Mars and Minerva: World War I and The University of Texas...
by Jim Nicar

"We are patriotic, you're mighty right, we are. It drips off our chins," declared a University professor. "And you ought to have seen us parade. Yes, sir, paraded until our tongues hung out." On Monday afternoon, April 10, 1917, just four days after the United States had officially entered the "war to end all wars," an enormous Loyalty Parade was held in downtown Austin. Under sunny skies and a warm spring breeze, over 8,000 marched up Congress Avenue, while another 12,000 cheered from the sidewalks.

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The University of Texas at Austin

World War I was a watershed event for American higher education. Before the war, colleges and universities were not considered as important opportunities for social and economic mobility. Professors were rarely asked for advice on solving society's problems. Despite curriculum reforms to include more "practical" courses in modern languages, science and engineering along with the traditional Greek and Latin, colleges had failed to win widespread support from government, business, and the public. The world war changed everything. Caught up in the patriotic fervor that pervaded the nation, male students rushed to enlist in the armed forces, which decimated college enrollments. At co-ed institutions like the University of Texas, the women left behind assumed leadership roles on the campus that had previously been denied to them.

Professors who specialized in subjects useful for war were recruited for their expertise. To avoid the closure of hundreds of male-only colleges, the Student Army Training Corps was created to allow students to both remain in school and receive military instruction.

Because the Corps was open to any high school graduate, legions of young men who might otherwise have joined the work force found themselves on a college campus, and returned after the war to finish their degrees.

In Austin, the declaration of war changed University life almost immediately. The residents of B. Hall, the well-known men's dorm on the campus, formed its own "B. Hall Guard." The group agreed to rise every morning to sound of reveille (instead of the traditional cowbell) and practice military drill for an hour before breakfast. A hat was passed that collected $7.00 to purchase a flag. Red, with "B. Hall" in large black letters, it was carried proudly in the Loyalty Parade.

Not to be outdone, the faculty elected to form a military company of its own.

Led by honorary Captain and philosophy professor Al Brogan, eighty-four members of the faculty agreed to participate in one hour of drill three days a week. The group included honorary Private (and UT President) Robert Vinson. Law professor William Simpkins argued that while military drill was necessary, "it's not drills but knowing how to shoot that wins wars." Simpkins wanted the entire faculty to attend classes in the use of firearms. Senior professors who were a little too old for active military training assisted Dr. Eugene Barker from the history department in planting a war garden on a section of vacant land near the campus.

In late April 1917, University president Robert Vinson was appointed to the Council of National Defense and was requested to attend a strategic conference in Washington, D.C.

The meeting formalized an idea supported by President Woodrow Wilson to involve universities in the war effort.

The SMA was to provide basic technical instruction for beginning pilots before they moved on to flight training. An eight-week session included classes in the history and theory of flight, meteorology, astronomy, machine guns, aerial combat, and the use of signal flags in communication. Those attending the SMA were soldiers in a new branch of the U.S. Army known as the "Air Service," later to become the Air Force, and were not considered University students. Instructors for the SMA included both army officers and UT professors.

When the war ended, the SMA had expanded to almost 1200 students. The largest in the country, it was given the nickname "West Point of the Air."

The success of the School for Military Aeronautics placed the University in good stead with the War Department, which assigned two additional schools to the Austin campus. The School for Automobile Mechanics opened in March 1918 at Camp Mabry in northwest Austin. Three hundred men at a time completed a six-week course before being sent overseas to the war. Like the SMA, instructors included members of the University faculty.

The School for Radio Operators was established on the campus a month later. It took over the B. Hall quarters vacated by the SMA, but needed more classroom space than was available. To solve the problem, several rows of large canvas army tents were pitched in front of the old Main Building, along what is now the South Mall. Once opened, radio students and their equipment were a common site on the hilltops and in the valleys west of Austin.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, almost five thousand Texas Exes in the armed forces had front row seats to the Great War. "I wouldn't be in any place in the world other than right here," wrote First Lieutenant Luckett Cochran (BA '17). "Next stop, Berlin!" A letter from Second Lieutenant Conan Wood (BA '19) was not as upbeat, "A three-inch shrapnel shell landed in the section of trench I was in, killing everyone in it except another officer and myself."

By the summer of 1918, Army manpower needs had grown to a point where the United States Congress was considering a bill to lower the draft age from twenty-one to eighteen. Had it passed, universities nationwide would have lost its remaining students and been forced to close. In order to save American higher education and provide the country with additional soldiers, the Student Army Training Corps, or SATC, was created. Participating colleges became full-time army training facilities controlled by the federal government. To encourage enrollment, the SATC was opened to any male eighteen years or older with a high school diploma. Even selective Harvard University welcomed applicants in would normally turn away. As part of the SATC campaign, the War Department adopted the slogan "It's Patriotic to Go to College!" Thousands responded.

On October 1,1918, over 140,000 college students nationwide, including 2,000 in Austin, were sworn into the Army at simultaneous ceremonies on 525 campuses. As members of the SATC, UT students were considered soldiers on furlough, and were housed in eight hastily built wooden barracks along the southeast side of the Forty Acres. The campus woke with reveille.

Students fell into formation and marched to meals, classes and military work, then fell asleep with Taps. Because campus buildings were placed under guard, professors had to carry identification to get to their classrooms. Fall sports, especially football, were permitted to continue, but the War Department requested fraternities be suspended because they were "incompatible with military training."

Courtesy, 1919
Cactus Yearbook.

Co-eds, meanwhile, had formed a UT chapter of the Red Cross, sent letters to soldiers overseas, knitted scarves and socks, and assisted communities statewide to grow war gardens and conserve food.

Since the Women's Building residence hall was filled to capacity, four empty fraternity houses were used as temporary dorms for female students.

If the times were not hard enough, a serious influenza epidemic swept the nation through the summer and fall of 1918, killing thousands. Austin was not immune. At its height, two or three persons in the city died of the disease each day. Social activities were cancelled; churches were prohibited from holding services. Infected SATC students were quarantined and moved into the Army tents already on the campus for the radio school. President Vinson suspended classes for a week each in October and November, then cancelled the term entirely at the start of December.

The war ended on November 11, 1918, and downtown Austin was once again the scene for spirited celebrations and parades. Within a month the SATC and military schools were disbanded, and by the following spring B. Hall residents once again awoke to the sound of a cowbell. Yet the University was not the same. The new faces that had arrived on campus with the SATC were encouraged to plan for the future, discovered the practical benefits of higher education, and remained to finish their degrees. As a flood of new technical and management positions opened after the war, businesses for the first time looked to hire well-rounded college graduates. With such opportunities, young Americans flocked to universities nationwide, creating an enrollment boom that would last for a decade. Because of the war, colleges and their faculties were elevated to high positions in society, and a university education became an integral part in the American definition of personal success.

In 1924, as a tribute to the 198,000 Texans who joined the armed forces for the war, the new football stadium was christened Texas Memorial Stadium in their honor. A large bronze tablet placed above the seats in the horseshoe section lists more than five thousand names of those who did not return home.