A true peace park during World War II

In a time of war, they practiced peace and kept Glacier National Park running as well. They built and maintained trails, plowed the Going-to-the-Sun Road, sawed timber and fought fires.

They were conscientious objectors, men who held religious or ideological convictions of non-violence, holding to the Fifth Commandment “Thou shall not kill.” Most were members of “peace churches,” like the Mennonites, Amish or Quakers.

From 1942 to 1946, conscientious objectors lived in Civilian Public Service camps across the U.S., including Camp 55 in Belton, where the men worked in Glacier Park and surrounding Forest Service lands.

The Belton camp opened in September 1942, historian Marcella Sherfy Walter said during the Park’s annual Science and History Day last week.

About 36 million men were registered for the draft during World War II. Of those who were drafted, about 12,000 were conscientious objectors and members of the CPS.

At the Belton camp, 550 men cycled through during its four years, with about 60 in winter to more than 200 in summer. Most were Mennonites and most were farmers before the war. They came from across the U.S. and before coming to camp, most had never been more than 20 miles from home.

The average age was 23 and almost all were single. The Mennonite Central Committee, located in Akron, Pa., supervised the camps in Montana, including Camp 103 in Missoula and Camp 64 in Terry. The church paid the men a stipend of $5 a month and fed them. They received no federal benefits or pay for their work.

With Glacier Park down to a skeleton crew, CPS crews did most of the work in the Park during the war. They plowed and cleared the Going-to-the-Sun Road each spring, maintained more than 1,000 miles of trails, built a 1,000 gallon water tank at Park headquarters, and built the Heavens Peak Lookout.

The lookout was particularly challenging, as crews had to blast a trail out of rock and haul the rubble up to the site. The lookout and its excellent masonry still stands today, but the trail has been abandoned. Park crews and volunteers — some of them relatives and family of CPS members — worked last summer to stabilize the lookout.

Firefighting was also hazardous, and several men came close to losing their lives. In 1945, a crew responded to a Forest Service fire near Whitefish. Surrounded by crowning flames, the crew sought refuge in a small pool they had built in a stream for their gas-powered pumps.

“We submerged ourselves in the pool of water and mud, placed our shirts over our nostrils and prayed that God would let us survive,” Simon Hershberger told the Hungry Horse News in 2004.

For the 20 minutes the flames passed over the crew, temperatures soared and oxygen was depleted, Hershberger said. Their faces were scorched, and their eyes swollen shut.

“The next morning, a crew came by expecting to find bodies, but the Lord wasn’t finished with us,” he said.

Outside of camp, the men were often greeted with scorn, Walter said. One man recalled going to the gas station to get some fuel. He went inside and when he came out, his tires had been flattened. But he didn’t fight. To fight would have meant he would be sent off to war.

The men said their peaceful convictions were strengthened during their time at camp.

“”What I’m finding, peace is a way of life more than a wartime stand,” conscientious objector Perry Schrock recalled. “It has to be more than that.”

But some said the camp was too easy for a wartime post, Walter said. Those men worked in more difficult environments, like mental institutions, where conditions were deplorable.

The Belton camp operated until Sept. 30, 1946. Most of the men went home or to other camps.