News
Book Celebrates Fort's History
By John Burton
FORT MONMOUTH - In the 92 years since it was first established, Fort Monmouth has been home to carrier pigeons, helped to launch satellites and been the scene of cutting-edge work intended to protect those in uniform serving around the world. As the fort begins the process of fading into the twilight after its service these many years, it seems appropriate that its history be remembered.
Certainly Wendy A. Rejan would agree. "It was an extremely special place," Rejan said of the fort.
Rejan is the author of a new book of photos published as part of the Arcadia Publishing "Images of America" series.
Encompassing 1,122 acres bordered by Eatontown, Tinton Falls and Oceanport, Fort Monmouth began with about 640 acres as Camp Little Silver, named after the neighboring community.
In 1917, according to Rejan, when the U.S. Army was preparing to enter World War I in Europe, it searched for locations to expand its Signal Corps training camps and looked for sites around the country.
With its proximity to New York and Philadelphia, Monmouth County was a good choice.
The expanded site was named Camp Vail, after a New Jersey inventor. In the 1920s it was again changed to Fort Monmouth, in honor of the Revolutionary War battle fought not far away in Freehold.
Early on the fort became home for the Army's carrier pigeon corps, which had been used in the trenches of France to send communications back and forth from locations. Today, this communications mode may seem ancient and quaint, but given that pigeons can travel up to a mile a minute, according to Rejan, it was a very effective way to communicate, likely saving lives and contributing to the Allied victory in the war.
Since established, Fort Monmouth has always been Signal Corps related and working in the fields of communications technology and electronics, from pigeons to today's highly sophisticated equipment. "Any sort of gadget or gizmo that soldiers would use to communicate with or transmit a message," Rejan explained, "much of that technology and those systems were developed there or fielded at Fort Monmouth and still are today."
Much of the work done at the fort has made its way into everyday life, making civilian life safer and easier.
"Many of these systems have transformed the civilian sector and have really revolutionized the way the entire world functions," she said.
Colonel William R. Blair, who had served as one of the fort's commanders, applied and received the first patent for radar. "Can you imagine doing air travel without radar?" she asked.
In 1958 the first communications satellite was launched from Fort Monmouth, with President Dwight Eisenhower using it to send a Christmas message to the world, Rejan said.
The fort, in its history, was often at the forefront of the struggle for equal rights, allowing women and African Americans to move into non-traditional roles.. "It really was ahead of its time," she said.
Since the high point during World War II, when military personnel stationed here reached into the tens of thousands, the fort has steadily decreased its military presence. But groundbreaking work continues there, which includes helping safeguard forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, she said.
Now though, that work has begun moving to Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland, as the U.S. Department of Defense continues to prepare to vacate and close the fort. "It's an extremely sad moment," she acknowledged, thinking of the end of a page of history when the fort closes no later than Sept. 2011.
"It was a special place, not only for the soldiers, the scientists, the engineers who worked there," she said, "but for the families who have been stationed there over the last 90-plus years."
Rejan, 30, had served for six years as the command historian for the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM), leaving that position recently to begin work with the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Service officer.
Her book grew out of an official narrative history she and others compiled commemorating the fort's 90th anniversary two years ago. "We had a lot of extra pictures," that the staff uncovered while working on the history. "And we learned a lot of neat things along the way," things that the public can share within the photos and captions contained in Fort Monmouth.
