Engel's Camp Manual

When Congress passed a $466,000,000 bill for Army camp construction last September, it was shooting from the hip. Speed in national defense was urgent; nobody knew just what would cost what. Even Michigan's bushy-haired, stubby Representative Albert Joseph Engel, a mole for figures, voted for the bill without more than five minutes' consideration. But, while other members went on to other urgencies, fact-loving Mr. Engel took time out to study what he had voted for. His conclusion: the Army had underestimated, would have a deficit of around $330,000,000. Sure enough, Congress voted a deficit appropriation of $338,500,000 in March. By that time Albert Engel was buzzing from camp to camp in his Mercury, sleeping in his car, eating sandwiches washed down with milk, and poking through 13 camps on the eastern and southern seaboards.

Last week, after turning in a carefully itemized expense account ($248.67), he gave his first report: on Camp Blanding, near Jacksonville, Fla., and Fort George G. Meade, 20 miles north of the capital, Representative Engel's words grated harshly on the ears of the Quartermaster Corps. For he had found plenty to document the suspicion that, at least in Camps Meade and Blanding, the Quartermaster Corps had been guilty of bad planning and blundering stupidity. Examples:

>About 40% of Blanding's 117,000 acres are below the level of a nearby lake. Result: $740,000 for a drainage system and dredging to replace muck with sand. Moving one group of tents out of the mud cost around $10,000.

>Labor costs due to overtime (and readjustment of wage scales by Madam Perkins) increased estimated costs by $2,014,600.

>On orders from the Quartermaster Corps in Washington, camp officers bought 26 miles of 60-lb. rail from the Southern Railway. Army regulations required 80-lb. rail. Said Mr. Engel: "It looks to me as though the Southern . . . unloaded some of its light rails. ... I am wondering what is going to happen should the Army ever attempt to send [over it] a trainload of mechanized equipment or railroad artillery."

>Roads built with crushed rock bought from a Florida partnership formed last July cost $1,247,000. Investigator Engel was told by engineers that $547,000 could have been saved by using sand, oil and clay binder.

>Visiting the camp in February, aging Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson congratulated all hands on progress made. Next day the contractor and engineer were fired.

>Original estimate for Fort Meade's construction was $9,053,187. Later expanded to accommodate 1% more troops, it will actually cost $23,117,000. Increased costs due to overtime alone: $1,808,320.

>Fort Meade's architect-engineer (Baltimore's seasoned J. E. Greiner Co.) recommended building the camp on the old World War I site, utilizing sewers and roads. The Army insisted on a new site with practically no roads, no utilities, but plenty of sewerage problems.

>Utilities at Meade were estimated to cost $766,264, will actually cost three and a half times that amount.

>Picking new hospital and anti-tank sites (and using them) cost an estimated $1,000,000 more than would have been needed for World War I sites.

After Meade and Benning, Mr. Engel's story still had eleven chapters to go. But he had already arrived at an angry conclusion. Said he: "The officers in the United States Army who ... are responsible for this willful, extravagant and outrageous waste of the taxpayers' money ought to be court-martialed and kicked out of the Government service."

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