The 152d Depot Brigade was a training and receiving formation of the United States Army during World War I. It was successively commanded by Brigadier Generals George W. Read,Walter Hines Page, Arthur Wilson Page, The World's Work, Biography, George W. Read, Volume XXXVI, November 1918 to April 1919, page 90 John E. Woodward,C. David Gordon, Nashoba Publications Fort Devens Museum: Biographies of 74th Infantry Regiment Commanders , March 6, 2004 George H. Estes,George Washington Cullum, Edward Singleton Holden, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy, Volume VI-A, 1920, pages 703-704 George D. Moore,Cullum, Holden, Biographical Register, page 564 Edward Sigerfoos,Ohio State University Alumni Association, Ohio State University Monthly, Volumes 9-10, February 1918, page 8 and William Jones Nicholson.

History

Secretary of War Newton Baker authorized Major General Franklin Bell to organize the 152d Depot Brigade, an element of the 77th Division.Wilson, 1998, p. 60. The brigade was later detached and placed directly under Camp Upton, New York, as an independent unit.Organizations and Activities of the War Department, 1949, p. 1277.Territorial Departments, Tactical Divisions Organized in 1918, and Posts, Camps, and Stations, 1949, pp. 843-45Directory of Troops, 1949, p. 1277. The depot brigade filled two purposes: one was to act as a receiving unit for men sent to camps by local draft boards;WD Cir 23, 1918, p. 7.Wilson, 1998, p. 76n32. the other was to train replacements for the American Expeditionary Forces.

Irving Berlin wrote the musical revue "Yip Yip Yaphank", including the song "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" while assigned to a unit of the 152d Depot Brigade at Camp Upton in 1918.Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, 1996, page 150

Purpose The role of depot brigades was to receive and organize recruits, provide them with uniforms, equipment and initial military training, and then send them to France to fight on the front lines. The depot brigades also received soldiers returning home at the end of the war and completed their out processing and discharges. Depot brigades were often organized, reorganized, and inactivated as requirements to receive and train troops rose and fell, and later ebbed and flowed during post-war demobilization.

Depot brigades were organized into numbered battalions (1st Battalion, 2d Battalion, etc.), which in turn were organized into numbered companies.Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Co., Memorial to the Employees of the Brown & Sharpe Mfg. Co. Who Served at Home and Abroad in the Great World War, 1920, pages 42, 47. Harold A. Chalford is listed as a member of 31st Company, 8th Battalion, 152d Depot Brigade. Ernest O. Sandstrom is named as a member of 9th Company, 3d Battalion, 152d Depot Brigade The major U.S. depot brigades organized for World War I, which remained active until after post-war demobilization included: 151st (Camp Devens); 152d (Camp Upton); 153d (Camp Dix); 154th (Camp Meade); 155th (Camp Lee); 156th (Camp Jackson); 157th (Camp Gordon); 158th (Camp Sherman); 159th (Camp Taylor); 160th (Camp Custer); 161st (Camp Grant); 162d (Camp Pike); 163d (Camp Dodge); 164th (Camp Funston); 165th (Camp Travis); 166th (Camp Lewis); and 167th (Camp McClellan).

See also List of formations of the United States Army during World War I Timeline of World War I United States home front during World War I

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