the Lanark Hotel. Alligator Point served as an aerial gunnery area, and Dog and St. George Islands were used for amphibious landings and airdrops.

Additional training areas occupied most of the interior lands north to the Crooked and Ochlockonee Rivers. General Omar Bradley was the most famous soldier to train at the camp.

The troops trained at the camp conducted several amphibious landings in the Pacific, including New Guinea and the Philippines (38th Division), and earned a fine non-amphibian record in the European theatre (28th and 4th Infantry Divisions).

The Second, third and Fourth Engineer Amphibious Brigades conducted dozens of amphibious landings in the Southwestern Pacific under General MacArthur. In 1943, the camp was re-designated as an Army Service Forces (ASF) Training Center, training harbor craft and amphibian truck companies, as well as port construction, repair and maintenance units. Whereas, before the "Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel" (LVCP) had been used stressing tactics and logistics, now the camp pioneered with the 1942 Amphibious All-wheel Drive, Dual Rear Axle Truck (DUKW) which revolutionized amphibious warfare. German and Italian prisoners were sent to the camp beginning in 1944. After VJ Day (Victory Over Japan) in August 1945, the camp was the scene of a wild, continuous and spontaneous celebration. By 1947 the U. S. Army was gone.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coker, William S., and Thomas D. Watson., Indian Traders of the Southeastern Spanish Borderlands: panton. Leslie and Company and John Forbes and Company 1783-1847. Pensacola:University of West Florida Press, 1985.

Coles, David J. "Hell by the Sea: Florida's Camp Gordon Johnston in World War II." The Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. LXXIIIA No. 1 July, 1994).

Jahoda, Gloria. The Other Florida. New York Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967. Mueller, Edward A. Perilous fourneys: A History of Steamboating on the Chattahoochee, Apalachicola. and Flint Rivers, 1828-1928. Historic Chattahoochee Commission, 1990. Owens, Harry P. "Apalachicola Before 1861." Ph.D. dissertation, Florida State University, 1966. Rogers, William Warren. Outposts on the Gulf. Pensacola: University of West Florida Press, 1986. Sherlock, Vivian M. The Fever Man: A Biography of Dr. John Gorrie. Tallahassee: Medallion PressA 1982 Wakefield, George Norton. A Florida Sandpiper. or. A Fool Rushed in Where Angels Fear to Tread. Gainesville: Storter Publishing Co, 1982.