Section II

The Golden Age of ROTC at Ripon College (1920s and 1930s)

The beginning of the Ripon College ROTC Unit dates to America's entry into World War I. Both the College and the town were patriotic and eager to support the nation's war effort in any way they could. As a result, less than two weeks after Congress declared war on the Central Powers on April 6, 1917, the College established compulsory military training for its male students who were organized as a company with 21 student officers, sergeants, and corporals. Retired Army Captain William C. Springborn of the Wisconsin National Guard acted as drill master. Among the student sergeants was Robert Icks '22 who would be regarded 10 years later as one of America's foremost authorities on tanks and tank warfare.

This training was limited to one or two periods of drill a week and was neither part of any established military program nor linked in any direct way to the war effort. It was, instead, a spontaneous gesture aimed at demonstrating the patriotism of the participating students and of the College and community and their support of the nation's war effort. Participation in drill was highly popular and taken seriously by the students even though the College could provide only wooden stocks and broom sticks for weapons. As a result, the company made a creditable performance in the town's Loyalty Day parade at the end of the school year.

This spontaneous drill effort was regularized a bit more when classes began in the fall of 1917. The faculty agreed to award the students two hours credit for participation in the drills which were now expanded to two hours a day, three days a week. At the same time, the college band agreed to participate in a number of the drills giving them an air that was more festive than onerous.

In the fall of 1918, this self-directed, spontaneous program of drill was replaced with the Student Army Training Corps (SATC), a military education program directed by the War Department. The SATC program was originally conceived as a means of helping colleges survive the war by providing male students a way of getting into the Army and into the war without leaving their campuses. These students would be allowed to join the SATC and receive military training along with their college education with the prospect of becoming an officer upon graduation. However, the major German successes in the spring of 1918 altered these plans and SATC was rapidly transformed and expanded to become a means for providing officers for the vast new armies the War Department planned to send to France in 1919. Institutional participation in the program was thrown open to any school with more than 100 male students. The program proved immensely popular with students and colleges so that by its start on October 1, 1918, more than 600 institutions had agreed to participate.

Ripon eagerly embraced the opportunity to participate in the SATC program as a means of preserving enrollments and providing an outlet for patriotic support for the war effort. Athletic Director Raymond McCrory and 11 students, including Paul G. Rodewald '21, who would later serve as chair of the college's board of trustees, and George Conant '21, volunteered to attend a 60-day summer camp that would train them to instruct their fellow students. Ripon then opened its program on October 1 with an all-campus ceremony. One hundred seventy-five men were enrolled and were housed as Companies A and B in Bartlett, Duffie, West, and Smith (Middle) Halls. Their training and education was subjected to a rigorous schedule that included reveille at 6:30 a.m., two hours of drill before 9:30 a.m., and mandated lights out at 10 p.m.

As was the case all over the country, Ripon's experience with SATC was not happy. The program had been instituted so rapidly that preparations everywhere were inadequate. Nor did the War Department have enough officers who understood how to run a campus-based military training program. Finally, the military training demands on the students were heavy and seen as interfering with the educational program of the College. As a result, both students and faculty at Ripon were cheered when they heard the news shortly after the armistice that the program would be terminated before the end of the year.

As it was terminating the SATC, the War Department announced that it was expanding the original ROTC program and would invite applications from any institution that had hosted an SATC Unit. However, the unhappy experience with SATC caused considerable skepticism about the value of ROTC among leaders of many colleges in the country and relatively few applications appeared. Ripon's trustees, on the other hand, were impressed by the fact that the SATC program had significantly increased enrollments in the fall of 1918 and they also felt that the physical training offered by the program had been valuable. As a result, Ripon applied for a ROTC Unit almost as soon as the SATC had been abolished. On January 27, 1919, President Henry Coe Culbertson was informed that Ripon and the University of Wisconsin would be the two colleges in Wisconsin allowed to establish an ROTC Unit.

The Ripon Unit's first two and one-half years were difficult and its existence remained precarious. Despite the financial incentives offered by the program, including a uniform valued at $24 for all participants and 40 cents a day for food for those in the Advanced Course, the program was initially not popular with the students. It took almost a year for the College to get enrollment in the Unit up to the minimum level of 100 required by the War Department. A rapid turnover in officer personnel precluded much from being accomplished in terms of program organization, while the Unit had no permanent local headquarters nor even rifles with which to drill. Finally, as Congress began to force budget reductions on the War Department, the Army several times considered dropping the Ripon Unit as being too small to operate economically.

By the spring of 1920, however, the situation began to be stabilized. Lieutenant Colonel J. K. Cowan, who was professor of military science and tactics (PMS&T) from February to April 1920, planned a four-year curricular program for the Unit which was successfully implemented during the next academic year by his successor, Captain C. E. Hathaway. For those in the Basic Course, the program focussed on physical drill, nomenclature and care of the rifle, and rifle practice. Students enrolled in the Advanced Course took a year of "Military Art 31" which dealt with the duties of junior officers as well as minor tactics, field orders, map maneuvers, company administration, and military history. During the spring of that year, the faculty formally voted to give cadets academic credit for ROTC courses thereby accepting the Unit and its courses as an integral part of the college's educational program.

Hathaway was the first PMS&T to stay with the Unit for an entire year, and under his leadership the Unit began to solidify its organizational structure as well as establish its position on campus. By the spring of 1921 the Unit had developed its own cadet officer structure with James A. Jones '21 as cadet captain and Bruno Jacob '22 as second-in-command. At the same time, it also began to develop its social organization, electing female sponsors for each of its three companies in March and holding its first Military Ball on May 20, 1921. Hathaway also founded the rifle team which helped increase the Unit's visibility and prestige on campus. Finally, in March, 1921, Sergeant Arthur Peters, who would serve the Ripon Unit for 25 years until he retired in 1946, reported for duty. Peters, who was often referred to later as "Ripon's Standing Army," became a stabilizing force in the Unit, while his reenlistment every three years became a source of celebration for the entire campus.

By the fall of 1921, the precarious years were clearly past as the Unit quickly entered its golden age. Captain George T. Rice arrived as the new PMS&T along with his assistant, Captain Frank Addington. Both officers came fresh from duty with troops and were filled with enthusiasm for making the Unit the dominant organization on campus. Both officers remained at Ripon for four years giving the Unit stability in leadership. By the time they left in 1925, the elements that led the Ripon Unit to the spectacular achievements seen in its first two decades were in place.

Overall, there were three main reasons for this remarkable success during these decades. The first was the leadership provided by the regular infantry officers in charge of the program such as Rice and Addington. These officers were generally young, most of them being either lieutenants or captains. They were energetic and often particularly gifted with the ability to understand the nature of the College and how to make the ROTC Unit a major focal point of campus life and interest. As a result, during these decades the Unit enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the entire college community.

In doing this, the officers developed a three-part formula that became the bedrock upon which the ROTC program at Ripon was built for the rest of its history. First, under their direction, the Unit became the sponsor of a number of social events that gave it high visibility and a positive image as the dominant force in student life on campus. By the middle of the 1920s the ROTC was the sponsor of an all-campus, off-campus Halloween party, a minstrel show for both campus and the town, a vespers service that featured patriotic readings and singing of patriotic songs, the Military Ball featuring a large band as well as a number of smaller tea dances and a military tournament in which companies competed for awards for drill and then engaged in an exciting mock combat operation. In addition, the ROTC had its own 25-piece band that played for all football and basketball games, a choir, and a baseball team. Finally, the Friday afternoon drill, which ended with the entire battalion marching around campus in full uniform behind its own marching band, was a source of weekly entertainment for both the campus and the community. While few, if any, of these ideas were original, most of them having been suggested to commanders of all units by the War Department, the regular officers on campus were unusually successful in integrating them into campus life and in uniting the campus community in supporting them.

Secondly, the officers put special emphasis on rifle marksmanship and in building a highly competitive rifle team. Rifle marksmanship was still highly prized in the U.S. Army in this period and competition between units was encouraged. Rifle matches, especially the annual national matches at Camp Perry in Ohio, were major news items in the service press all during the interwar years. At Ripon, the ROTC officers gave highest priority to developing a world-class rifle team within the Unit and almost equal priority to building campus support behind that team. To help build that support, the officers encouraged the creation of a women's rifle club and sponsored competitive shoots between fraternal groups. This support soon gave marksmanship high status on campus and greatly encouraged members of the ROTC team. As a result, the Ripon ROTC Rifle Team began to do phenomenally well at regional and even national rifle matches, giving the College the heady experience of national recognition while making the rifle teams and ROTC even more popular on campus.

Finally, in carrying out the ROTC's educational program at Ripon, the officers in charge placed heavy emphasis on the development of leadership. The large amount of time devoted to drill, together with the mandatory participation of nearly all freshman and sophomore males in the program, meant that upperclassmen in the advanced program got the chance to carry out leadership roles on the drill field. In addition, the many social activities in which the ROTC was involved necessitated the creation of a large number of organizing committees in which upperclass ROTC members would again take leadership roles. As a result, while off-campus military observers rarely credited Ripon cadets with unusual technical knowledge, they repeatedly complimented members of the Unit for their "pep" and their willingness to take leadership roles in summer camp activities. This emphasis on leadership was congruent with the College's own adherence to the liberal arts tradition and to its self-image as a builder of moral character which meant that the program quickly won faculty support while it attracted to the Advanced Course some of Ripon's best students.

Along with the leadership provided by the Army officers in charge of the program, the Unit also owed its success to the support it received from all elements of the campus community. The most active supporter of the Unit was President Silas Evans, an 1898 graduate of the College. Evans appreciated the value of ROTC scholarships to a college which traditionally drew a large portion of its students from families of no more than modest means. But, as was the case of presidents of many liberal arts colleges at this time, Evans was chiefly drawn to ROTC for what he saw to be its educational value in building leadership ability, moral character, and physical strength in student participants. Evans rarely sought to influence the educational side of the ROTC program but did all he could to promote its success. He attended ROTC events, visited the cadets at summer camp, and even made major efforts to secure musical instruments for the ROTC Band. He was particularly persevering in efforts to insure that the officers appointed by the War Department to serve at Ripon were the best available in terms of moral character and leadership ability.

While the support of other members of the college community was often less visible, it was still important. Ripon's trustees were instrumental in getting a unit initially assigned to Ripon and backed Evans' support of the Unit afterwards. Important faculty support came early, in the form of granting college credit for ROTC courses, an issue that proved sticky for years on many other campuses in the nation. Continued faculty support in terms of attending ROTC functions and public comments gave the program a fundamental sense of assurance about its acceptance as an academically legitimate and integral part of the College. The most vocal campus supporters of the cadets were, of course, their fellow students who participated eagerly in the social events sponsored by the Unit, noisily heralded the triumphs of its rifle teams, and, overall, granted the cadets a heady sense of status that encouraged even greater performance on their part. Finally, the Unit also had the clear support of the town. Townspeople willingly bought tickets to the ROTC minstrel shows making them financial successes and continuously provided appreciative audiences for the various drills, parades, and other military shows put on by the Unit.

Finally, along with the leadership provided by its officers and the support given by the community, the Unit also benefitted greatly from the particular nature and situation of the College. In the 1920s and 1930s, Ripon was still a small and isolated school whose students were not yet able to enjoy the benefits of either mass media entertainment or easy automotive transport off campus. As a result, the social activities sponsored by the Unit, which formed the core of social life on campus, were highly appreciated, as was the fact that only the ROTC had the size and leadership structure necessary for organizing such events. As a result, while many other ROTC units also sponsored military balls, tourneys, and similar events, the Ripon cadets enjoyed an unusually high return for their efforts in terms of gaining intense loyalty and support from the campus.

In seeking to put this program into place, Captain Rice gave immediate attention to the development of the rifle team as the showpiece of the Unit. Although the unit rifle team was never large, with widespread campus backing and under Rice's supervision, it began to enjoy almost immediate success. In March, Ripon won the 6th Corps Area Rifle Match, finishing ahead of 50 other schools including the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, and the University of Illinois, all considered to be among the finest ROTC units in the country. The Ripon cadets attending the 6th Corps Area Summer Camp in 1921 achieved a glittering record. The unit's rifle team captured the Chicago Tribune Cup, with the team captain, Burl W. Miller '24, qualifying as expert rifleman and finishing second among the nearly 1,000 cadets at the camp. Three other Ripon cadets ­ George Haun '23, John Kralovec '23, and Coleman Gunderson '23 ­ qualified as sharpshooters. The Ripon camp contingent that summer also included James H. Banville '23 who later became not only the first of the seven generals to come out of the Ripon program, but also the secretary of the Reserve Officers Association in the 1960s.

The rifle team continued to enjoy such success for the remainder of Rice's tour as PMS&T. By 1924 the team had voted to join the National Rifle Association in order to qualify for more meets and was invited to participate in the Army's national rifle meet in Camp Perry in the fall. In 1925, the team retired the Chicago Tribune Cup, having won it at three out of four summer camp matches, and was invited to West Point for a dual match with the Military Academy.

During Rice's tenure, the ROTC also attained its position as the preeminent social organization on campus. A reporter for the College Days noted with approval that "everywhere the olive uniforms are reminding us that one of the most vital organizations is again asserting itself in diverse manners throughout the campus." A year later, a writer for the Crimson was proud to claim that in "no institution in the ... Sixth Corps Area is there more interest felt in the activities of the organization [ROTC] than at Ripon College."

All of this success, attention, and recognition created a tremendous sense of elan within the Unit that was immediately noticed by military visitors. By 1924 outside observers were already beginning to refer to the College as the "West Point of the Midwest." In the fall of that year the commanding general of the Sixth Corp Area nominated the Ripon Unit as one of the 21 in the nation to compete for recognition as a "Distinguished College." Since only one other small private college in the entire nation had been selected to participate in this competition, Ripon's nomination was a tremendous honor and a recognition of the unit's remarkable achievement.

Ripon, however, did not win the coveted "Distinguished College" recognition, and the competition pointed out the weaknesses in the unit's position in the national ROTC program. The clear strength of the Unit was in its spirit and in the experience in leadership gained by its cadets. Yet the point system on which the competition was based had no entries for intangibles such as "spirit" or "leadership." It did have point entries for the absolute size of the Unit as a whole and for the Advanced Course in particular. In those areas, Ripon, in competition with units from the major state universities, did quite poorly.

Moreover, scores in the area of technical knowledge, while high in terms of overall national standards, were low in comparison with those of the other candidates for "Distinguished College" recognition. This was the price Ripon paid for the emphasis Rice placed on leadership and on producing a world-class rifle team. With the Army placing increasing emphasis on technical competency and economy rather than on leadership and quality, Ripon found itself competing at an increasing disadvantage. Initially, Ripon's small size had given it an advantage in the ability to organize the Unit, its rifle team, and widespread campus support for both quickly. Units in large state universities facing the problems of organizational and popular inertia common to such institutions were slow to get moving. Hence, Ripon had been able to outclass them in rifle meets and at summer camps early in the decade. But the large land grant schools enjoyed access to far greater numbers and resources so that eventually they, too, could field quality rifle teams while economically producing large numbers of technically competent cadets. It was becoming clear, therefore, that for Ripon to compete more effectively in the future, the Unit had to insure that its cadets' command of technical competency matched their skill as leaders. This task was left to Rice's successors in the second half of the decade.

These successors were able to meet that challenge. Ripon's next PMS&T was Captain William W. Eagles, a West Point graduate, who became as popular on campus as Rice had been and managed the Unit with equal effectiveness. Eagles' successors were also capable officers who quickly learned how to work with a highly supportive college administration, faculty, and student body to maintain the quality of the Unit that had been created in the early 1920s.

Largely as a result of this, there were few major changes in the Unit in the decade and a half between 1925 and 1941. The emphasis in these years, obviously, was on maintaining and, when possible, improving the quality of the Unit Rice and others had built. Maintaining, however, is less exciting than building so that some of the atmosphere of enthusiasm that had surrounded the Unit in the first half of the 1920s now began to dissipate. The College Days ran fewer stories about the Unit, while coverage in the Crimson was less than before. Even the Unit Diary became briefer, more prosaic, and more formulaic in its annual recording of activities of the Unit.

In addition, the Unit also gave up its earlier domination of college social life. It continued to remain an important part of the social life of the campus. The Military Ball was still the major social event of the year while the Sponsors' Ceremony, which featured the presentation of the women students elected as sponsors of each of the companies of the battalion, was also an all-college event, as was the vespers service. However, the Halloween party, minstrel show, and the frequent all-campus dances which the Unit sponsored earlier disappeared.

Moreover, the rifle team was no longer given the emphasis that it had received under Rice and its performance began to fall off. There was a brief return to glory in academic year 1934-35, when the team won the William Randolph Hearst Cup in competition with all of the other units in the Sixth Corps Area, and in which cadet Hubert Konopacki '38 was top marksman in the meet. In other years, however, the teams were sometimes no more than mediocre.

The result of both of these developments was that the College and the Unit, which had been so closely identified with each other in the first half of the 1920s, began to pull apart to some degree. The students began to find other areas of interest on campus. This drift from ROTC was not great. Nearly 75 percent of the male students on campus were still members of the Unit and the percentage of students electing to take the Advanced Course was still extremely high by national standards. Nevertheless, sports and social activities sponsored by other groups now competed more effectively with ROTC for student attention.

In return, the cadets began to identify themselves a bit more as part of a military unit rather than as champions and leaders of the College. This movement toward a more corporate and professional identity within the ROTC Unit was stimulated by several developments in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Continuing to seek recognition for Ripon as a "Distinguished College," Eagles placed more emphasis on classroom work. In 1928 the cadets received new, sharp looking, tailor-made uniforms to replace the ill-fitting, war-surplus outfits they had been given to wear in the past. The battalion was also awarded its own unit flag. The next year, the Unit finally got permanent headquarters and classrooms and a new rifle range in West Hall. At the same time, Ripon cadets took considerable interest in the Army as indicated by decisions by Cadets Sam Radetske '27 and Sidney Nelson '27 to join the new Army Air Corps. In the 1930s, this new, professional outlook was reflected in attempts to create social organizations within the Unit for the cadets in the Advanced Course. In 1932, the Ripon Unit followed others in forming a chapter of the Alpha Tau Sigma military fraternity on campus.

The shift toward a more professional self-identification paid off handsomely for the Ripon Unit. Under Eagles' leadership, the Unit was again nominated to participate in the competition for "Distinguished College" recognition in 1928 and in academic year 1929-30, Eagle's last at Ripon, that elusive recognition was finally achieved. The Unit won the recognition again in academic year 1930-31 and in nearly every year afterwards during the 1930s. Given the highly disadvantageous terms in which the College had to face in competing for this award, its continued success in the 1930s was an outstanding achievement in which the Unit and College justifiably took great pride.

Moreover, while the Unit may have identified itself from a more professional perspective in the 1930s, and while the euphoria with which the campus regarded the Unit in the early 1920s may have dissipated somewhat, the bonds between the Unit and the College were still close. President Evans remained an ardent supporter of the Unit as well as of the idea of ROTC in general. He wrote several pamphlets in support of ROTC and college military training that received national attention. He and Dean William Harley Barbour annually attended the Military Ball and other major ROTC functions. At the same time, classes at Ripon were always suspended on Military Field Day, the successor to the older Military Tournaments, so that students could watch the military activities of the cadets. In addition, as a show of campus support, classes were also suspended on the days in which the Unit was being inspected in the competition for designation as a "Distinguished College." The College even participated in helping the Unit develop its sense of professional identity. The Redmen designation, the college patch to be worn on the uniform, was designed by a committee with the wife of Dean J. Clark actually designing the patch and President Evans providing the motto, "Faith and Courage."

Finally, the College, as a body, stood by the Unit during times when ROTC was under attack nationally. ROTC was the target of a number of pacifist groups who saw military education in the colleges as the opening wedge for an eventual militarization of society. Thus, they made ROTC in general, and the compulsory nature of the Basic Course in particular, their main targets. Wisconsin, with its particular interest in socialism, became a major focal point for such campaigns. It had taken a gubernatorial veto in 1923 to stop a movement to abolish the Wisconsin National Guard while the University of Wisconsin became the first school in the nation to abolish the mandatory requirement for participation in the Basic Course. While little further progress was made in this campaign, its intensity increased in the 1930s, putting heavy pressure on all units.

The Ripon Unit, however, felt little of this. During the academic year 1933-34, the international relations club sponsored several forum discussions on the topic of the justification for incorporating military training in education programs, but nothing came of this, and it was the only moment in which the nationwide campaign against ROTC was felt on the campus. President Evans was partially responsible for sheltering the Unit from these attacks, and he received considerable criticism, especially from church circles, for his support of the ROTC. Otherwise, the anti-military pressure groups were largely centered in the cities so that Ripon's rural location and the rural origins of most of its students meant that all during the 1920s and 1930s the Unit had the advantage of operating within a highly patriotic atmosphere. This climate was, probably, responsible as much as anything for the continued distinction with which the Unit carried out its mission.

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