 ill repute coming to town. In a letter dated Dec. 24, 1918, Thomas H. Scott, lieutenant colonel of the Medical Corps. and chief camp doctor, says men were treated for venereal disease including 404 cases of gonorrhea, and 114 prostitutes were arrested and tried.
Additionally, when 110 soldiers came in from Camp Devens, Mass., they brought Spanish influenza with them. The highly contagious disease spread in camp and in town. A nurse from Chambersburg, Lydia Miller, cared for the sick at the camp hospital, only to return home and die of influenza on Oct. 20, 1918. Pvt. Boyd F. Shriver died on Oct. 4, 1918, but wrote to his family a week before, pleading for medicine because he was not getting what he needed. In a letter to the acting surgeon general, Sen. Howard J. Sutherland called for an investigation into the influenza situation, using the words of Shriver’s bereaved half brother, “He was spitting blood then had pneumonia and they let him die like a dog.”
The worst of the epidemic lasted nearly two months, mid-September through late October, and the death toll varies by source, says Weaver, but in “at ease,” Eisenhower puts the number at 175. The scene was reminiscent of what happened 55 years prior, when places in town become makeshift hospitals. A school, St. Francis Xavier Hall, was one of them, and “every church was utilized to accommodate the overflow of dislocated family members,” says Eisenhower’s granddaughter Susan Eisenhower in her 1996 book, “Mrs. Ike.”
Dwight Eisenhower writes, “There were no coffins. We had no place to put the bodies except in a storage tent until they could gradually be taken care of more suitably.”
“Treat ‘Em Rough”
It wasn’t all bad, though. The camp published a twice-monthly magazine for and by the men called Treat ‘Em Rough. A Tankers’ Club was opened at 37 W. Middle St., complete with pool tables and a lounge and smoking room. The building still exists, and there is a historic sign out front. Pvt. Selmer Swanson of Minneapolis, Minn., who was 16 when he enlisted in 1917, writes in an army service questionnaire that one of his fondest memories was “picnics with family daughters at Gettysburg.”
Chance meetings and social occasions led to countless marriages. One such event was a town dance held on June 7, 1918, at Rosensteel’s Pavilion at the north base of Little Round Top. Rosensteel was actually a museum with a large outdoor porch, says John Heiser, historian with the Gettysburg National Military Park. “It stood on the corner of Sedgwick Avenue and Wheatfield Road,” he says, and it was torn down in the 1980s.
“Any time men and women get together, there will be relationships, and there will be marriages,” says Park Ranger Dennis Flake of the Eisenhower National Historic Site. Charles H. Holder of Huntsville, Ala., “met his bride when he was stationed at Gettysburg” in 1917, according to a Feb. 9, 1918, newspaper wedding announcement. He married Mary M. Bushman of Gettysburg.
Despite Eisenhower’s restlessness, his one joy in Gettysburg was spending time with his wife, Mamie, and their infant son, Doud, whom they nicknamed Icky (also spelled Ikky). The family lived in three places during their short time here. Citing Susan Eisenhower’s book, Mary Burtzloff, archivist with the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kan., says, “The couple first lived in a cramped rented house without gas or electricity. In June, they moved to the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house associated with Gettysburg College, which was empty of students for the summer. That fall, they moved to a brick house at 237 Spring Ave. in Gettysburg, where they remained for several months.”
The Eisenhowers’ house at Gettysburg College, 157 N. Washington St., is not open for tours but has a historic marker and a bronze plaque that states it was their “first family home.”
From Capt. Eisenhower to President Eisenhower
On Nov. 11, 1918, the armistice was signed; WWI came to an end, and so did Camp Colt. When the buildings and tents toppled, so, too, did most of the memories.
Weaver says if Eisenhower had been sent