Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 3, Number 3, DeMotte, Jasper County, 1 June 1933 — Ideal Life Sought for Men in Forestry Army [ARTICLE]

Ideal Life Sought for Men in Forestry Army

Sports Will Help Keep Up Morale of Workers. Washington.--Work in the new reforestation camps--and there will be plenty of it--is to be well balanced with play. No one knows better than army officers, old hands at training large bodies of men, the valuable truth of the old adage, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Since President Roosevelt ordered the army to take charge of the men while they are in camp, Maj. Gen. Hugh A. Drum, deputy chief of staff, and his aides, have been busy drafting a recreation program for the new army of labor. Specific hours for play will be set aside and it will not interfere with the schedule of work. Rather, officials believe, it will add tremendously to the efficiency of the workers. Baseball Heads List. Baseball will, of course, head the list of sports for the quarter million unemployed city dwellers who are to be given jobs in the healthy outdoors. Each of the camps is to have 200 men in it, under tentative plans. Officials hope to develop a spirit of rivalry between camps located within a reasonable distance of each other to build up keen competition. Camps will be located near a stream whenever possible, and this will provide another much loved sport--swim-ming. For the long, cool evenings in camp there will be indoor games of all sorts, and movies. Cards will be provided, and there will be checkers, dominoes and the inevitable jig-saw puzzles. Secretary Dern has had a number of offers from college heads throughout the country, and as a result there may be instituted in the camps educational courses designed to prove highly valuable to the recruit when

he leaves the conservation corps and goes back into the life he came from. Living conditions for the men will be similar to those of the army. The food will be just as good as army rations. Often it will be better. Forces working in the forests will be able to procure more fresh food than the dough boys. Personnel will be under army supervision demanding a clean camp, regularity of habits and a high morale. The men will not be expected to maintain a schedule as rigid and tiring as the army demands. Because the army is the only force qualified to carry the burden of personal supervision of the forestry workers, their mode of life will be formulated somewhat along army lines. Another thing. Neither the army, which is supervising the work camps, nor the forest service, which will supervise the actual work in the woods, wants shirkers. Free Medical Service. Medical reserve corps officers will be stationed at the camps. Field medical kits will provide everything necessary for treatment of iinjuries except those of a major nature. In such cases, arrangements will be worked out to provide speedy removal of all patients to a medical center. Vacationists who take to the woods when the mercury climbs into the upper brackets will find the 161,000,000 acres of national forest even more pleasant than usual this year. New forest trails and roads, public camp improvements and a limited amount of tree planting are only a few of the additions to the vacationer’s pleasure that President Roosevelt’s civilian conservation corps will bring. In the field of safety from fires there will be new telephone lines strung, new landing fields set out for airplanes, new fire breaks, lookout towers and observatories, and range water development. Also, the reforestation army will tackle the job of insect and tree disease control, and other range and forest work.