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Volume aaa, Number 7 |
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The life of Casey Sills, Part III
KID WONGSRICHANALAI
STAFF WRITER
Sills' presidency spanned decades and while he was a busy man, he found time to travel. Always treasuring the ancient and glorious cultures of Europe, Sills journeyed there again and again. The scholar and president saw, documented, and remembered many events and places. Yet there was a time and place that stood out for him in the years leading up to the Second World War. He would remember it well and as his mind contemplated the sad, twisted irony of beauty and death, he noted it as a lesson that the world should learn and learn well.
It was March 1933, a glorious and beautiful day. Sills remembered, "nature was in her most smiling, most gracious and loveliest mood; all around the scenery was beautiful beyond compare the waters sparkled with the light of the rising sun; the whole scene was one of exquisite peace and beauty." Casey Sills was on a cruise ship in the Dardanelles-in the northwest of Turkey. As the vessel glided majestically through the strait and as the touring academic looked up upon a hillside, he could see rows of crosses against the morning sky. Here, above the ledges and rocky precipices that the British Royal Navy had tried to storm lay the remains of thousands of young men who had entered a war that had claimed millions of lives and dampened the spirit of an entire generation. Monuments rose against the blue of the Turkish sky; green grass sparkled as the morning dew dripped down into the blood soaked earth and Kenneth Sills' benevolent mind suddenly became aware of the true face of the unmerciful beast of war. So many young men, dead here on a field so far from home, he would think. Slowly the vessel sailed on and the tourists looked elsewhere, away from the pits that Turkish soldiers had dug to ambush and slaughter British youngsters at a place forever remembered as Gallipoli. Away their minds flew, blocking the horrors of the war that seemed so real and yet so distant. But for Kenneth Sills, who had seen Bowdoin's sons march off to war, his thoughts lingered on the graves of dead young men and he prayed that what had happened here, would not ever happen again.
To Be Continued.
Next Time: The Spirited Campus