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Volume CXXXII, Number 14 |
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Battle calls to Brunswick, Maine
KID WONGSRICHANALAI
STAFF WRITER
Walter M. Bush of the Class of 1940 wrote President Sills from basic training, describing the "evils" of "K.P." duty: "I had K.P. once, and its evils are not exaggerated in the least!" From H. Philip Chapman, Jr. President Sills received news of naval cadet training:
Our training at Quonset was an attempt to convert us from civilians into well-trained naval officers in 60 days; to give us the high spots of four years of Annapolis. There we learned the fundamentals of naval aviation (since we were officers attached to aviation) the rudiments of seamanship, navigation; the organization and regulations of the Navy, and the detailed study of ships and planes. Quite a program! And a quiz a day to keep us moving!
W. Streeter Bass, a graduate in the Class of 1938 wrote to Dean Nixon, describing the weapons he was being trained to use:
I have now completed 4 weeks of training in a so-called "heavy-weapons" company. This means that our principal weapons will be the heavy machine gun and the 81 MM mortar. For the first 6 weeks, however, we study basic rifle tactics, map-reading, grenade throwing, close and extended order drill, scouting and patrolling, and in general "what every soldier should know." All (or nearly all) of this has been very interesting to me. Army life in general is so utterly different from anything I've ever known, that I am regarding the whole experience as a great eye-opener and a thorough going lesson in the actions and reactions of the male animal in the mass. The really disturbing factor, which I sometimes find it hard to suppresses, is the realization that I am enrolled in a course of education for death-not for life! I sometimes have the feeling that I am too highly civilized ever to make a good soldier!
Richard C. Johnstone reported to Dean Nixon on his Marine Corps training-often considered the hardest and the roughest:
Our day starts at 6 A.M. and we are doing something until taps at 10 P.M. and often until the lights on the head go out at 11 P.M.-that happens only on the nights before exams when we all do a little last minute cramming. This first month has been devoted mainly to courses on the more important weapons and a rather rugged course in map reading. We have taken exams in the M-1 rifle, carbine rifle, Browning machine guns, automatic rifle, map reading, scouting and patrolling, and anti-aircraft defense.
It must have given Paul Nixon a good laugh to learn from graduate Irving Callman '44 that Bowdoin's physical training program-which had been reinforced to train students for military service-was considered (by the author of the letter, at least) to be even harder than the Marine Corps training at Parris Island:
Naturally it is rugged but it is easier than I had expected. At times Bowdoin's physical program was more strenuous than the Marine's; it has been a tremendous value to me, and I hope that it is still in effect.
Sometimes these letters were read to the students, still at Bowdoin, during morning Chapel-perhaps as a lesson in what they might expect beyond the College's walls. But the students who remained were sober and understood the hardships that would lie ahead for them. These letters merely reinforced their beliefs that a long hard war was ahead.
When Maine Governor, Sumner Sewall spoke in the Chapel and spun patriotic stories, telling the students to have faith, Orient columnist Don Sears replied bitingly:
Mr. Sewall professed, "Faith carries us on and will see us through." Faith can do that for the older generations, but for the youth of today faith is an almost unknown quantity…. We have no part of faith; since we have seen our faith in brotherly love, in equal opportunity, in world peace-each slowly torn to pieces. Faith and idealism-day-dreaming and wishful-thinking-we want none of them, for they help us not at all and they can hurt us infinitely.
On Sunday, January 25, 1942, as Bowdoin College was preparing for its first three-semester year and as its sons worldwide were facing the greatest war in human history, Professors Stanley B. Smith and Frederic E. T. Tillotson helped put together a special musical program to honor the 183rd anniversary of the birth of Scottish poet Robert Burns. Among the songs that were sung was one that had a special meaning for the large Bowdoin family that was now parting for all corners of the world and all branches of the service. As winter's dark evening turned to night on the chilly Maine day, faculty, staff, and students gathered in the Moulton Union, amidst flickering lights and great fears to sing a ballad of friendship:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot?
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot?
And days o' lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my Dear
For auld lang syne
We'll tak a cup o kindness yet
For auld lang syne
We twa hae paidlet i' the burn
Frae morning sun sill dine
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne.
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