Citizens Military Training Camp
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Citizens Military Training Camps were military training programs of the United States. Held annually each summer during the years 1921 to 1940, the CMTC camps differed from National Guard and Reserves training in that the program allowed male citizens to obtain basic military training without an obligation to call-up for active duty. The CMTC were authorized by the National Defense Act of 1920 as a compromise that rejected universal military training and adopted a continuation of the "Plattsburgh Movement," a volunteer non-enlistment training program organized by private citizens in Plattsburgh, New York, that had trained 20,000 potential Army officers during the summers of 1915 and 1916.
CMTC camps were a month in length and held at approximately fifty Army bases nationally. At their peak in 1928 and 1929 approximately 40,000 men received training, but as a whole the camps were a disappointment at their multiplicity of stated goals, but particularly in the commissioning of Reserve officers. The program established that participants could receive a reserve commission as a second lieutenant by completing four successive summer courses (titled Basic, White, Red, and Blue), but only 5,000 such commissions were awarded over the 20-year history of the CMTC. No records apparently exist that document total participation, but the source listed below estimates that 400,000 men had at least one summer of training.
Among known participants were Harry S Truman, Ronald Reagan, Robert Penn Warren, and Chuck Yeager.
[edit] Reference
- Kington, Donald M., Forgotten Summers: The Story of the Citizens' Military Training Camps, 1921-1940, Two Decades Publishing (1995), ISBN 0-9645789-0-5
