Mr.
Care’s unit was the 3008th. Ordnance Company, comprising 200 men, which was
part of the 624th. Ordnance Base Automotive Battalion (henceforward OBAM).
As the other three companies were billeted at Ashchurch. Sergeant Care and
his comrades trucked each day to Ashchurch to their job of assembling mobile
equipment of all sorts that was arriving “in
massive crates”, and other advanced operations.
It
appears that the most famous unit at Ashchurch was the ‘622 OBAM Battalion’
whose veterans visited Tewkesbury in 1993 and who have supplied much of the
information about the working of the camp. The Battalion was formed on 9
July 1942 as the ‘126th. Ordnance Motor Base Shop Regiment’. Subsequently,
from ordnance depots at Atlanta, Camp Normoyle, Texas, and Camp Halybird,
Maryland the 800 soldiers made a fourteen-day crossing to England by way of
Fort Lee in Virginia. Thus was installed “G-25. one
of key general depots”.
In the
early days accommodation was spartan. In August 1942 3,000 men lived mainly
in “squalid pyramidal
bell tents”6 while 158 buildings, including ten
hangars and five small warehouses were prepared. A hutted camp was later
built in Northway, possibly for the coloured soldiers.
In
addition, there was the vital extension of the Midland Railway line into the
camp, making an extra signal box necessary to cope with the extra lines.
