Via the Camp Roberts Historical Museum:
Arlin Weinberger, a supporter of our museum and member of our Chancellery, visited us recently and donated these photos of her father, taken during his training at Camp Roberts as our nation was entering World War 2. Her father, Caspar Willard Weinberger, went on to become Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, serving from Jan. 1981 to Nov. 1987.
Weinberger at the time of the below images was a 2nd LT, fresh from Fort Benning, with the 186th Infantry Regiment, a National Guard unit that went on to become one of the famed “Jungleers” of the 41st Infantry Division in the grueling push from New Guinea to the Philippines.
As noted in Weinberger’s DOD bio:
He entered the U.S. Army as a private in 1941, was commissioned, and served in the Pacific theater. At the end of the war he was a captain on General Douglas MacArthur’s intelligence staff. Early in life he developed an interest in politics and history and, during the war years, a special admiration for Winston Churchill, whom he would later cite as an important influence.