In a sense, every day is Veterans Day at the Devens Museum. The museum’s website says that “veterans and their families have found the museum a useful tool in expanding their own genealogical research and connecting with other veterans and their families.” The nonprofit, incorporated in 2001, has more than 3,000 artifacts, photos, and documents related to land, buildings, soldiers, and families that were once part of the base, and as such it is a “touchstone from which a shared heritage can be better understood.” A sign on the office of the museum, located in the Devens Innovation Center, 94 Jackson Road, announces that the museum is “made of memories. We are always collecting stories and memories from those who lived, trained, and worked here.” And Kara Fossey, the museum’s executive director, says most visitors come looking for a connection, usually with a family member who was stationed here.
For a visitor like me, with no personal connection to the base, there is still a strong sense of place and of history. There is something quite moving about imagining the many thousands of soldiers who were received and trained here at New England’s largest military base and the infrastructure that was built to support them. When Camp Devens opened on 5,000 acres of land in 1917, it processed and trained more than 100,000 soldiers. At the close of World War I, it served as a separation center for more than 150,000 troops returning from France. In 1931 the camp became Fort Devens, a permanent U.S. Army post. Nine years later it became a reception center for inductees from all over New England. An airfield was made, 1,200 wooden barracks constructed, and training provided for nurses, chaplains, cooks, bakers, as well as troops from the 1st, 32nd, and 45th Infantry Divisions and the 4th Women’s Army Corps. The Army Security Agency started training there in 1951, continuing into the early ’90s, and during the Korean conflict, Devens became a reception center for the third time. Several brigades were sent from Fort Devens to Vietnam, and more than 3,000 reservists and National Guard troops were deployed for operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield from 1990 to 2001. The base was closed in 1996.
From barracks to museum
I can believe how much deeper are the feelings of a visitor who once served here or one who is here in the same place as a relative he or she never knew. Fossey tells of one veteran who remembered when the Innovation Center was a barracks—he was excited to have been stationed in the very building in which the museum is now housed. David King, current president of the museum board of directors, said he likes to drive past the road where he lived when he was stationed at Devens in the 1980s. Although it’s now woods, it’s an important site for him.
This model of a World War II barracks was done by museum board member Andy Tabak, who has written a book on the construction of these buildings. (Courtesy photo)
Of course there is the opposite reaction, too. Fossey talked about the people who trained here who come back looking for the familiar and are disappointed. She recalled one veteran who, after visiting the Vicksburg Square area, found it very hard to be back. “The spirit is gone,” he said.
Throughout the museum rooms are artifacts and plaques connected to a particular person. For a visitor seeking a connection, finding such specific history must be very rewarding. Fossey talked about a veteran of World War II, a local man who had been drafted and had some bitter memories of his time in the service. He had not returned to Devens until a year ago. On that visit he had seen the uniform of an officer he had served with and it seemed to help him come to terms with his experiences. He has been back a couple of times since, Fossey said. Seeing a relative’s picture and short biography must bring a great deal of pride and perhaps supply a missing piece of one’s own heritage. I imagine a visitor seeking and finding a connection to Rena Wilhelmina Aherns, who was a nurse at Camp Devens before being sent overseas, or Italian Saverio Mesiti, who trained at Camp Devens, spent most of the war in France, and returned to Camp Devens where he became a naturalized citizen.
Fossey mentioned a woman whose mother was from Ayer who came to the museum seeking information about her birth father, a man she had never met. While she did not find anything about him, Fossey said she went away with a better understanding of him by knowing about his environment, his training, and everyday routines here.
A place for vistors’ memories
Postings on a large “Leave a Memory” bulletin board provide further insights into the importance of the museum to veterans and their families. One reads, “My father, Charles Armstrong, guarded POWs from 1944 to ’45. He met a young woman from Natick. They married and moved to Montana. Over the decades they returned to visit family. This is my first trip to Massachusetts to visit the family and places of their lives.” Another reads, “Greetings from WW II. I died in the Battle of the Bulge. My brother is here today reliving my memory.” Other messages are from “Here early 53–54” and “Vietnam Vet served in Vietnam 67–68. Stationed Devens 1966.” Another tells how the writer’s parents met when they were both in the Army: “If it wasn’t for Fort Devens, I wouldn’t be here.”
I had not realized there was a prisoner-of-war facility on Devens during both world wars, which produced veterans of its own. One memory reads, “We came from Germany visiting the US and tracing family history. Our great grand/grandfather was a POW at Fort Devens from 1944–’46. So enlightening to be here.” Fossey told of the daughter of a German POW who, with her husband, had come at the urging of her father to “see his history.”
While across the country veterans are honored annually on Nov. 11, the Devens Museum honors them all the other days of the year, too.
