Unbroken legacy: Half-track replica at YPG honors the ‘Greatest Generation’

Dubbed “The Spirit of Camp Laguna,” retired YPG Heritage Center curator Bill Heidner read the modest plaque at the culmination of the simple gathering. Camp Laguna, located at what is now YPG, was part of the California-Arizona Desert Maneuver Area where 20 divisions of American soldiers trained during World War II.

Constructed by YPG’s threat target and carpentry shops, the replica armored personnel character utilizes disused parts from various military vehicles, from a MIM-23 Hawk missile carrier to an M35 2 1/2-ton truck. Rob Bauer fabricated the replica without the benefit of schematics; he used only photos.

“I knew how tall the front tires were and scaled everything accordingly,” said Bauer. “It has been a lot of fun building it.”

Like the rest of the vehicle, the replica half-track’s bumper sports period-correct stenciling identifying it as belonging to the 13th Infantry Regiment of the 8th Infantry Division.

“TEMO borrows the lineage of the 8th Infantry Division because they happened to be the first to train at Camp Laguna as a division element,” explained Arroyo. “The 13th Infantry Regiment is still an active unit, but is now a basic training unit.”

Arroyo’s original concept of the display called for a genuine World War II-era M3, and arrangements had been made for a long-term loan of one from Anniston Army Depot prior to YPG’s Heritage Center museum being closed by the Center for Military History in 2023.

“We wanted to tie the lineage and heritage of Camp Laguna to FOB Laguna,” said Arroyo. “This object embodies our solemn commitment to the warfighter. We must always honor the unbroken legacy of those who came before us, stand beside those who serve today, and prepare the way for those who will one day test their mettle here at FOB Laguna.”

YPG’s primary mission is testing equipment for troops, but in recent years well over 100 units have utilized the installation for training purposes, oftentimes including multi-week stays in the proving ground’s FOB Laguna.

To ensure continuity in its vital mission of testing equipment for warfighters before their lives depend on it, the proving ground’s civilian workforce of engineers, data collectors and others has usually exceeded the number of Soldiers throughout its more than 80-year history. Army testing in the desert near modern YPG occurred during World War II, too, but back then training soldiers was the prime activity – and what Soldiers they were.

Seven of the 20 divisions that trained in the Desert Southwest were in the first wave that assaulted the beaches at Normandy in June 1944, including elements of the 8th and 79th Infantry Divisions that trained at Camp Laguna. They helped repel Hitler’s massive, but unsuccessful, last gasp offensive in the Ardennes Forest that bitterly cold winter. As German resistance melted away with the spring thaw, they liberated Nazi death camps inside Germany.

The Soldiers who engaged in these heroics were made, not born. The destinies of 20 divisions, more than 200,000 men, were forged in the massive Desert Maneuver Area that spanned Arizona, California, and Nevada. They trained in the blazing hot desert to prepare for combat in North Africa, but the Allies defeated the Nazis there before their training was finished. Nonetheless, it served them well in their deployment to Europe: more than one veteran of Desert Maneuver Area training said that the intense hardships of combat in Belgium’s raw winter were less grueling than a summer in southwestern Arizona subsisting on two quarts of water per day.

Their efforts were greatly aided by the M2 Treadway Bridge, the Army’s first modern tactical pontoon bridge, which had been rapidly tested at Yuma Test Branch prior to the invasion of Normandy. YTB engineers also developed the cantilevered delivery system for the more versatile and robust Bailey Bridge, which enabled Soldiers to construct a bridge on the friendly side of a gap and push it across before engaging the enemy. By the end of the war, Allied combat engineers had erected thousands of these temporary bridges as retreating Axis forces destroyed permanent bridges behind them.

YPG is the last active Army installation in the Desert Maneuver Area, and within its boundaries lies what once was Camp Laguna. Today, all that is left on the desert floor are concrete pads, rock-lined pathways that were once flanked by hundreds of tents, the occasional unit insignia rendered in rocks, and scattered detritus of camp life: badly rusted tin ration cans and cups, and the occasional glass Coke bottle. The camp’s legacy lives on in a free Europe, not in architectural remains.