Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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V I Commencement 1944. A joint ceremony held with the Army and Navy. After the ceremony, all but a dozen or so members of the class left, two years and nine months after their arrival in Cambridge. The history of our Class does not end here. This somewhat gloomy story of life in an Ivory Tower during war, 18 represents the experiences of no more than one-fourth of the members of the Class. Here is a record of life in the armed forces as experienced by most of us, and the reactions of one Harvard man to it: 'Hut toop threep foh! Pick up the step. Hut . . . hut . . . hut . . . hut hut ho. Pick it up, settle the step, left, left, left right left . . . hut toop threep foh! Whassarnatta, didn' Harvard teach ya yer right from yer left? Hut toop threep foh, laut, dammit, bat. At first, quite a few of us wondered whether or not we did know our right from our left. As members of the Class of 1945, we had never paid particular attention to this subtle distinction between two equally useful feet, nor had we harshly discriminated against the right by always stepping off with the left. Things were different now. Yes, very different. Most of us, whether by land or by sea, were far removed from the red brick buildings and the white towers of the college: our quarters now were barracks, fo'c'sles, pup tents, often the open air. Gone was our sherry- loving biddy, we made our own bunks, slung our own ham- mocks, dug our own foxholes, and only stared incredulously at the rookie who inquired for 'clean sheetsf Only memories were the House dining halls and their meat menus, now it was 'Chowl Chowl' sounding over the ravenous clanking of a thousand mess kits. Extinct and almost forgotten were tweed coat, grey flannels and club tie, on every side, as far as the eye could see, everyone was stylishly garbed in the G.I. ensemble, olive drab coat and pants to match. The life was far, far different from anything any of us had ever experienced, there were many changes and many new things. 'C'est la guerre,' we philosophized, and shrugged our shoulders while trying to feel nonchalant about it all. The shrug did not come off very well, due to a slight matter of a 60-pound light pack, but we said 'C'est la guerre, anyway, and looked wise about it Qas wise as anyone can look in G.I. shoesj, after all, we were still men of Harvard. Strangely enough, there was a good deal to that 'men of Harvard' phrase, more than we had perhaps ever realized. It was an almost subconscious, indehnable feeling, something that made us square our shoulders when, out on parade, the band by chance played 'Our Director., We came to be proud of the name of Harvard, even though we were not graduates and had never received our degrees, we were twice as proud as any graduate. Q We suddenly began to appreciate the advantage and the value of a higher education, we learned what President Conant meant when he said, lEducation is what is left after you have forgotten all you have learnedf Few of us remem- bered the date of the Hartford Convention or what an atavar is in the Hindu religion, but the habits of study and concen- tration, the intellectual acquisitiveness, the ambition to outdistance stagnation and the co-ordinated mental and physi- cal means of accomplishing this-all these we brought with us from Harvard, to put to use in the service of our country.

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