CO Basic Training - Fort Sam Houston, Texas

In 1954 the U.S. Army established a special camp at Fort Sam Houston in Texas where all noncombatants received their basic training. This removed them from regular units where their refusal to bear arms had been a source of confusion. Over half the men who received their basic training there were Seventh Day Adventists.

Conscientious Objectors (knows as CO's) would take their weaponless basic training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, then attend the field medical school there for training as hospital corpsmen/combat medics.

The CO Basic program ended with the beginning of the Volunteer Army at the end of the Vietnam War era.