Gold Wings and Brown Boots: The Organization of the Army ROTC at Marshall University

Abstract

Gold Wings and Brown Boots:The Organization of the Army ROTC at Marshall University Nathaniel DeBruin The 1902 Marshall College catalog contains a photograph of young men in uniform standing in front of Old Main, the College's academic and administrative building. The caption reads, "Cadet Corps in front of College Hall." Other photos of student organizations and "boarding clubs" in the catalog show young men in the same uniform. A single paragraph in the Herald Advertiser relates that college president L. J. Corbly was petitioning state legislators to form a corps of cadets at the college.1 In the May 1902 edition of the Parthenon, the college student newspaper, another few sentences relate the arrival of the cadets' uniforms and the fact that one of the colleges' female boarding clubs enjoyed coming to campus to watch the "boys drill.'"2 One last mention is made of the corps of cadets greeting the train to welcome the winning Marshall College baseball team on May 31, 1902.3 And that is where the story ends – as suddenly as it appears, the corps vanishes. No further mention is found in the local or student newspapers after 1902, and the college catalogs after 1902 contain no mention or photographs of the corps or students in uniform. In 1934, Marshall College had another brief interaction with the military when the opportunity arose to host an Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) unit. Support for the unit was found among the student body; but the faculty was opposed, and the opportunity for a unit was lost. The Civilian Pilot Training Act of 1939 designated federal funds to create a Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), which emulated the civilian pilot training programs in European countries. Marshall was selected to participate in the CPTP; the program included classroom instruction in aeronautics on campus and flight instruction at the Chesapeake (Ohio) Airport.4 It was not until 1943, when the US Army Air Force selected colleges and universities across the United States to provide academic training for aviation [End Page 1] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Marshall Catalog, 1902 (Marshall University Special Collections) cadets, that Marshall College and the military would finally come together. In February 1943, after meeting the criteria to host a unit, Marshall College was selected to become the home of the 47th College Training Detachment (CTD) (Aircrew). The 47th CTD became an integral part of the campus and the Huntington community until it was disbanded in April 1944. In 1950, Marshall applied for and was selected to host an official Army ROTC unit, and the Thundering Herd Battalion was created in September 1951. The desire for a military presence on the college's campus prior to World War II was mixed. However, as the United States moved toward entering the global conflict, Marshall actively sought and accepted an Army Air Force unit during the war. These changing attitudes toward education and the experiences of veterans returning to campus, both students and faculty, were instrumental in creating an atmosphere of increasing acceptance of the military that was absent prior to World War II. This presence of the armed forces on campus during the war and the changing attitudes toward veterans by faculty and other students contributed to the creation of an ROTC unit on Marshall's campus. The Early Years At the founding of the United States, it was a widely shared belief among the framers of the Constitution that "standing armies in time of peace are [End Page 2] inconsistent with the principles of republican government, dangerous to the liberties of a free people, and generally converted into destructive engines for establishing despotism."5 The result of this sentiment was a recurring cycle of expanding the military during times of crisis, and then just as quickly dismantling it when the threat or conflict had ceased. The Civil War made it apparent that the US Military Academy was not capable of meeting the demand for the large number of officers needed for a protracted conflict; thus a new method of training officers was needed.6 The debate over public funding of colleges and universities had also been ongoing prior to the...