July 31, 1946

Camp Chaffee, a large army training base located about five miles from Fort Smith (Sebastian County), was closed for a time after five years of service during World War II. As many as 20,000 men had trained there. The camp, first intended to be a training area for armored units, was named for Major General Adna Romanza Chaffee, a 1906 West Point graduate considered to be the father of the army’s armored units. In its last wartime incarnation, Camp Chaffee was a base for deactivating several infantry divisions. From 1948 to 1957, Chaffee was the home of the Fifth Armored Division. In 1956, Camp Chaffee was re-designated as Fort Chaffee. Currently, 66,000 acres are used by the Arkansas National Guard as a training facility.

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