Will they return?

This photo was taken last spring. In about 5 weeks it will be possible to see if the daffodils will return after the recent fire at Fort Chaffee. Over 150 mostly vacant buildings were burned to the ground. It was good to hear that nobody was seriously hurt fighting the fires. There are a few of the WWII era barracks that survived, but the remaining landscape is quite eerie. It is dominated by the vast number of tall brick chimneys that still stand, even after the wooden structures were quickly incinerated by the 50mph wind-driven fire.

We pass by the old Camp Chaffee area almost daily, and Davis does notice the change. Several fire breaks were dug around the burning buildings with bulldozers, so it will be a nice surprise if the daffodils do return. Why the concern?

There are numerous small patches of land within the boundaries of Chaffee that flower each spring, in what appear to be odd places. When the government secured the 75,000 acres during the onset of WWII, there were about a half dozen small communities that were displaced. Families were uprooted and some were forever distanced from lifelong neighbors. The daffodils they planted around their farmhouses remain, and continue to bloom year after year. It's almost like an annual reminder of the degree to which people were contributing to the war effort to stop the seemingly unstoppable Nazi advance across Europe.

Soldiers soon to be deployed to the war in Europe would now have an open expanse of area to utilize for training. And they would have new hastily built barracks to live in during their last few weeks in the US. Seeing the old buildings of Fort Chaffee was a subtle reminder about this close connection that the local area has with American history. Now, most of those buildings are gone forever. Perhaps the daffodils will return.