The War and the College
THINGS ARE MOVING FAST IN HANOVER. IT WAS JUST YESTERDAY, IT SEEMS, that President Hopkins said in the Bema: "Men of 1942!" But that was May, with new grass and young foliage barely come to life. The seniors stood, received the message of the President, heard his benediction, marched to the campus to disband. Now the Men of 1942 are in uniform.
With spring still sunning its buds the College reconvened and as summer flowered on Hanover Plain many of the new freshman class arrived. Then Dartmouth joined the Navy. Hanover moved over to make room for a thousand student officers, many of their families, and the executive and teaching staffs. Facilities were stretched and crowded. Final soft ball games receded into the quickening dusk of early September as Dartmouth students departed for a ten day vacation. Navy students rose in Webster Hall to sing Auld Lang Syne, marched to the campus to disband and scattered to the corners of the earth.
There were then a few days when officers and teachers of Hanover's two leading institutions—the Navy and the College—girded their loins and rushed preparations night and day for arrival of their respective student bodies. They came and Hanover is bulging at the seams. Leaves are beginning to fall. Touch football fills the shortening afternoons with movement on the campus, its historic paths bearing the rhythmic Navy marching to its "Hep-two-three-four!" Everyone is too busy to think about the brilliant spectacle of October. But Balch Hill is turning red and yellow, as it always has, before the land freezes in gray November. Then heavy blue collars will be turned up to fend the North Wind from graduates of the second Navy class at Dartmouth. . . .and another thousand men will report at once.... and in eight weeks, another.
December. This is no time for graduation.... for strolling on the green with your folks and your girl while the band plays. Many of us remember the warmth, the friendship, the soft lights, the gaiety of the President's garden reception—but not for these seniors. Out they go!—sped on their way, just be- fore Christmas, to military duty.
