Dan's 2012 Great Adventures: May 2012

I spent Memorial Day re-visiting Fort Wolters where I was stationed with the US Army in 1968 for Primary Helicopter School. It's true about the saying "you can never go home" as things are never the same. The emotions of memories, sadness and disappointment at what I saw were overpowering. On the other hand, what was I expecting? I guess it's one of those things where you have to live it to understand it. The photos tell it all. The photos of the barracks with the fences and barbed wire is where I lived and is now a prison. The classrooms where we took our academic flight training is now a college. The heliports are now part of the Municipal Airport and the lake is now a State Park. I took most of the attached photos but some are copied from the internet. I know they won't mean anything to you, but to me they really stir up a lot of memories.

Here is a posting on another web site by Brian N. Bagnoll which pretty much sums it up.

"The old base is slowly moldering away, it is sad, but I guess time has that effect on everything. I originally started the site because I felt Fort Wolters' place in history needed to be preserved. During WWII over 200,000 Infantry trainees cycled through there, and when it was re-opened as the Army's Primary Helicopter School over 40,000 student pilots graduated - most of them destined for the war in Vietnam. Four decades have past since I was first stationed at Wolters, now the base has a sad, evocative air about it. Whenever I go back to visit the old base my mind slides back to when it reverberated with the activity of hundreds of choppers launching and landing during the day. During my visits, I also think of my departed friends, and the other ex-Wolterites who also died in Vietnam or during WWII. The base may be moldering and the facilities becoming derelict, but they are still a memorial to the spirit of the fighting men who spent part of their youth in this special part of central Texas......"

The following is copied from a web site by Keith Robinson.

"FORT WOLTERS, established as Camp Wolters in 1925, is four miles east of Mineral Wells in Parker and Palo Pinto counties. It was named for Brig. Gen. Jacob F. Wolters, commander of the Fifty-sixth Brigade of the National Guard, and designated a summer training site for his units. Mineral Wells donated fifty acres, leased 2,300 acres, and in World War IIqv provided land to increase the camp's area to 7,500 acres. The camp became an important infantry-replacement training center with a troop capacity that reached a peak of 24,973. Six months after the end of the war the camp was deactivated.

Local businessmen purchased the land and facilities and converted them to private use. The tensions of the cold war, however, resulted in the reopening of the camp in early 1951, under the authority of the United States Air Force. At the installation, then named Wolters Air Force Base, was housed the newly formed Aviation Engineer Force. Special-category army and air force personnel were trained there.

In September 1956 the base became the Primary Helicopter Center directed by the United States Army. In June 1963 it was renamed Fort Wolters. At the time all army rotary-wing aviators received basic and primary flight training there. The Vietnam War increased the need for pilots, and the base became the home for training not just army personnel, but also helicopter pilots for the Marine Corps in 1968 and for the Air Force in 1970. By 1970 Fort Wolters covered 8,500 acres and leased an additional 1,700 to help handle the 1,200 helicopters used at the camp. By January 1, 1973, 40,000 students had completed the twenty-week training program. The base was also the home of the Beach Army Hospital, the Eighty-fourth Military Police Detachment, the 328th United States Army Band, and United States Army Reserve Detachment 20, Sixteenth Weather Squadron.

In 1975 orders deactivating the base were issued. Part of the land and facilities became the property of the city and private businessmen; ninety acres and thirteen buildings became the Education Center of Weatherford College. A portion of the land was also transferred by the United States government to the state of Texas for development as part of Lake Mineral Wells State Park."