Nationwide military enlistment greatly expanded throughout 1942 in response to US troops departing for combat action in the Pacific and European theaters.

Young men from throughout the United States filled the 102nd Infantry Division's ranked and arrived for training at Camp Maxey.

The varied terrain provided facilities for working out problems of infantry training to meet modern battle conditions.

In March 1943, command of Camp Maxey administration was passed to Colonel Robert O. Annin, who remained there for the duration of the war.

In late 1943, the 102nd Division departed after one year at Camp Maxey, moving to Louisiana for maneuvers before being sent into action in France shortly after the Normandy Invasion.

Other nondivisional units trained at Camp Maxey including artillery (250th Field Artillery who fired the one-millionth round of World War II on 29 January 1945), and associated reconnaissance aircraft, tanks, tank destroyers, cavalry, ordinance, quartermaster, signal corps, engineers, medics, and military police (793rd Military Police Battalion was activated at Camp Maxey on 26 December 1942.

Triumph for the Allies in North Africa in the spring of 1943, and the realization that the Japanese would not surrender in large numbers, resulted in the internment of principally German troops from the defeated Afrika Korps.

Later in the war, more noncommissioned officers arrived from the German army, navy, and air force until the camp grew to 7,458 prisoners by April 1945, but stopped short of its capacity of 9,000.

Several thousand acres were kept intact by the federal government, including the old post command buildings and vehicle shops near Gate 5 (current National Guard Camp Maxey Training Center Headquarters’ and cantonment area), and turned over to the Texas National Guard for a training facility.

In the early 1960s, some 10,000 acres of the old artillery range on the north side of the former camp along Sanders Creek, conveniently without improvements or public access for the past 20 years, were transferred to the US Army Corps of Engineers for construction of the Pat Mayse Reservoir.

The camp's responsibility is to provide training facilities to units in Northeast Texas region from DFW to Marshall to Texarkana.