MEMORIAL FIELD WORK WELL UNDER WAY

Dartmouth's khaki-clad undergraduate army, which spent the spring of 1817 tearing a section of college property into a fair semblance of the Western Front in France, didn't do one-half the job that 150 workmen are doing today with Alumni Oval, scene of so many brilliant Dartmouth athletic victories.

The Oval has been a criss-cross of long, deep trenches, enough of them to conceal the entire student body of 2000, if they were here and wished to repel a mythical attacking force as in war-time days. Every day has seen the addition of more trenches and the filling up of those made earlier.

All this digging is the first step in the construction of the College's Memorial Field, for which a special committee has been raising funds during the past year. It is also the least spectacular piece of work that will go into the new recreation field. Yet it is the most important.

The digging will accomplish one end—a dry season for Dartouth's athletes. Hitherto, the football squad has been hampered by early snows which have melted to make the gridiron a veritable swamp, baseball teams have been forced to spend the valuable early days of spring on the bumpy campus diamond, and track men have been kept indoors on the gymnasium track until late in the spring, all because the Oval lacked proper drainage facilities.

The trouble with the field, engineers found out upon investigation, lay in the fact that the piece of ground occupied by the Oval was lower than that around it, making the place a catch-basin for surface water.

Larson and Wells have overcome these difficulties by planning changes necessary to transform the entire field into a low plateau. Allen Hazen of New York acted as consulting engineer on the drainage.

This is being done by the use of drains in a system of hills and valleys. Cinder pockets, through which water will seep easily, are being placed at convenient spots all over the field. They will collect the water and let it through to drains underneath, from which it will travel eventually to Mink Brook, a small stream several hundred feet away. All this sounded simple, but from the start, the problem has been the most difficult offered by the whole project. The "hills" have a height of 18 inches and one of them runs lengthwise across the football gridiron, yet the whole field is being so graded that to the naked eye it appears perfectly level.

To insure Jack Cannell plenty of room on which to work out his football squad this coming fall, the system has already been installed. underneath the area on which the football field will be laid out. Workmen have already commenced laying this piece of ground with sods, after which an expert ground keeper will take charge and groom it for the candidates next September.

The job has been made even harder by the fact that the previously-unused field between the old Oval and South Park Street is being drained, as is also the recently-purchased property across the street. All this area will be called into use for the immense playing field which is necessary for Dartmouth's system of compulsory recreational athletics.

Among the minor activities of the workers will be the laying out of a new quarter-mile cinder track, several feet to-the south and east from the old track—this will mean that the football field will be moved a trifle, as well—and the construction of the new set of tennis courts, for which the Athletic Council contributed funds at its Commencement meeting.

It is planned to have the bulk of the work out of the way by the time that the student body returns for the opening of college, late in September, while the entire job of grading and drainage is to be out of the way before weather conditions put a stop to the work in the fall.