The Ritchie Boys

30 May 2021

Fort Ritchie at Cascade, Maryland consists of 400 acres (originally grounds of the Buena Vista Ice Company ) on the Maryland - Pennslyvania border. It was established by the Maryland National Guard as a summer training camp in 1926.

The US Army activated the base as the Military Intelligence Training Center in 1942 and trained 19,000 intelligence troops, incliding The Ritchie Boys.

The Ritchie Boys were the US Special German - Austrian unit of military service, Approximately 2,200 of them were Jewish refugees born in Germany and Austria that enlisted or were draftees. They became an important weapon for the allies providing valuable intelligence, counterintelligence. interrogation, investigation and psychological warfare.

Fort Ritchie closed in 1998 under the 1995 Base Realignment and Closure Commission

I discovered Fort Ritchie watching "60 Minutes" in early April. I had never heard about this training base, almost hidden in the western hills of Maryland.

There is a documentary about the Ritchie Boys but it's not on Nrtflix or Amazon Prime, but by watching a number of videos on Youtube, you have the opportunity of putting together the story about the heroic men that trained there.

I did a Memorial Day road trip to honour the men and women of my Father's generation that served in World War II

If you go, take the back roads of Maryland and approach Fort Ritchie from Pennslyvania. For the drive home, check out nearby Hagerstown and Williamsport

then take Highway 40 thru historic Boonsboro and Middletown. After exploring the base, I highly recommend Rocky's, just outside of the gate,for a pizza or a hot sub, then have a picnic lunch on the lower lake wharf and imagine the training exercises taking place so many years ago.