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The Compass - Bainbridge, Maryland


A history buff, I have never claimed to be.....maybe a little ditsy, but thanks to looking for yearbooks, I believe I have found an old (new to me) recruit training site.


Could it be, that Bainbridge, Maryland used to be a Recruit Training Command?


According to Wikipedia....


Recruit training

The center was activated on 1 October 1942, and the first batch of recruits arrived 10 days later to begin "boot camp" training. They came in busloads from transportation collection points at Havre de Grace and Perryville, Maryland. The recruits were given a battery of tests to determine their educational and skill levels, then trained in ordnance and gunnery, seamanship, fire fighting, physical training, and military drill.

Recruits were trained in shipboard duties aboard the R.T.S. Commodore, a 200-foot "ship" built on dry land. The trainer was equipped with deck guns, a pilot house, davits with whaleboats, and mooring lines fastened to earth-bound bollards, so that crew members could learn casting off hawsers and other lines connecting the ship to its dock.

Halfway through boot camp, recruits had a "service week", which generally included kitchen duty, peeling potatoes, mopping, picking up cigarette butts, etc. Recruits with desirable skills, such as typing, could end up on an office typewriter rather than in a kitchen. One winter, recruits were sent to shovel snow off roads to a largely rural area near Colora and Rising Sun.

By the end of World War II, the center had trained 244,277 recruits who transferred to various ships and stations throughout the world.

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