Lehigh University - Epitome Yearbook (Bethlehem, PA)

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THE WAR . strange places no one had heard of since his eighth grade geography days drove home the grim reality that America was taking a beating and that a great national effort would be necessary to turn defeat into eventual victory. What ' s this I ' ve been hearing about the J avy ' s having a special reserve for engineering students? Sure, they let you graduate and then give you a commission. Say, that sounds swell. Sorta ills two birds with one stone. C HE WELL-KNOWN human desire to have one ' s cake and eat it too was illus- trated in the great interest that all American college students showed in the various Army and Navy reserve programs, the first of which appeared about the middle of December, 1941, and which was very similar to the present V-7 set-up. More than 175 junior and senior engineers at Lehigh began to investigate its possibili- ties. At first glance a reserve of this kind seemed to be just what most normal fellows were looking for. Almost everyone felt a deep pain inside of him when he read of the Japs taking one island after another, pushing MacArthur back to Bataan and hoisting their flag in Manila. Everyone wanted to help. But it ' s not easy for a man to drop his education after having sweated blood to pass Math 106, having burned the midnight oil for years over physics and heat engines and organic chemistry and strength of materials. It ' s not easy for a man to walk away from an education that his parents have saved for years to give him or that he ' s worked full shifts at Steel to get — even if he does walk into the service of his country. Yes, sir, the college reserve program of the Navy looked good and so did advanced R.O.T.C. Most fellows thought these units offered a chance to fulfill two seemingly conflicting desires. ¥ 4 M ■ it J .i, w flU uto

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THE WAR YEARS He had been lying across his bed, dozing, on that quiet Sunday after- noon when someone shouted into the room and said that a guy on the radio said Pearl Harbor was being bombed. He didn ' t now where Pearl Harbor was but he new that the news must mean that somebody was starting a war with us. Suddenly he got a queer feeling that the world in which he had been living only a few seconds ago had just disappeared forever and that he was in some strange new md of existence. It was an un- comfortable feeling; so he quic ly got up to join the bull-session that he new the news would start. y)N DECEMBER 7, 1941, the United States began to change and Lehigh began I y to change with it. The national phases came rather slowly because the country was in a stupor for weeks after the paralyzing shock of Pearl Harbor. Lehigh was shocked too. But there was no mass hysteria, no rushing to recruiting offices. The men were excited, of course, and they rushed around quite a bit, but all their rushing was done in circles, the same circles that everyone else rushed in in those days — that is, everyone except those in the Philippines who were too busy to get excited. The first war casualties at Lehigh were the quizzes that had been scheduled for the Monday and Tuesday following the Pearl Harbor attack. Most professors were of the opinion that the student body was far too excited to take quizzes, and most students believed that the faculty was far too excited to make them up. Keep cool, was the keynote of messages from President Williams and Dean Congdon which appeared in the Tuesday issue of the Brown and White. Wilkes McClave, president of Arcadia, urged that Lehigh men continue with business as usual. It seemed that everyone expected the student body to do something rash — like resigning from school in a body and enlisting in the Marines. However, according to a survey made by the Brown and White a few days after the start of the war, only seven men had definitely decided to leave college and enlist. The remainder of the students were fighting within themselves to decide the question of just what their duty was. For a few days the feeling of We ' ll crush Japan within a month swept over the campus as it did over the rest of America, but soon the big, black headlines about Official U. S. Navy Photograph [10]

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