from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the New England states. Between 1917 and 1919, over 140,000 recruits passed through the post. In fact, Recruit Week in December 1917 brought so many recruits to Fort Slocum that an overflow had to be housed in New Rochelle. Fort Slocum's guns were dismounted and transferred to other uses beginning in 1917. Battery Kinney's 6-inch guns were moved to Fort Tilden; Battery Fraser's 5-inch guns were dismounted, probably for potential service on field carriages on the Western Front. Records do not indicate if these guns were sent to France. In 1919 Fort Slocum was totally disarmed; its 16 mortars were removed and possibly became railway artillery. Between the wars In 1922 there was a general military drawdown, and closure of Fort Slocum was proposed. However, it remained open with varying roles. It housed at least one US Olympic Team, a Civilian Conservation Corps camp, and the Army cooks' and bakers' school. The 1884 water tower was replaced in 1929, and a sewage system was installed. In the 1930s most of the coast defense batteries were demolished to make room for three new barracks, the Trivium. World War II On 16 May 1941, as war raged in Europe, Fort Slocum became part of the New York Port of Embarkation, becoming a staging area for troops moving overseas. Fort Slocum also trained cadre to set up other staging areas in Greater New York, such as Camp Kilmer and Camp Shanks in 1941 and 1942. Fort Slocum hosted the Atlantic Coast Transportation Officers' Training School, acquainting former civilians from the transportation industries with the Army. The fort was thus a key element of the Army's Transportation Corps, so named in mid-1942, whose mission was moving huge numbers of men and amounts of materiel overseas. By early 1944 the need to ship troops to Europe had lessened, and a policy of rotating troops in the US who hadn't seen action to overseas battlefields and the reverse was instituted. Battle-hardened soldiers returning from Europe were put through a "Provisional Training Center" at Fort Slocum to re-acquaint them with the stateside Army, with its surplus of proper military appearance, courtesy, and discipline, along with its deficit of actually shooting Germans. In May 1944 Private Willie Lee Duckworth of Sandersville, Georgia devised the famous "Sound off, one, two" military cadence while attending one of these classes. In November 1944, as