The University of Michigan

by Wilfred Byron Shaw

Such are the bare statistics of Michigan's part in the fight for the principles which have made America what she is. The war came slowly to the University. During the years just preceding the entrance of the United States there was probably no part of the world as little touched by the actualities overseas as the mid-western portion of the United States. The seaboard states felt it, in their commerce and other contacts with Europe, far more than the vast central region, which had been favored with an unexampled wave of prosperity. So while America was at peace, the war spirit in the University was for the most part latent, far more so than in many of the universities of the East, where the implications and the realities of the war, which always come more vividly through personal relationships, led to more vigorous preparatory measures and many enlistments for service in the English, Canadian, and French armies.

The lessons the struggle on the Marne, in Flanders and Gallipoli was teaching were by no means unheeded, however, and a strong movement for military training in the University developed as early as November, 1914, when a petition signed by fifty members of the Faculty, including the Deans of the Medical, Engineering, and Law Schools, for the establishment of a military course in the University was presented to the Regents. This had no immediate effect, however, and it was not until the University Senate took similar action a year later that the movement was really inaugurated. The opinion was as yet by no means unanimous in favor of the plan, for a straw vote of the Faculty showed 85 for and 55 against the general principle of military training for students, with a somewhat smaller majority in favor of making it compulsory. A similar vote among the students showed 1,040 for the plan and 932 against it. In March, 1916, the Regents took favorable action on the project, though the course was not compulsory. Several military companies and a naval reserve unit were organized immediately, and the students were encouraged to attend the summer camps at Plattsburg and Fort Sheridan.

It took over a year and the stimulus of the actual entry of the United States into the war to bring to practical completion the plan of the Regents for voluntary training, with a course in military science instituted under officers designated by the War Department. Co-operation on the part of the Government, too, came slowly. There was great difficulty in harmonizing the University system with the government plan for college military training which was embodied in General Orders 49, establishing a Reserve Officers' Training Corps. Many meetings took place between officers detailed by the War Department and a committee, composed of the heads of various universities, of which President Hutchins was a member, before a modification of the government program was eventually secured. This made the prescribed course more elastic, and put military drill wholly or in part in summer camps. Inasmuch as the students under this plan could not be appointed reserve officers without examinations, it was not strictly the R.O.T.C. as originally contemplated by the Government, but it was a practical solution. As a matter of fact most of these difficulties of organization vanished when the United States entered the war, on April 6, 1917, in the general enthusiasm and eagerness to serve. The great practical question became a matter of the detail of a competent army officer to the University.

Meanwhile the students lost no time; little companies could be seen drilling everywhere on the streets. Three hundred students stayed over the spring vacation and drilled for four hours every afternoon. By May 315 men had been recommended for training camps, and 500 had left the University to enlist. The Regents also authorized the circulation of the 43,000 alumni and former students for the University Intelligence Bureau, and 25,000 replies, giving the qualifications of each individual for various forms of war service, were received. The Engineering College announced seven preliminary courses in military science, while the Medical School, with almost the whole Faculty enlisted, foreseeing the need of surgeons turned its whole force to training the upper classmen, and the Law School so arranged its programme that twelve hours a week were given over to drill. The upper class medical, engineering, and dental students were also enlisted as reserves while completing their courses.

It was not until October, 1917, that the Officers' Training Corps really got under way, as a definite part of the curriculum. But once started the response was overwhelming. Though the attendance in the University had declined by 1,239, and the course was not compulsory, there were 1,800 enrolled by the end of the first week. To introduce this great body of embryo soldiers to the rudiments of military drill the Government sent just one officer, Lieut. George C. Mullen, who had retired after some years' service in the earlier Philippine campaigns. Later came two sergeants, and another officer, Lieut. Losey J. Williams. With this slender force, and the aid of a company of Faculty men who drilled every night in order to prepare themselves as advisors, or "tactical officers" to supervise the student company commanders and with 300 old rifles, Michigan managed to "carry on," maintaining the largest, though owing to these difficulties probably not the most effective R.O.T.C. organization in the country. Nevertheless it served a very useful purpose, as its continually dwindling ranks indicated; for the better men were leaving all the time for the numerous training camps which had been established in the meantime. Of the 800 who received commissions after the first course at Camp Custer only 60 percent survived, but among these were all the candidates sent from the Michigan R.O.T.C., twenty-two of whom were included in the first hundred.

The University may also claim particular credit for the development of courses in army stores, which were first instituted by Professor, later Lieutenant-Colonel, Joseph A. Bursley, '99e. This course, which aimed to fit men for the ordnance and quartermasters departments, grew through six successive increments every six weeks, to about 250 men, and proved so practical and effective that similar courses were installed in other universities. In the same manner similar short courses were established in the Engineering College for the training of mechanics, particularly in the maintenance and repair of gas engines. The first course of eight weeks began on April 15, 1917, and prepared 195 men for this important branch of the service. A detachment of 700 men followed which included 500 automobile repair men, 100 general mechanics, 60 gunsmiths, and 40 carpenters.

These men came as enlisted soldiers and were under the command of Captain, later Major, R.H. Durkee. Five old residences belonging to the University were transformed into barracks, while the still far from completed Union was used as a mess hall. The laboratory facilities of the Engineering College naturally proved inadequate for so large a number, and temporary buildings sprang up rapidly in every open space nearby, erected by the men in the detachments. In addition to the technical training given these men, who were not, however, enrolled as university students, various special courses were given in war aims which proved of great value in furthering morale. This whole effort proved so effective that the Government desired to make a contract for the training of 2,800 men from October, 1918, through July, 1919; but this was more than the University could care for, though it agreed to take 1,140, including 60 telephone linemen, and 600 telephone electricians.

The next step came in the establishment of the Students' Army Training Corps in the fall of 1918. This was designed to correct the weaknesses, revealed under the stress of war-time conditions, in the old R.O.T.C., which in most universities did not furnish really effective military training for the emergency, particularly in the matter of discipline. The passing of the draft law also threatened the very existence of many of the private colleges and the plan to carry on university work and military training, side by side, while the students were actually inducted and under strict military discipline, seemed an ideal solution of a most threatening problem. Michigan, therefore, in common with every other college and university which could muster the necessary one hundred students, became in effect a military academy with the opening of the University in October, 1918, though of course there were many students not enrolled in the S.A.T.C., particularly the women, and the medical, engineering, and dental reserves who were completing their courses. The total S.A.T.C. enlistment was 2,727, of whom 2,151 were enrolled in the Army, and 586 in the Naval Training Corps; these were entered as regular students in the University, while 2,247 more in Section B, the army mechanics course, were not considered University students.

Thus with the largest S.A.T.C. enrolment of any university in the country, Michigan gladly devoted all her resources to the one supreme aim of training soldiers. Practically every fraternity house was turned over to the War Department as a barracks; the mysterious Greek letters were dropped and henceforth they were known simply by number—officially at least. The sum of $260,000 was borrowed from the State War Board to hasten the completion of the Union sufficiently to serve as a mess hall and kitchen, and this together with a temporary building erected alongside accommodated some 3,650 men. The Union also furnished sleeping quarters for 800 student soldiers. The fact that Michigan had a building so well adapted to the needs of the new situation was perhaps the principal factor in enabling the University to enter upon the programme so extensively. Dean Mortimer E. Cooley of the Engineering College was made Regional Educational Director with the work in all the colleges and universities in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan under his charge, while some forty army officers, many of them recent graduates of training camps, were detailed to the University as officers in charge.

Difficulties arose everywhere from the very first, however. The plan, which was not definitely approved by the War Department until a month before the opening of the colleges, was naturally not carefully worked out in detail. But this was a minor matter compared with a more serious defect in the general scheme. This was the lack of competent military officers, men with sufficient vision to co-operate effectively with the universities. The officers detailed were for the most part retired from active service, or recent recruits from training camps, and it was the exaggerated emphasis of things military on the part of the latter class that was largely responsible for the difficulty, noticeable from the very first, of maintaining any semblance of university work. The scheme provided for 42 hours of class work and study (14 hours of recitation with 28 hours of preparation) and only 13 hours of military drill; but the almost universal experience was that the military officers wholly misinterpreted the object of the plan and, with their strict control over their men, were able to discount, almost completely in some cases, the educational side of the programme. To add to the confusion, the onset of the influenza epidemic at just this time made the task of bringing order out of chaos almost impossible. Nevertheless, by the time the end came with the signing of the Armistice, measures were under way which might have saved the situation by curbing the complete ascendancy of the military officers, and restoring the scheme to its original essentially educational policy; for, in the original plan, the military features were to go only so far as to enable the authorities to select the best men for further intensive training at the officers' camps.