The Navy’s Scholar-Sailors

On 1 July 1943 several thousand young men eagerly appeared at the gates of 131 U.S. colleges and universities. Each of them had successfully passed a nationally administered qualifying exam and medical screening. They had been proudly sworn into the Navy and were ready to serve their country. As lowly apprentice seamen, they were taking part in the largest educational program this nation had ever undertaken: namely, the U.S. Navy’s innovative V-12 officers’ training program. Its purpose: “to produce officers for the largest navy the world had ever seen.”

While the strategy for the V-12 program originated in Washington, D.C., the success of the program depended on the partnerships forged between the U.S. Navy and the participating universities and colleges. In each instance, the college was responsible for the educational aspects of the program; the Navy, the military training and logistics. Just as the modern-day Naval Academy relies on both a commandant of midshipmen and an academic dean, so at each V-12 college the dean and the V-12 unit commander were close-working partners. While the final academic structure may not have been as nautical as the admirals would have liked, nor as scholarly as the professors would have preferred, it worked nevertheless. When the program ended on 30 June 1946, more than 60,000 men had entered active duty through V-12.

For the institutions selected, however, “enlisting” in the Navy was truly traumatic. One such school was Union College, in Schenectady, New York, even though a small contingent of Navy V-5 aviation trainees had been on campus since 1939. Seemingly overnight, historic Union was suddenly overrun with 450 sailors who, according to Dr. Dixon Ryan Fox, then Union’s president, rocked the venerable college to its very foundations. “To many a professor,” Dr. Fox observed, “the serenities of academic learning existed only in wistful remembrances.” Indeed, the Union faculty soon developed a negative attitude about the military presence on campus. It was perhaps best expressed by the professor who anguished that Union College “had been converted into a factory affair where technicians were produced on a mass scale.”

But America’s all-out war effort needed us. We had been ordered to report early on the morning of 1 July 1953 to Grand Central Station in New York City. Immersion into Navy life was abrupt. No-nonsense chief petty officers (CPOs) formed us into ranks and marched us onto a train headed for Schenectady. Behind me, a tearful mother and my carefree life as a teenager. As the train clacked along, some trainees talked incessantly, their voices high pitched with excitement. I was pensive, a little scared, yet more than a little proud, wondering what the future held. The 17 year old seated next to me whispered as the train chugged through Poughkeepsie, “This is as far away from home as I’ve ever been!”

The trip was over almost before it started. Suddenly the conductor was shouting, “All out for Schenectady.” Piling onto the station platform, we found the omnipresent CPOs awaiting us. From the railroad station we paraded up Union Street, in cadence, while local citizens along the way enthusiastically applauded. I felt exhilarated and proud! Our arrival had brought the war to Schenectady in a forceful, unforgettable way, and all our lives were changed . . . forever.

The arrival of this disparate group of new student/sailors at Union dramatically altered campus life. New courses were offered; classes were scheduled six days a week; North and South Colleges were called “barracks”; the “chow hall”—a temporary, utilitarian building—was considered an architectural eyesore; the Kappa Alpha fraternity house became a “sick bay”; walls became “bulkheads”; stairs became “ladders”; and toilets were called “heads.” Reveille was sounded by a shrieking steam whistle at 0545 every morning. The Navy Department’s repugnant movies about venereal disease were shown, of all places, in the chapel!

“The mutual suspicion and jealousy as between trainees and civilians were not to be overlooked in the summer of 1943,” bemoaned President Fox. After all, from the civilian point of view, V-12 looked like a big break for anyone in it: a college education, room and board, uniforms, and medical care, all free, plus $50 a month.

To us, though, it was far from free. The academic side of the program was exacting. Premed, deck, and engineering students all carried heavy course loads: 18 hours a semester, not including labs and homework (study rules were in effect from 2000 to 2200 every weekday evening). The three, four-month semesters each year left little time for liberty or leave. In 16 months, the typical V-12 trainee completed two years of college credit.

The physical training was just as rigorous. Six days a week—whether in the frigid darkness of January or the soft light of July—while civilian students were still asleep, we were trotting, doggedly, in cadence, up to Alexander Field for rugged calisthenics supervised by a CPO. “The persons least blessed by all this exertion,” recollects one former trainee, “were our professors. When V-12s went to class directly from physical training, they were very apt to go instantly to sleep as [their] nerves and muscles relaxed.”

In between classes, which generally ran from 0800 to 1700 (with time off for lunch and, three days a week, chapel), we had commando course training, “abandon ship” drills in the pool, physical education, and lots of close- order drill. V-12 trainees went everywhere in cadence: Hut! Too! Hree! Haw! Every Saturday, year-round, we underwent captain’s inspection, by the squad, by the company, by the battalion. A weekly highlight for the local populace, it was irksome duty for us V-12 sailors.

Then came the “awkward squad”—a group of hapless sailors who were drilled for up to three additional hours because of various infractions of the regulations, including being late to class. The atmosphere was, at times, according to one Union professor, “like a miniature West Point.” Despite all the griping, most Union V-12 bluejackets not only survived, but thrived.

Eventually, the tension between the civilians and the sailors eased. “Ultimately, there came a cordial feeling of solidarity between Naval and civilian students,” Dr. Fox satisfyingly observed. “The men are intermingled in every activity . . . and the whole college [now] thinks of itself as a constituent part of the Navy effort.”

The V-12 program at Union College produced four admirals, a commodore, a Marine Corps general, and uncounted numbers of captains, commanders, lieutenant commanders, and lesser ranks. From Union’s V-12 ranks came a Nobel Laureate, a college dean, and two recipients of Alumni Gold Medals, as well as doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and engineers.

Even today, V-12 graduates continue to serve the needs of their country and their alma mater. The Union College V-12/V-5 Endowed Scholarship—one of only two such programs in the country—is a living legacy born of the V- 12 era, which enriches the college and honors its Navy veterans. Whether as sailors, alumni, or citizens, the V- 12 trainees of World War II served their country, the U.S. Navy, and their colleges with distinction. By all criteria, the V-12 program was a singularly distinctive success.