I’m reposting the story I wrote in the Spring 2011 Wofford Today here with some of the images – some of which didn’t make the magazine.
By providing students with the opportunity to serve their country, exercise leadership on the campus, and represent the college in the community and elsewhere, ROTC has been a significant part of student life at Wofford since 1919.
During World War I, students at Wofford were organized into a Student Army Training Corps, and campus life was militarized. Out of a student body of 218, 187 students were part of the training corps during the 1918-1919 school year. President Henry Nelson Snyder noted in a letter to an alumnus in the army written just two days before the armistice that “We have been turned into a military post” and that the course of study and discipline had been changed to suit the government’s needs. The end of the war saw the campus returned to civilian control, but the country’s need for a trained officer corps did not go away.
A Reserve Officers’ Training Corps unit was organized at Wofford in October 1919. An order from the Secretary of War formally established the unit on December 29, 1919. According to the 1920 Bohemian, the battalion was reorganized in the spring semester, with future South Carolina Governor and U. S. Senator Olin D. Johnston (who had already graduated) as the battalion commander. The two companies included some 108 students.
Participation in ROTC continued to grow through the 1920s. In 1925, 267 out of 474 students were part of the corps. Students in ROTC during the 1920s in the basic course studied first aid, military hygiene and sanitation, military courtesy, and lots of infantry drill, physical training, and minor tactics. In the advanced course, students continued training and drill, but added field engineering, military history, military law, and administration. In the summer between their junior and senior years, cadets were expected to attend summer camp for six weeks at Camp McClellan, Alabama. Students in the advanced course received a subsistence allowance of about $108 a year, plus all of their military equipment and uniforms. Especially during the Great Depression, receiving uniforms that they could also wear to class and a stipend helped keep many a student in college. Tuition in those years was just under $100 a year, with room and board costing about $200.
Throughout the time period, the college has strongly supported having ROTC at Wofford. President Snyder wrote to a colleague in another state that “We like the training it furnishes – the drill is excellent for the physical exercise it gives, and the instruction is sufficiently academic to warrant its inclusion in the curriculum. Great emphasis is made on preparation for citizenship in time of peace.” During the 1930s, ROTC was housed in the old gym – not Andrews, which was the new gym then – but Burnett Gym, near where the Burwell Building is today.
Participation in ROTC remained high throughout the 1930s, and well over 1,000 Wofford alumni served in World War II. After the war, ROTC continued to have a strong presence on campus. Even during the Vietnam era, participation remained high. In the fall of 1968, for example, 188 freshmen signed up for ROTC, and in 1969, 67 members of the graduating class of 264 were commissioned. The advent of Interim made additional training opportunities during the academic year possible, and in 1969, the ROTC band of 44 students participated in one of the largest Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans. Led by Professor John Coker and then-Major Ed Hall, they were housed on a nearby aircraft carrier during their stay in Louisiana.
A few weeks ago, the military science department transferred three boxes of materials to the archives, so we’ll be going through those scrapbooks and files this summer and adding them to the existing ROTC and military records here in the library.
Do you have any ROTC stories that you’d like to share? Let me know – you can post them here.
Images: The 1919 order establishing the ROTC unit; one of the ROTC companies in 1925, and ROTC cadet Rodney Anderson’ 79 (now Major General Rodney Anderson) at advanced camp in 1978.
