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Section I: The Development of the ROTC program in America, 1862-1916

Section II: The Golden Age of ROTC at Ripon College, The 1920s and 1930s

Section III: Ripon College and its ROTC Unit during World War II

Section IV: Postwar Reconstruction: The Ripon ROTC Unit, 1945-1950

Section V: An Era of New Challenges: The Ripon ROTC Unit in the 1950s and 1960s

Section VI: The Ripon Battalion in Crisis: The Ripon ROTC Unit, 1967-1970

Section VII: The Ripon Battalion as a Volunteer Organization: The Ripon ROTC Unit 1970-1991

Concluding Observations

Appendix: ROTC Personnel, Ripon College, 1919-1995

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{ ROTC History at Ripon : Faith and Courage }

Section III

Ripon at War: Ripon College and its ROTC Unit during World War II

The outbreak of World War II in Europe in the fall of 1939 was soon felt on the campuses in America. By the 1940-41 academic year, Ripon authorities were noticing with dismay that academic performance began to fall while breaches of discipline occasioned by a new urgent strenuousness in social life suggested that the presence of war was already being felt on campus. Enrollments at Ripon shot up in academic year 1940-41 after it was suggested in advertisements that males enrolled in ROTC might be exempt from a draft.

The presence of war, however, had little immediate impact on the Ripon ROTC program. The additional enrollments in 1940 led to the formation of a new company. Otherwise, the well-established annual routine continued as it had earlier. The annual Military Ball provided the brilliantly visible highlight of the year while the performance of the men's and women's rifle teams and the drill team continued to testify to the quality of the program. In 1939, the drill team again won the Wisconsin Reserve Officers Association state competition.

But with American entry into the war after Pearl Harbor, things quickly changed. As was the case in World War I, the student body as a whole sought ways to take an active part in the war effort and formed a student War Council to coordinate activities in support of the the war. The women's rifle team disbanded to allow its members to take first aid training or to enroll in the Women's Military Training Course. In the spring of 1942 it was announced that ROTC would be temporarily suspended at Ripon. The Basic Course was to be suspended at the end of spring 1942 with most of the male students enrolled in it to become members of the Enlisted Reserve Corps. Those students enrolled in the Advanced Course were to be allowed to complete the program scheduled for academic year 1942-43, at which time that program would also be suspended. At the same time, traditional military drill gave way to more practical tactical field problems.

During this final year of the Advanced Course, the Unit enjoyed one last spark of glory as the rifle team in the spring of 1942 defeated both the University of Wisconsin and the University of Illinois to finish second in the Sixth Corps Area meet. The final Advanced Course boasted five honor students qualified for commissions in the Regular Army, including Ervin Zippel '43, who later became one of the leading members of the college's board of trustees. Military Week in winter of 1943 was by every measure the most extravagant in the history of the Unit and was attended by many out of town alumni as well as faculty members and all members of the administration. The special guest was none other than the commanding general of the Sixth Corps Area. And, with this final flourish, the golden age of the Ripon ROTC Unit came to its end.

Although the Advanced Course was suspended for the duration of the war after the end of academic year 1942-43, the Basic Course was actually continued, although now it was restricted to discharged veterans, men who were physically disqualified for service, and men under 18. This program was small, amounting to only 15 cadets in 1944-45. The staff was reduced to a single junior officer, First Lieutenant Fred M. Sullivan, who was also involved in other, far larger military programs on campus. However, even this vastly diminished unit managed to keep alive some of the traditions of the previous decades. Sullivan continued to maintain a rifle team that fired in Sixth Service Area and Hearst competitions while the Unit also sponsored intramural women's rifle competition that attracted more than 50 participants.

As was the case in World War I, during the height of World War II, colleges and universities across the country were called on to supply emergency training programs of a variety of types. Thus, from July, 1943, to December, 1944, the focus of military education at Ripon shifted from the greatly diminished ROTC Unit to the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) and the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program (ASTRP).

The ASTP was established by the Army on December 18, 1942, as a means of providing a continuous supply of replacement officers in the war. By the middle of 1942 it was foreseen that the current mobilization of manpower would soon deplete the nation's supply of college-trained males. The initial objective of the ASTP was to make up that deficiency by sending soldiers between the ages of 18 and 22 who were high school graduates and who had scored well above average on the Army aptitude examinations through a compressed program of college-level instruction. At its height, the ASTP had 145,000 soldiers taking courses in programs in 227 institutions. The basic outline of the curricular program was dictated by the War Department, but the institutions were given wide latitude in developing the program on their respective campuses. The program was to be divided into three 12-week terms with the equivalent of a semester's work being carried out in each term.

At Ripon, President Evans was eager to participate in the ASTP. The vast expansion of the draft in 1943, which drew nearly all male students away from the College, threatened Ripon with financial disaster. The 400 students promised by the ASTP, therefore, would be a financial godsend as well as an opportunity for the College to make a contribution to the war effort. Hence, pointing to the success of the ROTC program at the College, President Evans eagerly pressed the War Department during the spring of 1943 to get a unit of ASTP assigned to Ripon. On May 19, Evans was informed that Ripon would get a contract for between 300 and 400 ASTP students.

During the next six weeks, the College and the faculty scrambled frantically to create the facilities and the courses for the program. The 400 new soldier-students were given the tri-dorms, West, and Smith Halls for living and the main student dining room in the Union, while the women on campus were hurriedly moved into Bartlett, Duffie, Lyle, and Merriman and were given a small, hastily constructed dining room in Merriman. The curricular program drew on the talents of 25 members of the Ripon faculty and emphasized the mathematics and sciences needed as a foundation for later training in engineering. Courses were offered in physics, mathematics, chemistry, English, geography, and history. The military training was provided by eight officers. The ASTP soldier-students were organized as the 3657th Service Unit and given physical and classroom training in military subjects similar to those offered in the ROTC Advanced Course.

The 400 new soldier-students represented the diversity and quality that Ripon would have liked to have been able to attract in normal times. They came from 40 states and a half dozen foreign countries. Most were between the ages of 20 and 22, all had high school diplomas, all had scored well on the Army's aptitude test, and almost a third had a year or more of college education.

While Ripon had made adequate plans in terms of providing facilities and courses for the ASTP soldier-students, no provisions had been made for their social life or recreation. Since the Army saw ASTP participants as soldiers engaged in an educational crash course (one War Department news release bragged that the word "loaf" was not in their vocabulary), it was intended that they not mix with civilian students and at some schools this isolation was rather rigorously enforced. Moreover, many Ripon students harbored some initial resentment against the ASTP because of having to be moved and to live in more cramped quarters.

The initial separation of the two groups of students did not survive long, however, once school started. The ASTP soldier-students wanted recreation and, in their spare time, began to organize their own touch football teams and musical groups. The college athletic department soon stepped in to assist by providing equipment and places to play, so that by October 11 intramural ASTP basketball teams were created to compete both against each other and against intramural college and local town teams. At the same time, the ASTP students formed a 30-piece military band and a smaller swing band. Finally, since almost all of the remaining college students were women and the ASTP students were males, an active social life involving both groups quickly evolved. At the end of October, the ASTP Swing Band played at a "War Stamp Stomp" sponsored by the women students and attended by both. By that time, the college newspaper was filled with gossip about romances and even engagements between the ASTP soldiers (now referred to familiarly by first names only) and women students.

Overall, the integration of the ASTP soldier-students into the wartime life of the College was rather complete and many developed an attachment to the school that led them to return to complete their education (and sometimes marry a coed sweetheart) after the war. Moreover, while the ASTP was not connected in any way with ROTC, the service Unit soon began to take on many of the characteristics of the ROTC at Ripon in terms of providing leadership and focus for college social life. Finally, while the ASTP program here was hastily improvised, it succeeded and the College was later recognized by the War Department with a "Certification of Distinction" for its work in the program.

However, by the time that the ASTP program was underway on campuses across the country, the assumptions upon which it was founded had been proven wrong. Officer casualty rates in 1942 and early 1943 had been far less than predicted so that far fewer replacements were needed than had been expected. On the other hand, the need for enlisted men grew more rapidly than expected so that the ASTP increasingly began to look like a luxury for the Army. By December, 1943, rumors were rife that the program would be discontinued, and on February 18, 1944, the War Department announced that the program would be reduced from 145,000 to 35,000. On March 30, 1944, President Clark G. Kuebler was informed that Ripon's ASTP contract was being terminated. Kuebler made a major effort to get a new ASTP contract for Ripon but without success.

The ASTRP that was run parallel with ASTP was established as a pre-induction program to bring 17-year-old high school graduates on campuses for college-level education and basic military training. It was often run in conjunction with a third program, Specialized Training and Reassignment, or STAR program, which was introduced to provide technical education for future enlisted specialists in the Army and as a preliminary training unit for some of the soldiers selected for participation in ASTP. The ASTRP and STAR programs bought to Ripon only a few students, all of whom were younger than the ASTP soldier-students and college women students. They integrated far less and made little impact on the school.