NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Before we sent off our young men and boys to fight in World War II, did you know that they trained for battle right here at home? Not just in the U.S., and not just in Tennessee, specifically, but in people's backyard and on their farms.

These untold stories are now the subject of a documentary called "Maneuvers."

Kelly Magill first learned about the Tennessee Maneuvers from her grandmother.

"I started reading her memoirs, and there was this one paragraph that I didn't understand. It was about how tanks and jeeps were destroying the farm. And I didn't understand why that would possibly be happening. So stopped and said, 'Granny, I don't understand this.' And she explained maneuvers to me for the first time in the 1980s. And I remember thinking, why don't we learn about this?" said Magill.

Fast forward a few years to when Kelly started a video production company. She knew the story she had to tell: the Tennessee Maneuvers.

"I started finding and interviewing everybody I could," recalled Magill. "To date, we've interviewed over 100 people with firsthand accounts. Seventeen of them were soldiers who maneuvered here, only one of the soldiers I interviewed is still alive, he is 102 years old."

An estimated 850,000 soldiers descended upon 21 Middle Tennessee counties from 1941 to 1944. It was chosen because our topography is similar to where they would be fighting in Europe, plus the state's interstates and railroad systems made it easy to access.

The hundreds of thousands of soldiers set up camp and trained for war on private farms and in backyards as Tennesseans welcomed them.

"Very few of the civilians did not wholeheartedly support the use of their land, for these maneuvers. And once Pearl Harbor happened, I think everyone supported the use of their property, and they knew it was going to be destroyed, they knew the fences were going to be destroyed, they knew that the soil was going to be compacted and damaged," said Magill.

Lives were lost during training, too. About 300 soldiers were killed as well as civilians.

"Parents across the country are offering up their adult age sons through the draft, to go fight for our country. But in Tennessee, in the middle of these war games that were very realistic, our children were being killed. I've interviewed people with firsthand accounts of a 15-year-old, a 9-year-old, and a 5-year-old, all being killed on their family farms. And so Tennessee mothers aren't just losing their adult children. They're losing their children in violent ways, on their property, for the sake of the war," said Magill.

Middle Tennessee was changed forever from the Maneuvers. Not just the loss of life and property, but many soldiers ended up moving here.

"Many of these families began intermarriage. The joke is that there wasn't a single woman left in Wilson County by the time the maneuvers were over."

It was also an economic boost for the state. "You've got 850,000 maneuver soldiers who are bringing their money into Tennessee for all that time. It's basically like having tourists here," said Magill. "So they were going out and they were spending this money that they were making in restaurants and movie theaters with local people."

The Maneuvers changed the way we went to war in 1944; and documenting them, changed Kelly.

"One of the key messages I'd like to get across in this documentary is how unprepared we were we really were an underdog army. And none of us is used to looking at America as an underdog militarily, but at the time we were so if people can realize how far we had to come from being an underdog to winning that war, I think it's important to know that this is in our DNA. This is who we are as a people, and even if we're divided, even if we're unprepared."

The documentary is set to come out in 2025. For more information on the documentary, including how you can contribute, click here.

News Source : https://www.wkrn.com/special-reports/filmmaker-captures-history-of-tennessee-maneuvers/