Central Officers Training School - Shavetail Yearbook (Fort Gordon, GA)

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N, GQTHQN 41 1 I' -J ---'-- -4 v-AMIAIMU-didn! rn K- . ,,.,., . . ,.,. .. ,. . as--H I., -- 1, .-...i...1 . sl4'!.::if'9 viva'--ti ,-,lu-wmv-MT iivqfeyr W - ., . .. - .- --- --H -' K - Q A -- ' H an f-pta-f:'---...-......-.. td--- --.---------------A --- --new D' ,Mn A - ---f-wfw-'f 'o'c i'r ' 'Q ' 'J - ' -- 'W A- 'c ' ' izs . 'M -as,-gre.- 1 . fi' rw 'v' 12 t-jim.. L .A . 'pa K- sf, xx. 1.45. . .,,,:..q, A 4 ers-. 1 -r-5 s . . rr pi A, 15 --af confident ambition. The whole history and progress of the nation is indissolubly bound up with the practice of not taking the other fellow's word for it, and of acting independently of that word when it is insistently pressed upon us. The continent itself was discovered by a man who was fool enough to believe that the world was not flat, and was stubborn enough to stick to his belief and go off adventuring with a lot of rowdies in two or three overgrown catboatsg it was settled by a company of re- ligious obstinates who declined to swallow the theologi- cal dose prepared for them by their monarch, it was ex- plored by others who exhibited few other traits than in- decent curiosityg it was freed by a handful of resolutes who had the temerity and lack of knowledge of the con- sequences to oppose a tyrannical mother countryg it-was developed, expanded and enriched by men who hadn't sense enough to realize that the things they accomplished were obviously impossible, its immense and multitudi- nous contributions to science, government, art, litera- ture, industry, transportation and the joy of living all were the outgrowth of some fellow's persistence in not letting well enough alone and of disregrading the sane and conservative advice of sensible men who wear rub- bers and carry umbrellas by way of precaution. . The devil of it is, we get away with it. We blunder on, getting bigger, richer, more influential, we go on in- venting the uninventible, building the unbuildable, doing the undoable. We assemble an army in the face of facts which conclusively prove that we are not in position to assemble any such army, we train that army by methods which clearly are the wrong methods for training an army, and then, to cap it off, we go ahead with that army and win a war which cannot possibly be won. So with the C. O. T. S. It wasn't feasible, you couldn't apply volume of production methods to so individual a prob- lem as the training of army ofiicersg anyhow, you couldn't find a word to justify the attempt in either the F. S. R. the 1. D. R. or the I. I. R. P., and if you couldn't find it in those three it certainly Wasn't anywhere, and conse- quently was not to be thought of. Nevertheless- The immediate genesis of the C. O. T. S. idea was the work done by Major General Leonard S. Wood in inau- gurating the first civilian training camp at Plattsburg, New York. The success of this camp was astonishing and resulted in the series of Reserve Officers Training Schools established by the War Department immediately after the declaration of war. In these camps men from every walk of life, every profession and every national- ity, found common cause and common object, and the class of men graduated and commissioned was the high- est possible. With the enlargement ofthe Regular Army, the fed- eralization of the National Guard and the creation of the National Army, the necessity for commissioned officers caused the War Department to take especial cognizance of the thousands of capable men serving in an enlisted capacity, and to provide for them an opportunity to demonstrate their adaptability and worthiness. Accord- ingly the third Officers Training School was established at many different camps, and men from all branches of the service were chosen from every division and admitted for instruction to the schools. The privilege was eX- tended to many colleges and universities which include a course of military training in their curriculum to send a small percentage of their ablest men, and these also were graduated and commissioned. The fourth Officers Training Schools opened in all divisional cantonments May 15, 1918. The general stu- dent personnel in all the schools was equal to the stand- , .........e . 74 -iz' 1 fy A 2 5 z 1 1 1 i a Ig . 2--a-4-..-.-..,....

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FZFPQ alzillq 151 igl p ig. ii-Qfii lffllp .xiii 1.1, 3 ! V: 'Q jeff,- 'T-iiiii Qggfgfj 'iii F! fiffi .4 5Z'l :Will 'Qsir.. iii . M1 fl- lf? - 2 g QD 1 'T Exif' ffl 15 ,wfgiyg 5 W .. , fi Q Eli. Qin fuk ,of ffl-l I 4152! Fl' Y Qi Q- .. 'wil wi, aw jj .ggi 532 ll. . - 1 Ll' -liif xs' .- , i 'Vw 5 if . HX' xi .lp 'N-A2512 Nil ' 519 1' ,iw if 'f T .-z. fi'? 41, ,Ali :5l'l' l.. 'ftriif ?lz'n'iJ .... vu--:ul , 1.1 . I lfng' l e is 0115 ,M me . . 35,85 . lt' f lt r I .5 mtumal HAT apt and energetic epithet applied by Gen- eral Sherman to war describes with equal pre- I cision the conditions of peace, insofar as the 'W' M production of a battalion book is concerned. For pluperfect perdition it is likely that nothing could exceed the assignment of preparing such a volume, and of resolving into some semblance of order and form the inconstant and chaotic elements which go to make it up. The project of issuing such a record, even in its original aspect, was viewed with some misgiving by the men re- sponsible for its appearance, since it is one thing to draw sap from a dummy with a bayonet and quite another to draw money from a candidate with a typewriter. And following receipt of 'ftel A G O dated Nov. 14, l9l8, and the heavy casualties in the battalion consequent up- on its appearance, any such book seemed out of the question. However, here is the book. It was impossible, of course, to get it out, nobody would be here to get it, the fellows who were going lacked further interest in it and those who stayed would probably read nothing but the script on their commis- sions for a couple of years anyway, there would not be enough remaining subscriptions to pay for publication, the time was too short in which to complete the book, it was inconsistent with peace, anyhow, to produce such a book, there wasn't time enough in the day outside of the schedule in which to do anything on it, the paper market couldn't be pried into on any terms-and so on lad lib. , 1 However, as has been said, here is the book. 4 RK ,-xx .1 infgxg ,w it We have digressed this far upon the book itself to emphasize how precisely it reflects the C. O. T. S. as a whole, in that the conditions and difficulties surrounding its preparation and completion bear so exact a resem- blance to those experienced by the school. The making of a commissioned officer--so long, so many centuries a task laborious, unhurried, meticulous-had by virtue of a grave and menacing emergency to be converted over- night into an immediate and intensive process, an under- taking, which, multiplied manithousandfold, is compa- rable in its difficulties and potentialities with a proposi- tion of making Pierce-Arrow cars or Swiss watches on Ford or Ingersoll schedules, of producing miniatures with a whitewash brush. It couldn't be done, the thing was manifestly ridiculous. German publicists sneered at our plans and pointed out to their readers the absurd- ity of hoping to make officers by sewing epaulets on their shouldersfi while our own crape-hangers addressed the project in sepulchral tones and gathered immortelles for their buttonholes. Well, here is the book, and there go the officers, tread- ing with sacrilegious feet the sanctified soil of the Father- land-officers of a quality that hurdled the line of Hin- denburg and walloped the one of Wotan, that reduced the allowable inquiries of the Teuton envoys at the peace conference to the single question, f'Where do we sign? Ho, and likewise, hum, such is America. No less than as the book reflects the school does the school reflect the country. If we as a people have a national genius, which in its quality and application is distinctly our own, it is the genius of expediency and . S , 4 N-' W rv MC' 2 V -3 Q Q x ............Ms....,..,.......4, , w r- F -an-'L K - . . ,...fe-.af--:-ff: Y---g ---' -.,--L1 3,-:lg -pg-gh -- --Q - '-W - - 41- '-, -W - W- - - --- ,yaarz .V--1-Y 2 J .- 5, V1-155-3,-7'1-g.,F','iT'-3-1-3,-1-'I-v-zo'-g.nf-Y 'zz' - -- ,.- T.. Z , U: , ,. .- , - 1 u L 854,-,ggggzrg..:,.i . gl, anna,-1 - -f5.T.:-g.,-5 ' ' f ' -' ' S I. 5 A,-L. 14:1 :gg,':.::g'g::-x 1lrf1::-uc: :::t'75':..f:..' '.-gr' iz, -'- f v , 51,1 gf-Y QAM, 'V X, W , -egg'--A'1'-'Eu' Lifti- T-IW-4-Y g -- -3 W ,--- - 'fs .- ,,,,,m.--..,,, H ,,.-..,,,,1, ...,.Q. . .,, --3 --,r-1-fg4-L.--aan L.. 4 - me K- Q , V x . .,. ,,:1mj -,.... . . -. ,- ,ug-, F ...-yvw ..

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sa-,-......,,As.4 V in Y - jf! ard established by previous schools, the corps of instruc- tors the best obtainable, with the added advantage of many exceptional instructors with overseas experience with the French and British. The schedules were co- ordinated and standardized in such a manner as to en- able instructors and students to utilize the training period to the maximum extent. After consideration of numerous factors the War Department ordered that these several divisional schools be collected into Centralized Officers Training Schools, under centralized supervision, with centralized instruc- tion and centralized attendance. The Camp Gordon School is representative of the splendid result accom- plished by this action, and its achievements the best pos- sible evidence of the Wisdom of the move. It is with the Fifth Battalion, senior inthe school as this is Written, that this book is chiefly concerned, and xv . Q- - ,..-..... ...-.-,..--a........-.-.,,. .-,..-,- .............-.--n f'-M' gg-'C ff-piqilh - ' with its labors and leisure, its trials and triumphs, that the pictures and paragraphs hereinafter printed have to deal. It is possible that for many of us the Fifth Battalion will remain as our last experience in the army, as for others it will stand as the first. The armistice, the immi- nent peace, and the enforced action under the circum- stances of commissioning the graduates in the Reserve, send us, temporarily at least, to civil life instead of to the trenches. Whether the transfer is permanent or not, in no Way can affect our regard for the organization of which we are now a part, or our vivid recollection of the Battalion's virile existence. The Fifth will always remain, as it is now, our battalion, its men, our meng its fortunes, good or ill, our own.