The story of Camp Rucker, Alabama, during the Second World War illustrates the colossal effort of a quiet nation to shake off its peaceful slumber and mobilize for total war. Camp Rucker's role in that mighty endeavor is told in these pages through vintage photographs from Fort Rucker's Army Aviation Museum. Select passages from the War Department's 1944 pamphlet Army Life complement these images to give a unique glimpse at the life of a U.S. Army training camp during World War II and the men and women who trained there. Today, Camp Rucker is known as Fort Rucker and is home to the United States Army Aviation Center. In 1941, however, it was simply a vast acreage of pine trees, scrub oak, and sub-marginal farmland. But following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the War Department decided to carve out a training camp in this southeastern corner of Alabama. By the spring of 1942, the first freshly mobilized units had entered its gates. In the following three years, Camp Rucker trained thousands of Army soldiers, WACs, and nurses. Many of these young Americans were destined for the battlefields of the Pacific and Europe.

Alabama and its people played a conspicuous role in World War II. Not only were thousands of servicemen trained at military facilities in the state but Axis prisoners of war were interned in camps on Alabama soil, most notably at Aliceville and Opelika. More than 45,000 Alabama citizens were killed in combat or died as POWs, some came home injured, and many labored in war factories at home.

Camp Forrest was a World War II induction, training and prisoner of war facility in Tullahoma. The self-sustained city was home to seventy thousand soldiers and about twelve thousand civilian employees. In 1943, the base accepted and housed German and Italian POWs. After the war ended, the base was decommissioned and dismantled. The legacy of the facility at home and abroad is still evident today. The memories of those who lived, worked, trained and grew up during this time of sacrifice and war recount a time the world has not seen since. Author Elizabeth Taylor uses numerous personal interviews, newspaper articles, diaries and biographies to tell the stories of those who lived through the era.