By The Numbers/Eight Week Class Content

Camp Ritchie: Eight Week Class Content* describes the curriculum for the thirty-one basic eight-week classes at the Military Intelligence Training Center.

Each of the thirty-one basic Camp Ritchie classes ran over an eight-week period, with the first five weeks focused on "General Instruction" and the last three including specialized training. "General Instruction" covered the following areas:

Subject	Hours
Terrain Intelligence	50
Signal Intelligence	25
Staff Duties	51
Counterintelligence in Theater of Operation	21
Enemy Armies	42
Aerial Photo Interpretation	28
Military Intelligence Interpreters and Foreign Maps	28
Combat and Operations	27
Visual Demonstration	Included above
Order of Battle	Included above
Total hours	272

During the final three weeks, while continuing to take "General Instruction," students were enrolled in eighty-two hours of "Specialized Instruction." All students in the first class specialized in the interrogation of German prisoners of war (IPW). Students in the later classes were enrolled in a variety of languages and areas of specialization. The number of students in these specialized fields fluctuated according to the exigencies of the war.

Instruction concentrated, as a rule, on the following areas, although counterintelligence increasingly became an important focus of the Camp Ritchie curriculum:

• Interrogation of Enemy Prisoners of War and Identification and Translation of Documents
• Aerial Photo Interpretation
• Military Intelligence Interpreters (Allied and neutral)
• Terrain Intelligence
• Signal Intelligence

Appendix 6 shows the emphases and shifts in specialized instruction for the thirty-one classes — see Eight Week Courses by Specialties.

Finally, the students participated in an eight-day "terrain exercise," which involved the completion of twenty intelligence-related problems. They were also sent on a forty-eight-hour patrol and on night azimuth training.

* As outlined in Charles Y. Banfill, "Brief of Pertinent Facts and Data Concerning the Military Intelligence Training Center, Camp Ritchie, Maryland," June 3, 1944, and reprinted in Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Interrogation: World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq, 39–40.

Source and copyright

The contents and writing on this page are courtesy of and Copyright "Ritchie Boy Secrets: How a Force of Immigrants and Refugees Helped Win World War II" by Beverley Driver Eddy. It should not be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission.

See also

• By The Numbers
• Eight Week Classes - Dates & Graduation Numbers
• Eight Week Courses by Specialties
• Student Numbers - All Classes
• Secret Heroes/First Class
• Camp Ritchie
• Category:Classes
• Contents