Site of World War II Camp Bowie
Brownwood, Brown County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Huge World War II training base, Camp Bowie was a home of the "Texas" 36th Division and trained many other units, including the "Dixie" 31st, 4th, and 13th Armored; and 113th Cavalry. It was also Seventh Headquarters of Special Troops, Fourth Army. Here, too, Gen. Walter Krueger was Commander of the VIII Corps Area Troops. The camp had a capacity of 45,000. Commanders were Col. K.L. Berry, Gen. C.V. Birkhead, Col. F.E. Bonney, Col. A.G. Brown, and Col. K.F. Hanst. Camp operated Sept. 1940 to 1946, when 45th Div. was deactivated. It was named for James Bowie, hero of the Alamo siege, 1836. (1968)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
During World War II, Camp Bowie near Brownwood was a sprawling training base capable of holding 45,000 soldiers and home to the Texas 36th Division along with armored, cavalry, and headquarters units. Operating from 1940 to 1946, it helped prepare countless troops for the fighting overseas. The camp took its name from Alamo hero James Bowie.
Why it matters
Camps like Bowie turned small Texas towns into engines of the wartime mobilization that fielded the American armies of World War II.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the autumn of 1940 the United States was not yet at war, but it was getting ready for one. Europe had fallen into conflict the year before, and Congress had just approved the first peacetime draft in American history. Almost overnight the nation needed places where hundreds of thousands of new soldiers could be housed, fed, drilled and turned into fighting units. Much of that work went to the wide open spaces of the South and West.
Central Texas was ideal ground for it. The land was spacious, the weather allowed training for most of the year, and small towns like Brownwood were eager for the jobs and business a military post would bring. Camp Bowie opened in September 1940 and grew quickly into a huge base, able to hold around 45,000 people. That was many times the population of the town beside it.
For Brownwood, the war years brought an enormous change. Barracks, training grounds and the daily traffic of an army post changed a quiet county seat into a busy military town. Local families rented rooms and opened businesses, and the town got used to the sound of soldiers marching and trucks rolling. When the war ended, the camp wound down. It closed in 1946, and the countryside slowly took back the ground.
People & events
The heart of Camp Bowie was the 36th Division, the Texas National Guard division known simply as the Texas Division. Its guardsmen came from towns and cities across the state, and the camp was one of their homes as the division trained for war. The 36th later fought overseas, in the Italian campaign and after that in France. Many of the young Texans who drilled on these fields did not come home.
They were not alone here. The marker lists a long run of units that passed through, including the Dixie Division (the 31st), the 4th and 13th Armored Divisions and the 113th Cavalry. Each brought its own soldiers, vehicles and traditions for a while, then shipped out and made room for the next. Camp Bowie was less a single unit's home than a busy crossroads of the wartime army.
One name stands out among the officers: Walter Krueger, who commanded troops here before becoming one of the senior American generals of the war. Krueger went on to lead the Sixth Army in the Pacific. His time in Brownwood was part of the long preparation behind that later command. The camp itself took its name from a much older Texas hero, James Bowie. The frontiersman gave his name to the Bowie knife and died defending the Alamo in 1836. Naming a 20th-century training post after him tied a new generation of Texan soldiers to one of the state's founding stories.
Its place in the American story
The United States entered World War II with a small standing army. By the end of the war it had put millions of men in uniform. That expansion could only happen through camps like Bowie, huge temporary cities built in months where civilians learned to be soldiers and scattered units learned to fight as divisions.
The 36th Division's path shows how a National Guard unit fit into that effort. Before the war, the Guard was a group of part-time units organized by state. Mobilization turned them into full-time federal divisions that fought alongside draftees from every corner of the country. The Texas Division took its state identity overseas with it, and places like Camp Bowie were where that shift happened.
The camp also shows how the war changed the home front. Towns across the South and West grew fast, took on new residents, and joined the national economy in new ways because a military post landed on their doorstep. Brownwood's story is one version of something that happened in dozens of American communities between 1940 and 1946.
If you visit
Don't expect to find a fort. Camp Bowie was built quickly and taken down quickly, and most of it has disappeared into the modern town and the surrounding countryside. The marker is a point from which to picture it: rows of barracks, dusty drill fields and tens of thousands of young people who passed through on their way to war.
Part of the pleasure here is using your imagination. Stand by the marker and try to picture a population several times larger than the town's, packed onto this ground. Then think about the letters, the train departures and the families waiting at home.
Brownwood sits in the rolling country of central Texas, which makes it an easy stop on a drive across the state. If your family has a World War II veteran, and especially one who served with the 36th Division, this is a meaningful place to pause. Many travelers find that a marker like this turns an ordinary road trip into a conversation about the generation that fought the war.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Walter Krueger
- · James Bowie
Related events
- · World War II
Themes & tags
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Prisoners of War at Camp Bowie
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During World War II, Camp Bowie near Brownwood held several thousand German prisoners of war, the first arriving in 1943 including men from Rommel's Afrika Korps. The Army let them write letters, attend morning classes in subjects from English to bookkeeping, and hear lectures and music at night, while many worked on nearby farms. Some kept up friendships with local farmers and returned to visit years after the last prisoners went home in 1946.
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