For 107 years, Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) has had strong ties to Yelm, and thousands of servicemen and women have lived in the community off-post since Yelm’s official incorporation in 1924.
The base, created in 1917 originally as Camp Lewis, was opened for officers and recruits to train before their World War I deployment to France. Since it was created in 1917, Camp Lewis, now known as JBLM, has prepared soldiers for wars like World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Wars on Global Terrorism.
Tales of WWII Vets
According to a Nisqually Valley News article published in the April 30, 1943, edition, and later referenced by Ed Bergh in August of 2015, seven young men from the Yelm community died in World War II, including Second Lt. Dan Carrew, who was accidentally killed when his plane crashed in California.
Lt. Andrew Rogers, Quantico, Virginia, was a Yelm High School alumnus and played football at YHS and Willamette University. According to Bergh’s recollection, Rogers was in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor but survived.
Like Rogers, Jack Maybee also played football at YHS and later served in World War II. The former all-conference guard later entered the U.S. Army Air Corps and served in Cairo, Egypt. He published a letter to the Nisqually Valley News for the Dec. 24, 1942, edition.
“Dear Folks: I’ve found out that I can write a little more freely than I’ve been able to in the past (and) tell you about my visit to Cairo, where I took in all the usual sights. It must have been all of two months ago when I went in. We stayed two days and visited the Pyramids, the Sphinx, zoo, and wax museum,” Maybee wrote. “The pyramids aren’t anything spectacular, their only points of interest are the fact that they have been standing for a few thousand years and were constructed without modern machinery, from blocks of stone whose source is a mystery. I’ve got some awful good pictures of both the sphinx and the pyramids. I’ll send some as soon as I can get reprints made for some of the boys that went with me.”
JBLM History
Though Yelm wasn’t incorporated as a city officially until 1924, the first permanent national Army base for draftee training opened locally at Camp Lewis, also known as Fort Lewis and now JBLM, in 1917.
Camp Lewis was constructed by the end of 1917 and was opened for officers and recruits to train before their World War I deployment to France. After being renamed Fort Lewis in 1927, the military spent the next 12 years erecting permanent Fort Lewis structures, and by 1939, the permanent construction program ended, with Fort Lewis featuring over 400 permanent buildings.
According to Richard and Floss Loutzenhiser in “The Story of Yelm: The Little Town with the Big History,” the influenza epidemic hit Yelm with “terrible violence” but struck nearby Fort Lewis even harder. Due to the ongoing epidemic, a number of local volunteer nurses offered their services, and the American Red Cross eventually became active in the region as well.
In 1939, additional Third Infantry Division troops from the 15th “Can Do” Infantry Regiment arrived, and one year later, the national Protective Mobilization of 1940 brought more expansion to Fort Lewis as additional units were welcomed. The post would reach 7,000 men by July 1940, and by March and April of 1941, 37,000 soldiers were housed between Fort Lewis and north Fort Lewis.
In order to accommodate the growth between the 37,000 soldiers and future additional troops, an additional 800 buildings were constructed.
They Liked Ike
Notably, from 1940 to 1941, future general and president, Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower served at Fort Lewis; 12 years later, “Ike” was elected as the president of the United States, where he served two terms.
Lt. Col. Eisenhower reported for duty at Fort Lewis in February of 1940, where he joined the 15th Infantry Regiment as First Battalion commander and regimental executive officer. Eisenhower worked long hours to introduce new strategies, which ultimately saw him gain popularity amongst his troops, according to HistoryLink.org. He would also receive considerable attention from his superiors due to his management skills in organizing troop movements to California from Fort Lewis for maneuvers and training.
Early on in 1941, Eisenhower was named the Third Infantry division chief of staff, and in March of 1941, he was promoted to colonel. He would eventually assume the position of chief of staff in IX Corps, leaving him responsible for the defense of the entire West Coast.
Eisenhower took his role very seriously as he believed the United States would become involved in World War II, according to HistoryLink.org. Eventually, Eisenhower left the region for Fort Sam Houston in Texas in June of 1941.
Throughout Fort Lewis’s entirety, service members used the post to train soldiers for future wars like the Korean War in the 1950s, the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s and the Global War on Terrorism. In 2010, Fort Lewis merged with the nearby McChord Air Force Base to form JBLM.
