Coxcomb Desert Training Center: Liberating Buchenwald

The third of General Patton’s Desert Training Centers that we have explored.  This one is outside the Coxcomb Mountains, hence the name.

We have spent over three weeks in three of the Desert Training Centers AND HAVE SEEN NO OTHER VISITORS.

All three of the Desert Training Centers we have visited have nice monuments on the main road describing them.  But how many people stop at those “Historical Markers Ahead" places?  We rarely do.  We wouldn’t even know about these places if the Iron Mountain Desert Training Center wasn’t mentioned on one of the BLM maps Vicky purchased for our trip.  And we got to wondering what it was.

So far, our recommendation is that if you want to visit one of the Desert Training Centers, Coxcomb is a better one to visit than Camp Iron Mountain, although Camp Iron Mountain is the one where most effort was made to preserve it (a fence around the entire place).  The reason we would recommend Coxcomb is that the road into it is very good, whereas the road into Iron Mountain camp is dreadful—even with our 4WD we almost didn’t make it.  Don't try it with anything other than 4WD.  And once you get there, there isn't anywhere to park. 

Coxcomb Camp is relatively easy to visit, and any vehicle can be used to access it.  This is the monument along the highway.

You take the well packed dirt road north at the monument, and then turn left at the only remaining maintained road.  You then drive on another well packed dirt road for about two miles through the camp seeing one of the most interesting and beautiful remaining structures (a stone alter).  When you are through the camp, you then turn left onto another well maintained road and drive back to the main highway.  

Like in Camp Granite, the former roads are identifiable by berms that were built.  In Camp Coxcomb, these berms often had rocks placed on top of them.  There were also the usual rock-lined sidewalks that we have seen in the other Desert Training Centers.

By following the berms, we were able to locate the original headquarters area, complete with (what we made up to be) the former location of the flagpole.  

There is a fenced off area where the topo map of the camp used to be.  Sadly, like at Iron Mountain Camp, weather has totally obliterated the actual map, so the fenced off area looks no different from any other area.  

In one spot we found a huge amount of old wood.  From what we could tell, this was on “Kitchen Road.”  It reminded us of the place we found near the Camp Granite area that we could not identify.

So in the spirit of making things up as we go along, we decided that, because they were so similar, that the place with wood strewn all about near Camp Granite was, like this place in Camp Coxcomb, the kitchen and mess hall.  Along with a large amount of old wood was what appeared to be a lot of chimneys.  

We further made up the fact that the kitchen area(s) were placed away from the living quarters so that the flies that the kitchen area attracted could be contained to that area.  This is why the wood structures near Granite Camp were outside the actual camp area.  

We are good at making stuff up.  

But a lot of the fun we are having is in trying to reconstruct the places given the few clues we have.

As we did when we camped near Camp Granite, we alternated hikes into the hills with hikes around the camp.  We found a number of artifacts that would look great in our home, and after photographing them, returned them to their original place (actually, we hid them better than we found them so other people would have the fun of finding them but people wanting to steal them would have a more difficult time doing that).  

The men who trained here, the Sixth Armored Division, liberated Buchenwald Concentration Camp on April 11, 1945.  The ones still alive, that is, after fighting against the second greatest war machine in history (next to the US forces).  

Liberated a concentration camp?  And this is where they trained to be able to do that?  We are walking on the same roads they walked on?  Looking at the same mountains?  

And on a seldom used highway where all that you can see from it is a small pull-off with a small monument.  Nobody stops.  They, like us too often, in too much of a hurry to get to their destination.  

We almost feel like we want to go out to that highway, start flagging people down, and saying “You really need to come see this.”

You think you have done something with your life, and then you read what the guys who trained here did, and you can feel awfully small.

They defeated the powerful German army.

And liberated Buchenwald.

Some photos and artifacts from Camp Coxcomb:

The beautiful alter.  Please, Bureau of Land Management, put a fence around it so no one can tag it with spray paint.  It's only a matter of time. 

Some guy or guys built this.  Many examples were in the camp, but this one was wonderfully preserved.

Here is another one, built by some guy or guys from Yuma, Arizona.  Still in great shape.

A soldier shaved with this:

Coils of wire:

Old Root Beer bottle:

Owens medicine bottle:

One day we took a hike far into the Coxcomb mountains.  What we found was really interesting--several rock barriers.  Were they part of the training exercises?  We can think of no other purpose for them:

Our quiet, isolated, and beautiful campsite in the Desert Training Center: