Camp Doniphan was the harsh, makeshift training ground where Harry S. Truman developed as an officer and formed a consequential partnership with Eddie Jacobson. Its open prairie, bitter weather, and demanding drills provided the setting for Truman’s early military command; the regimental canteen, meanwhile, made him familiar across the camp and gave rise to a business success that helped define his relationship with Jacobson.

Setting and Namesake

In September 1917, Truman arrived at Camp Doniphan, a huge new tent encampment beside Fort Sill near Lawton, Oklahoma, within the old Comanche Indian Reservation. The landscape offered little shelter: not a tree stood in the camp, and the surrounding hard country was almost perfectly flat, apart from barren hills to the west. Lawton, described as a prairie tank town, lay twenty miles away. Approaching trains could be seen for miles across the exposed plain, a feature of the landscape that underscored how far the camp stood from the comforts of established towns.

The camp took its name from Alexander Doniphan, a Mexican War hero who had led eight hundred Missouri volunteers on a march of more than 3,000 miles, from Santa Fe through El Paso and Chihuahua to Buena Vista, defeating larger Mexican forces along the way. That namesake linked the new encampment to an older story of Missouri military service, while the camp itself was a product of a very different war and a rapidly expanding army.

Training and Conditions

Daily life followed a strict schedule: reveille at 5:45 in the morning, breakfast at 6:30, and drill beginning at 7:30. Truman’s responsibilities included teaching the men how to handle horses, leading trench-digging exercises, and training them with the regiment’s limited supply of 3-inch guns. He also stood inspections and drilled his men in the fundamentals of marching and formation. His earlier National Guard experience had already made many artillery terms familiar, but he worked to become comfortable thinking and calculating in the metric system.

The weather made the routine punishing. Nights were unexpectedly cold, and a nearly constant wind drove dust through the camp. During storms, the dust could obscure a tent only fifty yards away, coating the men’s eyes, hair, and clothing. The men joked about giving Oklahoma to the Germans to settle the matter. When the wind finally stopped, Truman reported, the camp was happy. The contrast between those rare calm days and the usual exposure made the landscape an active part of military life, not merely its backdrop.

Winter brought a more severe test. A January 1918 storm shifted from rain to snow and sleet, then became the worst blizzard Truman had seen. Temperatures remained at or below zero for weeks; bread froze so hard it had to be cut with a saw. Truman continued living in a tent warmed by a Sibley stove, the kind used by the Army during the Plains Indian wars. A twenty-four-hour exercise under simulated battlefield conditions also took him into the trenches overnight, where he saw a rapid-firing French 75-millimeter field gun in action for the first time. He learned gas-protection procedures as well, putting on a mask and spending ten minutes in a gas house.

The Canteen and a Lasting Partnership

Alongside his regular duties, Truman was assigned to run the regimental canteen, which sold everyday supplies such as candy, soft drinks, cigarettes, tobacco, shoelaces, and writing paper. The assignment brought him into contact with nearly everyone in camp. To make the operation financially successful, he partnered with Sergeant Eddie Jacobson, a former Kansas City clothing-store clerk. Truman readily credited Jacobson with running the enterprise; the two men’s complementary work turned what was often an unprofitable Army service into a thriving business.

The partnership began with a practical arrangement: every man in the regiment was assessed two dollars, creating $2,200 in starting capital. The canteen soon took in between $500 and $900 a day. A barbershop and tailor shop joined the operation, and after six months the enterprise paid $10,000 in dividends. Its success made Truman and Jacobson popular and encouraged them to think of themselves as an unusually effective business team. A stripped-down 1911 Stafford automobile (Lizzie), repurposed as a truck, became a familiar sight as Truman drove through camp with Jacobson beside him, raising a trail of dust.

The camp also fostered the daily rituals of their friendship. Truman wrote a letter to Bess Wallace each day, while Jacobson wrote to his sweetheart, Bluma Rosenbaum; when Jacobson went into town to replenish supplies, he mailed both letters. Years later, Jacobson remembered Truman as a capable officer as well as a business partner. Virgil Thomson, who had also enlisted in the regiment, likewise recalled Truman’s effectiveness as an officer.

Command, Anxiety, and Comradeship

For all his apparent resilience, Truman privately worried that he might fail to measure up as an officer and be disqualified or disgraced. Rumors that the regiment would soon leave for France made the prospect of another physical examination particularly consequential. A doctor twice refused to pass him because of his eyes, but Truman kept talking until the doctor relented. The episode was a close call: his confidence in conversation helped him overcome a barrier that could have ended his service.

His letters to Bess Wallace also reveal the strain of separation. After a brief visit to Independence, during which he saw her for little more than an hour, he wrote that leaving had made him realize how deeply he missed her. Yet the letters no longer carried the earlier self-pity and uncertainty about what he might make of his life. Camp Doniphan’s demands had given him responsibilities he could meet: he grew more confident that he could endure hardship and, to his surprise, discovered that he could make men obey.

Among the people he counted as close friends were Jacobson and Father L. Curds Tiernan, along with fellow officers Edgar Hinde, Spencer Salisbury, and Roger Sermon, three of them from Independence. Truman’s role also extended beyond routine camp administration. When Lieutenant James M. Pendergast, nephew of Thomas J. Pendergast, faced a board of inquiry after three of his men died in the explosion of a live shell found on the reservation, Truman served on the board and worked to defend him and secure his exoneration. In that setting, the camp was both a place of military preparation and a community in which Truman’s judgment, loyalties, and authority were put into practice.