BY MATTHEW LAKIN
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER
Sep 20, 12:00 AM EDT

CAMP SHELBY, Miss. – When the soldiers of the 278th Regimental Combat Team arrived here in June, the base reminded them of a ghost town.

"I thought we must be in the middle of nowhere," said Capt. Richard Hunter Halliburton, commander of Troop F, 2nd Squadron, based in Bristol Tennessee.

But the connection to home was closer than they thought.

The 136,000-acre camp just outside Hattiesburg bears the name of Isaac Shelby, the Revolutionary War hero who marched with his father, Evan, from what’s now Bristol with the Overmountain Men to defeat the British army at the Battle of King’s Mountain, S.C.

The 278th traces its history to the frontier militiamen who fought in that battle.

Camp Shelby didn’t come into existence until July 1917, when it was activated to train National Guardsmen during World War I. More than 40,000 soldiers from across the country went through training here before the signing of the armistice in November 1918.

The camp shut down at the end of the war. It was reactivated in 1934 for use by the Mississippi National Guard.

The Army resumed control of the camp in 1940 with the onset of World War II.

Within two years, the camp was the second-largest training base in the country, housing nearly 85,000 soldiers and more than 3,000 German prisoners of war.

The camp shut down again after the war, reopening in 1954 as a permanent training site for National Guardsmen.

Over the next five decades, soldiers trained here during the Vietnam War in the 1960s, for the invasion of Panama in 1989, during the Gulf War in 1991 and for peacekeeping in Bosnia in 2001.

The arrival of the 278th this summer poured millions of dollars into the local economy, bringing another resurgence for the 87-year-old camp.

Now, the base is preparing to say goodbye to its most recent graduates.

A send-off for the 278th is set for Veterans Day, after the soldiers return from training at Fort Irwin, Calif., and visiting their families.

Deployment to Iraq will follow.

Story Copyright to TriCities.Com