A tour along Barnum Road

Two of several dozen gravestones which mark the first American victims of the Spanish flu outbreak that swept the country as World War I came to an end. As the gravestones above attest, these soldiers died within 24 hours of each other. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)

A cemetery to remember

The Hill Crest Cemetery, two orderly rows of headstones behind the center flagpole on Barnum Road, is the final resting place of the first victims of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. The first case was reported on Sept. 8, 1918 at Camp Devens, a demobilization center, after soldiers returning from war brought the disease home with them from Europe. Though it was designed for 35,000 men, the camp held 45,000 at the time, and this overcrowding proved the perfect environment for spreading disease.

In late September of 1918, the U.S. attorney general sent four distinguished doctors to investigate the outbreak. One of them, Col. Victor Vaughan, said he saw “...hundreds of stalwart young men in the uniform of their country coming into the wards of the hospital in groups of 10 or more. They are placed on the cots until every bed is full, yet others crowd in.”

Devens lost 878 men, and a quarantine proved too late. The disease spread worldwide, killing 60 million people.

An M60 tank, the primary battle tank of the Cold War.

Relics of war

Retired guns and vehicles can be found in front of the National Guard Maintenance Facility at 87 Barnum Road. Despite the appearance of being on display, these pieces are here temporarily, waiting for a VFW post or town common to request them.

As you look from the road, the first two guns are Russian-made howitzers captured in Iraq. The next two are American M114 field howitzers, and the last gun is an American M115 towed howitzer.

The tan vehicle is a Russian-made armored personnel carrier/ambulance captured in Iraq.

The rest are American: An M114 reconnaissance vehicle, an M59 armored personnel carrier, an M60 tank, and an M151 Jeep.

Repair shop extraordinaire

When it opened in 1942, the Whittemore Service Command Base Shop was the largest garage in the world. Covering almost four acres, the building had rooms for sheet metal work, canvas repair, and electronics. It also had a tailor shop for sewing patches on uniforms and three paint booths, each large enough to hold a tank. The shop—a wide building with three garage doors—can be found next to the National Guard maintenance facility on Barnum Road.

A pillbox turret on Devens was used in training for World War I.

World War I training ground

A walk up Barnum Road about 200 feet along an old paved road forking back into the woods to the left of Loaves and Fishes leads to what appears to be a large rock that’s a bit too round to be natural. Built during World War I by the 301st Engineers to learn fortification techniques, the pillbox turret’s entrance faces Robbins Pond and is connected to a system of trenches. On the opposite side is a barely visible machine gun port. The pillbox and trenches were also used by soldiers training for battle. Both the soldiers and the engineers got the chance to use what they learned at Devens against the enemy overseas. The pillbox is one of the few remaining World War I-era structures on the post.

World War II POW camp

The red concrete-block buildings on Barnum Road across from the entrance to Robbins Pond Road were used as a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. Built in 1944, the buildings once housed 5,000 enlisted men; most were captured in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. Lt. Colonel H.M. Thompson stated in The History of Fort Devens: “For their labor they were paid 80 cents a day and a $3 monthly allowance for purchasing personal items at the camp canteen. Organized into companies under an American officer, POWs worked in road gangs, the laundry, mess halls, and motor pools; others cut timber in Maine and New Hampshire. The POW camp closed in 1946, after the release of the internees who were repatriated to Germany and Italy.”