Camp McCoy

October 1943 Begins Winter Training For the 808th TD

Camp McCoy, Wisconsin was created for WWII winter training.

The available information about Camp McCoy is limited.

Countless references to winter training are available but they all said the same thing. It was cold. "Official" documents concerning winter training deal with high mountain winter training in Colorado.

Facts I found about Camp McCoy follow:

All troops lived outdoors in the snow. The temperature, despite what the natives had to say about mildness, dropped as low as twenty-eight degrees below zero.
Lt. Louis L'Amour of the 808th Tank Destroyer Battalion at Camp McCoy was the guest speaker at the meeting of the Rotary club in the Stoddard Hotel. L'Amour, poet, author of short stories and world traveler since he was 15, talked about the Far East. "Whether it likes it or not," L'Amour said, "the United States will be a world power after this war, and it must act like one."
I finally found a few newspaper articles from Wisconsin papers from the 40s and learned much about winter training at Camp McCoy.
- The goal at Camp McCoy was to prepare our men for severe winter weather survival.
- To train them to move their equipment through the snow efficiently.
- To survive outdoors in subzero temperatures. They lived outside with minimal provisions as would be expected on the battlefield.
- The 808th tank destroyer record on the battlefield during their winter in the ETO proved they learned well how to survive and seek, strike and destroy the enemy during the most severe weather.

This photo was sent to us by an 808th family member. It was titled on the back as "Winter Training in N. Michigan 1944". There is no documentation that any of the 808th TD had been sent to Michigan for winter training but apparently some were. This photo describes exactly what the newspaper descriptions of Camp McCoy were.

Can anyone explain?

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Camp McCoy

October 1943 Begins Winter Training For the 808th TD