“SEEK, ATTACK, DESTROY!”: IMPRESSIVE VINTAGE ARCHIVE OF 102 PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTS DOCUMENTING OPENING CEREMONIES AT FORT HOOD, TEXAS, THE U.S. ARMY
“SEEK, ATTACK, DESTROY!”: IMPRESSIVE VINTAGE ARCHIVE OF 102 PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTS DOCUMENTING OPENING CEREMONIES AT FORT HOOD, TEXAS, THE U.S. ARMY’S FIRST TANK DESTROYER TRAINING CENTER
(WORLD WAR II). Photographic archive of Fort Hood Opening Day. Killeen, Texas: U.S. Army Signal Corps, 1942. Oblong folio (11 by 14 inches), 90 leaves of cardstock, each with gelatin silver black-and-white or sepia-toned photographic print on glossy paper stock affixed (88 measuring 8 by 10 inches, 2 measuring 4 by 6 inches), ring-bound; 12 additional photographic prints (9 on glossy paper stock, 3 on matte; each measuring 8 by 10 inches) laid in loose. Housed in custom half morocco clamshell box. $4500.
Vintage archive of 102 black-and-white and sepia-tinted photographic prints (90 mounted on thick card stock, another dozen loose) documenting the September 1942 opening ceremonies of the United States Army’s groundbreaking tank destroyer training center at Camp Hood, with numerous intriguing views of anti-tank artillery, troop exercises and Army officials and important visitors from Washington, D.C. and Hollywood. A unique, visual primary source of American military history.
In 1942, while World War II raged, the United States Army developed 108,000 acres of central Texas farm land into Camp Hood, later Fort Hood. The new base became home to a tank destroyer tactical and firing center and some 38,000 troops (a figure that would swell to almost 95,000 in less than a year). The Army designed Camp Hood to house its newly created Tank Destroyer battalions: mobile anti-tank guns on armored half-tracks to combat Nazi Germany's Panzers, which had overrun so much of Europe. Generals Andrew D. Bruce and Lesley J. McNair (both pictured in several of the photographs in th