Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 68, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1917 — Hoosier Fort May Be Made Headquarters. [ARTICLE]

Hoosier Fort May Be Made Headquarters.

Washington, D. C., April 10. —Fort Benjamin Harrioon is to be made the concentration point for two divisions of the army, numbering approximately 40,000 men, if plans of the war department do not go astray. Whether these men will be a part of the emergency army or whether they will W national guardsmen and regulars is not made clear, but it is understood that the two divisions to be formed at Fort Harrison probably will be made up of all these classes, with national guardsmen and regulars forming the nucleus. In general, the two divisions will be drawn from Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. It was the former plan of the war department to form a division from the nationail guard of Indiana and Illinois, but this plan has been ad-tcrod Most of the troops of the emergency army will receive their training probabl y in s mal ler concent ration camps in the three states. It is the intention of the war department to decentralize the process of preliminary training as much as possible, as smaller units are easier to handle. As the men become experienced, how* ever, they gradually will be shifted to Ft. Harrison for maneuvers in large units. It is presumed that a battlefield will be constructed at Ft. Harrison to resemble the trenches of France. Here the troops will receive 'instructions in building trenches and dugouts, in doing observation work, in rushing enemy trenches and bayoneting the enemy forces, in throwing bombs, in repelling gas attacks and in repelling enemy charges. Much of the training will ibe based on the lessons of the European war, and every trooper, from the most experienced regular down to the rawest recruit, will start even on this work, as little of it has been done in the United States. - - ----- If the congress should not accept the plans for raising the new army that have been drawn up by the general staff, the plans for Ft. Harrison might be altered materially.