Camp Cachalot Alumni Association Forums

[Dave G]

HAs anyone seen the Wikipedia page for Camp? The first lines are what really get me (never mind all the other things I have never heard of).

A POW camp? A military installation? Who wrote that? I know anyone can edit the info on there but I have never heard of half the things on that page....

[Dennis Wilkinson]

I've seen it, and I've already made a few corrections (the info on the Covill Chapel was wrong, in a way that could be insulting to the still-living donors of the chapel,) but I've been holding off on major updates until I get the history pages here up-to-date with a decent summary. I'll be doing that pretty soon.

But, no, the facility was never user as a POW or other internment camp -- I looked into it (it's not the first time I've seen a reference to that.) There was a facility at Camp Edwards (you know, at Otis) that opened in 1944 that was used as a POW facility for POWs from the European theater in World War II. The 'inmates' there were occasionally used as agricultural labor in the surrounding communities, so there is a very, very remote possibility that, if the cranberry bogs on the property were in operation at that point (unknown) that they may have helped to work those bogs, but there's absolutely no evidence of that.

In other words, chalk it up to an urban legend, like Three Fingered Willie.

Another common misconception that's listed on that page is that you can tell where the fire in '64 moved through Camp just by looking at where we have pitch pine and scrub oak. You need only look at photos of Camp from the '50s to tell that that isn't true -- in fact, the tree canopy looked worse then than it does today. The simple fact of the matter is that Camp is in a type of forest usually called an eastern pine-oak barren (there's a huge one in New Jersey.) They burn down, often, as fire is a major part of their normal life-cycle, and they don't tend to "graduate" to other forest types because the soil remains sandy and acidic. (I'm sure Brian B. could tell you more than you'd ever want to know.)

A lot of the info is correct, like the current campsite names, which have undergone some, er, odd additions over the last several years. I'm reasonably sure that the author of most of the Wikipedia article is from Troop 164 in Assonet (in fact, I think he's got a forum account here, as well.)

As I said, once I've put up the basic outline of Camp history here, I'll probably make further edits at Wikipedia (if you look at the page history for edits made by cachalotalumnicurator, that's me. Tom W. made an earlier edit anonymously related to the Chapel.)

Of course, if you'd like to make edits yourself, have at it (especially if you or your relatives can fill in any holes.)
_________________
Dennis
Minister of Propaganda, Webmaestro, and Chief Bottle Washer

"Everything that passes unattempted is impossible." - Stephen R. Donaldson

[Peter Ashworth]

"In other words, chalk it up to an urban legend, like Three Fingered Willie."


Three Fingered Willie is an urban legend?

[Dennis Wilkinson]

[BrianB]

What? Three Fingered Willy isn't real?

Brian

[Dennis Wilkinson]

I was doing some more browsing last night, and I think I found what may be a potential source of the confusion about this. There are a lot of references to a "Camp Myles Standish" in the early 1940s as an embarkation point for soldiers shipping over to the European theater in WW2, and a lot of those references make no mention of its location. It's not unreasonable to think that some folks may have concluded that it must have been adjacent to the state forest, and therefore could have been on the Cachalot property. Furthermore, Camp Myles Standish did use German POWs as labor for at least some time, although it's not clear that they were housed there.

However, Camp Myles Standish was in Taunton, and occupied some or all of the site of the Paul A. Dever State School there today. See:

http://personal.tmlp.com/cohannet/EXPERIMENT%202.htm

The State of Massachusetts' web site also makes at least one passing reference to the property, as legislation to transfer ownership of part of the property was passed in '97. See:

http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/seslaw97/sl970123.htm
_________________
Dennis
Minister of Propaganda, Webmaestro, and Chief Bottle Washer

"Everything that passes unattempted is impossible." - Stephen R. Donaldson

[Sahasrahla]

This is the first time I've posted here, so I'm going to hope that I do it right.

I wrote the Wikipedia article last summer/fall, and I haven't touched it too much since then. My intent at the time was simply to create the article, based on information that I'd been told over the years, so that people with more knowledge would have a base to build from.

Most of this came in the form of stories, which as we all know can be hit or miss at times. The military snippet, for example, is a story I'd heard several times from older individuals who'd spent time at Cachalot when they were younger (and, considerably closer in the timeline to the 1940s than I am). Also, please keep in mind that that part stated the stories were unverified.

My hope in creating the article was that people, such as yourselves, would eventually come along and fix what I may have gotten wrong, clean up where I may have made a mistake, and contribute to making the article better and more accurate.

It seems as though I've offended several of you. I apologize for that -- I simply used the information I had, that I trusted, to build a base. I shall not be contributing to that article further.

[Dennis Wilkinson]

[Dave G]

I was not offended at all. I just thought it was funny seeing some of the stories that get passed around and turned into fact However I just want to head off slightly untrue items and get to the history of the subject.