HOW TO CHOOSE A COLLEGE

 

By Dr. Robert E. Plucker

            Back in the spring of 1945, I was in high school, very close to graduation in late May. In April of that same year, word came to the high school that boys who were 17 years old and would graduate at that age would be eligible to take an Army test. By passing this test one could join the Army Reserve and get in as much as a year of college at Army expense. This was a plan by the Army to get a head start on training new Engineers. This was a good plan for us high school seniors who were still sweating out the draft, as it looked as if Japan would fight on for a very long time. Furthermore, higher education for me was unlikely, as money was always in short supply. I had scholarship offers from Yankton College and Dakota Wesleyan in Mitchell, but the offers were so small that college seemed impossible. Since I was 17, and wouldn't turn 18 until the following January, I jumped at the chance. In about six weeks I received word that I had passed the test and was to report to Fort Crook, near Omaha, in June if I wanted to go ahead.

            The benefits for this Army Reserve program were just fine; there would be free tuition, free books, free room and board, free uniforms, and free medical care, everything the regular Army troops got except a monthly salary. Once we turned 18 we were to finish the term at the college, then report for Active Duty. Only two colleges were offering this Army Specialized Training Reserve Program (ASTRP) at this time, the University of Wyoming and South Dakota State College (of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts).  Brookings, where SDSC is located, is located only about 65 miles from my parent's farm.

            In June, according to directions, I took the bus to Omaha, stayed overnight in the YMCA, got an Army shuttle bus out to Fort Crook the following morning and was sworn in as member of the United States Army Reserve by afternoon. From then on, I was to be Serial Number 17149628, having raised my right hand and sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies. This was the first time I had ever traveled away from home without at least one parent.

            By early August, orders came in the mail to report to Fort Snelling just outside Minneapolis, to get uniforms and to get "processed", whatever that may have meant. . I made the trip by train from Sioux Falls and in a few days was shipped back to Brookings where the ASTRP school cycle began several weeks before the civilian quarter started. Thus the US Army chose my college for me.

            We Reservists were quartered in West Men's Hall, which we were told to call the "barracks", were assigned student officers and non-coms (I don't know how these were selected from our inexperienced ranks), and soon we were being marched in formation to classes, to the "mess hall" (not the dining room), to any place we were required to go. Since there were only a few male civilian students on campus, we were pretty much "it." Curfew was at ten, with a bed-check; required study was from seven to ten and about the only free time was between six and seven pm, or 1800 hours and 1900 hours, as we were "encouraged" to refer to the time. Saturday morning was inspection time, but most of the afternoon and all day Sunday were off-duty.

            As to course work, I did well in English literature and grammar, history, geography, physical education and military science, but poorly in math. I liked engineering physics and did reasonably well in it despite my mathematics difficulties. I was told that I could apply for a third quarter (a full year of college, total) if I wanted, but my math grades were falling steadily and I knew I would flunk the next course: calculus. So I reported for active duty at Fort Snelling on the 9th of February, 1946. The war had been over following the droppings of The Bomb at just about the same time we Reservists arrived in Brookings from Minneapolis, summer of 1945. We were vastly relieved, of course.

The Camponille at SDSC

            There were some fun parts to all this regimented life at SDSC. I somehow found time to work in a few voice lessons with Professor Karl Theman whom I had met before at a high school music festival. Three of the other ASTRPs and I discovered that we had some similar musical interests and formed a quartet. By some chance or other, our commanding officer, Captain Olson, heard of us and we had to sing for him. He must have been impressed because he called us out one night to sing some bawdy songs during the "short-arm" inspection. This was a job that I suspect the officers who inspected enjoyed about as much as we who were subjected to it. I don't believe that any of us was ever found to have a venereal disease. We also got a call to sing for a much more high-class occasion, a civilian banquet. Fortunately, we had a few songs that we dared sing in polite society. We were given special passes to leave the campus that night.

            Back to active duty: the stay at Fort Snelling was only about ten days, but I learned a bit about malingering whilst there. About a half-dozen of us were called out of the barracks one morning for a work detail. I was expecting that we would be given mops and brooms to clean up some latrine or other, but when we got to the place we were told to go, an officer told us to go back to the barracks and change to Class A uniform because we were to work in an office. So we went back, changed, and some clever fellow noted that the officer who had sent us back had failed to get our names, ranks and serial numbers. So most of us "got lost" on the way back to the work detail, but somehow found the shuttle bus to downtown Minneapolis. If anyone from the original group ever made it back to that officer's lair, we did not ask.

            After the Fort Snelling "processing" a few of us were sent to Fort Snelling, Alabama, for Basic Training. The SDSC military stuff was a help in getting through basic without much trouble, and now we were getting a monthly salary, a princely $50. The paratroops were getting an extra $50 and that appealed to me. At the same time, I was not above being macho enough to volunteer for the 'troops just to prove how tough I was.

            So the papers that identified me as a volunteer for parachute training were signed. Basic being concluded, we were given orders to report to Fort Lawton in Seattle to be "processed" for the Army of Occupation of Japan. But they gave us a ten-day delay-en-route, which meant that I could take the train to be home in South Dakota on the way, and to be a part of my sister's wedding. She had advanced the day by a month just so I could be there. I left on the train for Seattle almost immediately after the wedding.

            The voyage to Yokohama from Seattle's Fort Lawton was the worst experience of my life, up to that time. There was no air transport for us in 1946; we took a troopship, a converted Liberty ship. The Liberty ships were celebrated for rolling even in a dead calm sea when under way, and they were much worse in moderate to heavy seas. The Great Circle route that was used passes fairly close to the Aleutian Islands, and it was stormy and cold.  I was in fair shape all the time the ship was in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but as soon as we passed Cape Flattery I got queasy and then outright seasick. It was a 16 day voyage and I was sick for 13 of the 16. Sick to the point of being afraid that I might not die. Dying would have been more fun. It would have been better on deck, but most of those days were so stormy that none but the ship's crew was allowed outside.

            After more "processing" at the 4th Replacement Depot just outside Yokohama (Most of the troops referred to it as the Repple Depple), I was sent to Yamoto in northern Honshu for parachute school. It was a short session, hellish enough, but that made the first five qualifying jumps seem easy by comparison. From there I was assigned to "G" Company, 188th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 11th Airborne Division. In due time I was promoted to Corporal, but never advanced to the exalted rank of Sergeant.

            I had a rather enjoyable time in Japan; "G" company was quartered at Camp Schimmelpfennig, near Sendai. I was a very tame soldier, seldom leaving camp and obeying all the rules punctiliously. Before Christmas of 1946, word was put out that a Methodist missionary college in Sendai was hoping to resume the practice of singing the Handel Messiah in December, and needed tenors and basses. They would supply the transportation for anyone who wanted to sing, and thus it was that the first time I had ever had any part of this great Handel masterwork was in Japan and with a Japanese-speaking (only) conductor. We were to sing it in English, and I was impressed with the quality of the Japanese women singers. I was equally impressed with the clarity of the conductor's directions. He was very clear as to what he wanted, even though he spoke only Japanese. I had occasion to sing with that choir one other time, but that was the extent of it.

            The chaplain at the camp, a Methodist minister with the rank of captain was the ideal person for the job. He was a qualified parachutist along with the rest of us, and was said to have made at least one jump with every class that had come through the Yamoto jump school. We all admired him. Cashing in a bit on the head chaplain's popularity was his subordinate; a lieutenant who was attached to the Division, but really belonged to the despised IX Corps Headquarters. He was not a parachutist and could never be as close to the men as his boss. He tried to organize some music for the Christmas Eve chapel service with the aid of his Chaplain's Assistant, and managed to round up four men to sing some carols in four parts. I was the baritone, as usual. Our only appearance was at that Christmas Eve service; the second tenor arrived with the smell of booze on him. He had a bottle with him to keep the buzz going. I thought there could be trouble with the singing but it went OK. What was not OK was that while we were still standing in front of the crowded Christmas Eve chapel, before we could even start to move back to our pews, the second tenor upchucked very noisily and messily on the floor. My memory of how that was cleaned up is completely gone and I would like to be able to forget the entire incident. But this convinced me that drunkenness, or any drinking before a performance is a bad idea.

            Not long after that, hoping to do some more music, I applied for a transfer, thinking that I would be able to slip into the spot that would soon be vacated, the Chaplain's Assistant. Nothing happened for a very long time and I had begun to think that no one in authority had ever seen my transfer application. Our First Sergeant, Jack Dudley, a tough "old" guy of some 30 years and 10 of those in the Army, talked to me first. The subject of the conversation was that I should re-enlist, as my tour of duty was nearing the end, and I could sign on for as little as one additional year, or two, or three. He made "G" company and the whole 11th Airborne Division sound very attractive, and I wrote home that I was considering signing on for one more year. Sgt. Dudley also mentioned that my request to be a chaplain's assistant was not viewed favorably by any right-thinking officer of his acquaintance.

            This hint of renewing my enlistment did not sell well with my father. But Dad was an immensely wise person, and instead of hitting the ceiling with wrath and fury about throwing away my life and chances for college, he wrote about philosophy. He wrote almost poetically about the work of a farmer, about preparing the soil, planting the seed, fighting the weeds, praying for rain. The harvest was nothing he had created, but his work had made it possible for the grain to grow and become useful food. I had never guessed that my Dad, a man who had tried several times to get away from the farm but had failed to do so, nevertheless felt so passionately about the creative aspects of farming. He mentioned, as a kind of afterthought, that the underlying purpose of an army is not creation, but destruction. Had it not been for this letter, it is likely that I would have signed on for another year, then another three years, and three more and so on. So, after completing one more "glory" jump, I was sent home in May 1947.

            In the fall of 1947 I was all set to take advantage of the really fine GI Bill that was in force then, and to pick up where I had left off, I thought that going back to South Dakota State College would be the way to go. After a year there, I thought I would look around and transfer to someplace where I could actually major in music, as the "Agriculture and Mechanic Arts" part of South Dakota State allowed only a Bachelor of Science degree, and only a music minor. Perhaps I would go to the University of Minnesota, I thought. After a year of some of the most enjoyable times of my life, I couldn't bear the thought of leaving, so I stayed and got my Bachelor of Science degree, history major, music minor in the spring of 1950. The genuine music degree was not to come until 1939 with an MA, University of Minnesota, made possible in part, by the Korean GI Bill.