Fort McClellan Internment Camp Photographic Album

Fort McClellan was a United States Army training base located in Anniston, Alabama. The United States War Department first established the site in 1917 as a mobilization camp to train troops after the United States entered World War I in April of that year. By 1929, Camp McClellan received funding to become a permanent post at which time it was renamed Fort McClellan. With the onset of World War II, Fort McClellan underwent a major expansion, receiving 6.5 million dollars in federal funding to prepare the base as a training center for new soldiers. In 1943, the Army Corps of Engineers completed a 3,000 person capacity prisoner of war camp at Fort McClellan—one of four major camps in the state of Alabama—to house German and Italian prisoners captured in North Africa. While commonly known as a prisoner of war camp, the camp at Fort McClellan, as seen in a photograph of its sign, was officially named the Fort McClellan Internment Camp. Many considered Fort McClellan a model camp with very few escape attempts or suicides. The POW camp at Fort McClellan operated until 1946. Private Charles W. Christopher (1922-1964) was a member of the Military Police Escort Guard Company, a branch of the United States Army established in 1941, tasked with providing “supervisory and security personnel for the evacuation and movement of enemy prisoners of war and civilian internees.” (Department of the Army Field Manual)