Museum sheds light on the history of how soldiers train for desert conflicts

CHIRIACO SUMMIT, Calif. (KESQ) – California's Colorado Desert is home to the Coachella Valley, as well as a deep history of training American soldiers.

The General Patton Memorial Museum in Chiriaco Summit, which sits about 45 minutes from the valley, recounts that history for its visitors, which dates back to World War II.

Portions of California and Nevada deserts were selected by General George S. Patton as the home of his Desert Training Center during the Second World War. Thousands upon thousands of American troops trained in the desert to learn how to fight in desert wars – a critical step ahead of Patton's North Africa campaign in 1942. From the unique challenges dry, sandy environments put on personnel and equipment to dealing with the extreme heat, our desert was the perfect place to practice on American soil.

The United States has since been embroiled in a number of desert conflicts since World War II, and with another war brewing in the Middle East, there are lessons that the museum wants to share.

The desert southwest is still home to a number of military training sites, including the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms and the Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range, still used for live-fire training, east of the Coachella Valley.

Margit Chiriaco is the President of the Board and Co-Founder of the Patton Museum. Her father was a pioneer in the area, and she fondly remembers her childhood of playing with the soldiers training in the desert.

"Some of them boys from all over the United States [had] never been to a desert before, never had a scorpion crawl across on their belly or a snake under their feet," she remembered with a chuckle.

General Patton brought over a million soldiers to the desert, according to Chiriaco. They endured everything from the harsh desert climate and its dramatic temperature swings. The terrain, sand, and rocks were all chosen by Patton, as they closely mimicked the environment soldiers would encounter in North Africa.

Written on one of the walls of the museum, one of his quotes is printed next to a destroyed tank:

"I want my men to take just as rough a beating as I can give them in as near the situation they will have in North Africa."

General George S. Patton

Chiriaco firmly believed that training is what allowed for the success of General Patton's conquest in the region. She said, "We could not have won that war without the training that General Patton gave his men here on this very dirt."

The museum features the hidden treasures the desert sand have obscured from public view. Artifacts range from dog tags to sand-weathered helmets and rifles, all on full display for museum goers today.

A wide array of tanks, including the iconic M4 Sherman and M5 Stuart, are parked for viewers to see. Some cutaways of M60 tanks – which is named after General Patton – are also available for visitors to view up-close.

It's all accompanied by carefully-written accounts which tell the story of the hardship and challenges soldiers endured to ready themselves for desert combat.

That history is even more relevant now, as the United States is embroiled in another conflict in a desert climate. Soldiers in past wars in the Middle East trained in our desert, and the same still applies today.

One family visited Monday from Chandler, Arizona on their way to Orange County, including Rick Filtz. He has a son who is a combat medic in the United States Army.

"Whether you agree or disagree with what they're doing, you have to support the people in the armed services and always will," he affirmed. "Even by coming here and honoring the memory of that people have done in the past so that we can honor the memory of the people that are doing it now."

I asked Chiriaco, "What do you hope people take away from this museum and looking at current events?"

She replied, "I hope they take away 'I hope this never happens again.'"

She reminded me the motto of the museum: "Preserving the peace through lessons of the past."

"I believe that people come here and they see some of the what happened and what these men lived and went through," Chiriaco said.

Aside from the museum's regular displays, Chiriaco also added several events may be of interest to museum goers. On Saturday, March 14th, Pulitzer Award-winning author Steven A. Holmes will visit.