The History of the School of Automobile Mechanics at Camp Mabry

In 1918, with World War I raging in Europe, Camp Mabry, the Austin summer encampment of the Texas National Guard, became home to the School of Automobile Mechanics (S.A.M.). S.A.M. represented a collaboration between the U. S. War Department and the University of Texas (UT) in response to the urgent need for trained drivers and mechanics to support forces in Europe (the School of Military Aeronautics [S.M.A.] on the campus of Austin’s Blind Institute was another product of this collaboration).

In early 1918 the War Department’s Committee on Education and Special Training had solicited help and advice from university leadership from across the United States. UT president Robert E. Vinson offered university resources to establish training schools in Texas. UT Regent George W. Littlefield provided a critical loan of $300,000. The Texas legislature assented to the proposed site of Camp Mabry, which was owned by the state of Texas, and workers broke ground for construction on April 10, 1918. At the new schools, students would be rapidly trained and sent overseas. The school trained approximately 6,000 civilian men as automobile mechanics, truck drivers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, machinists, and welders. The men also received military instruction. The school lasted from May until December and was the largest such school in the country. Total investment in construction and equipment was later estimated to be almost $1 million.

On May 16, 1918, when students first arrived, there were no completed facilities and few tools, forges, or other necessary equipment. At first, the students worked and slept under tents. During a six-week period, the school built workshops, administration buildings, six two-story brick barracks, a 100,000-gallon water tower, and other buildings. UT resident architect George Endress oversaw the design of the school’s buildings, which were constructed by local contractors J.Y. Johnson and J. F. Chambers. Carpenters and lumber were in short supply, so, while the workshops were constructed in wood, the barracks, dining hall, and administration building were constructed of brick, which was locally available in large quantities.

The first structure built was the operation shed, “simply a covered building in two sections holding over forty Continental motors mounted on permanent test blocks.” Three generally identical workshops—the machine shop, chassis building, and auxiliaries building—were built, each taking less than two weeks to erect. These buildings were adapted by Endress from a standardized design for a Signal Corps Mobilization hangar by the architect Albert Kahn. The machine shop was set up by its general foreman E. M. Hankin and the instructor Victor Smith. Machines were brought from UT’s School of Mechanical Engineering. While the shop was being constructed, the blacksmiths worked under tents.

An academic board, headed by Hal C. Weaver, formerly head of the engine division of the School of Military Aeronautics, planned the curriculum and selection of instructors. An instruction team of up to 190 men taught at S.A.M. during its operation. Capt. John B. Banks served as the first commanding officer at the school. New students traveling from Arizona, Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, continued to arrive over a period of months, with the largest number of students coming from Texas. To house the trainees, six two-story brick barracks were constructed in a row along the west side of the parade ground. Two of these were destroyed by fire in 1929. Each barrack housed 400 men. Building 1, the main administrative building, constructed of brick, stood at the camp’s historic main entrance on West 35th Street. Building 6 (home to the Texas Military Forces Museum since 1992) was built as a kitchen and dining hall with the capacity to feed 4,000 men at one time. The June 30, 1918, edition of the Austin Statesman noted that the kitchen featured a revolving potato peeler “capable of peeling forty pounds of potatoes per minute,” a bakery that could bake 180 loaves of bread every forty minutes, a 100-gallon-capacity stew kettle, and six meat roasters which could “cook at one time three whole steers.”

Students took eight weeks of instruction, and the school provided specialized training in engines, chassis, ignition, carburetors, batteries, and starting and lighting equipment. Different divisions included those for engine, auxiliaries, chassis, operation, and machine shop. Instruction began with truck driving and basic vehicle maintenance. Students learned to drive three-ton Packard trucks and the Class-B standardized military truck known as the “Liberty” truck. At first, they drove around the expansive parade ground on the east side of the camp; later they practiced on a course laid out through the forested hills on the camp’s west side. Eventually, trainees also serviced cars and trucks for the public so that they could benefit from the “advantage of doing actual commercial work.”

S.A.M. students enjoyed a wide variety of extra-curricular entertainments and activities during the school’s short duration. Already in May, the various Austin Masonic groups had donated a building for use by the Y.M.C.A., which became very active at the camp. The “Y” offered a reading room, a Victrola and piano, space for parties, movie screenings, and weekly French lessons. The Knights of Columbus also maintained a building at the camp, where Mass was conducted on Sundays.

Students fielded a football team and a baseball team (called S.A.M., or the “Fighting Mechanics”), playing the Coca-Colas (from the local bottling plant), the Aviators (from the School of Military Aeronautics), the Radios (from the Radio School), the Lions (from the Lions Club), and the Rotarians (from the Rotary Club). Baseball games were played at Clark Field on the UT Austin campus, where Bass Concert Hall is now located. After officers at the camp joined the Austin Polo Club, polo matches became a regular event at Camp Mabry. Students also held track events. S.A.M. students formed a musical band using musical instruments supplied by the university, and UT professors offered lectures on subjects related to the war.

The S.A.M. Sun, Camp Mabry’s newspaper, was first published on August 24 with more than two dozen reporters and contributors. The newspaper included articles on the progress of the war, goings-on at the camp, and advertisements for local businesses. In its first issue, the paper published a “Letter from the Front” from First Lt. Donald M. Kirkpatrick from the American Expeditionary Forces on the front page; the letter offered a bleak and unvarnished view of the war as “collossally [sic] stupid, infinitely wasteful and tremendously serious—more serious than it is possible to appreciate at home.”

The global influenza pandemic swept through Camp Mabry in October 1918, though cases at the camp were reported to be generally mild. The camp was quarantined between September 30 and October 26, by which time the camp was thought to be mostly free of new cases of the disease. In the meantime, the Red Cross Motor Corps delivered nurses and supplies. In early October, a rat-catching effort was centered at Camp Mabry; locals were encouraged to catch mice and rats which were used to diagnose and address individual cases of pneumonia. The testing was conducted in the “Metchnikoff,” a laboratory within a Pullman Sleeper railcar brought to Camp Mabry from Fort Sam Houston.

The School of Automobile Mechanics was demobilized in the weeks following the end of the war on November 11, 1918. The UT Board of Regents formally returned Camp Mabry to the state of Texas and the adjutant general of the state of Texas on August 14, 1919. The surviving structures were included as part of the Camp Mabry Historic District and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.