- Historical Date: November 12, 1940
- Location:Camp Beauregard, Louisiana
Photo above: Michigan Guardsmen in Camp. A squad of national guardsmen from Michigan are shown marching through the gates of Camp Beauregard, La., as they arrived for a year’s training under the nation’s defense program.1
Camp Beauregard, situated at the fringes of Alexandria, Louisiana, was the division’s new home. Beauregard, though, was not ready for the 32nd. Built as a National Guard summer camp and equipped to accommodate only one regiment, the camp’s infrastructure was overwhelmed by the division’s one hundred officers and thirty-two hundred enlisted men, who promptly dubbed Beauregard ‘Camp Disregard.’ The tents in which they lived were heated with charcoal, which gave them terrible headaches. And when the cold late-fall rains began, the camp, trampled by the boots of thousands of men and the heavy tires of military vehicles, became a mudhole.”2
Corporal Bennie Richell, Camp Beauregard, Louisiana, 1940
Davis the cook at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana, 1940
Corporal James Schultz at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana, 1940
Soldier at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana, 1940
More About Camp Beauregard
Today there is a Louisiana Maneuvers Military Museum located on the grounds of Camp Beauregard, Louisiana. It is housed in a replica WWII barracks. Visit the museum website.
The museum curator, Richard Moran, is interested in any photos that others may have of the camp. You can contact him at 318-641-5733 or richard.b.moran.nfg@mail.mil.
- “Michigan Guardsmen in Camp.” Muskegon Chronicle, 23 Oct. 1940, p. 1.
- Campbell, James. The Ghost Mountain Boys. Three Rivers Publishers, 2008.
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