V-12 PHYSICAL TRAINING
Program Builds Strength and Skill of Future Officers
THE NAVY'S V-12 college training program for officer candidates is essentially academic in character, with the more strictly military phases of training reserved for the Navy and Marine stations to which the men will go when they complete their allotted college terms. The V-12 trainees are required to have only one hour of military drill a week, and in many respects they enjoy the privileges of peacetime undergraduate life as the Navy carries through with its original policy of making the best possible use of American colleges and universities as they normally function and not of trying either to take them over or to make them over.
This emphasis on the academic rather than the military does not mean, however, that the period of V-ia training is not to be utilized to bring trainees up to the peak of physical fitness for the fighting days ahead. An intensive, well-rounded, and long-range physical training program went into operation at Dartmouth when the V-ia Unit first started, and ever since it has been a common denominator among all trainees, basic or advanced, Navy or Ma- rine. When the trainees arise each morn- ing to a dark, six o'clock world, physical fitness becomes the first order of the day, with twenty minutes of calisthenics and running at 6:05; and starting at 8 o'clock and continuing throughout the morning and afternoon, between 200 and 300 men each hour pour into Alumni Gymnasium to take their daily period of physical train- ing. Last term, when outdoor activities were possible, all men had the same physi- cal training hour in the afternoon, but the arrival of the indoor season has necessi- tated a staggered schedule, making the gym just about the busiest and bouncing-est structure on Hanover Plain.
The Navy has long had a definite and well-formulated program of physical training for its men, and the V-12 units throughout the country have been brought within its general scope, using prescribed courses and standard Navy tests. Navy personnel, whether officers or gobs, must be prepared for long periods of standing, climbing, swimming, moving quickly, and enduring physical strain. Accordingly, in its physical training the Navy endeavors to develop strength, muscular endurance, agility, flex- ibility, and a certain amount of speed. The concomitants of these are mental alertness, efficiency, initiative, and competitive spirit. The main objective is not to develop the specialized skill of the expert but to bring each individual to the highest level of all- around fitness. Tests and the sequence of training are designed to this end, and the evidence of general improvement—in some, cases amazing—is practically unfailing and is especially impressive in a group as large as the Dartmouth V-12 Unit.
The Navy physical training program at Dartmouth is in charge of Lieut. Leslie C. Avery, USNR, to whom Captain Cummings, the commanding officer, has delegated responsibility for this phase of V-12 training. Lieutenant Avery is well qualified to see to the physical fitness of the country's largest V-12 unit. Before coming to Hanover he was Recruit Training Physical Fitness Officer at the U. S. Naval Training Station at Farragut, Idaho, and prior to that he was assistant football coach at St. Louis University and was for seven years supervisor of athletics at Roxbury School, now Cheshire Academy, where he turned out crack football teams and a long list of future college stars. Lieutenant Avery is assisted at Dartmouth by Ensign Leon P. Williams and by a staff of 18 Navy Chief Specialists, who conduct morning calisthenics and the daily classes at the gym, and some of whom help with the Dartmouth varsity teams. Marine Corps sergeants and corporals also lead the dawn workouts and assist at the gym.
Valuable help in the Navy physical training program is provided by Dartmouth's own physical education staff, headed by Sidney C. Hazelton 'og, and College equipment also is used. Sid Hazelton, Robert J. Delahanty, and Douglas Wade, the College naturalist, are helping with swimming; Harry Hillman with track; Jeff Tesreau and Ross McKenney with handball and squash; and Pat Kaney and Lauren Sadler '2B with tumbling and apparatus. Tommy Keane, Dartmouth's golf coach, will soon join this group, increasing it to nine men.
The program which the Navy and College men conduct is divided into two main parts—the Basic Training Program required of all hands during their first 16- week term, and the Maintenance Training Program required each term thereafter. For the first eight weeks of the former, trainees concentrate on general conditioning, engaging in such activities as calisthenics, swimming, running, tumbling, obstacle courses, rope climbing, grass drills, jog marching, and informal games. Of the five hours per week required, one must be devoted to swimming, and for all trainees unable to pass the Navy's third-class swimming test, three hours each week must be devoted to this activity.
The second half of the basic course is given over to combatives and competitive conditioning activities, with the first-half swimming requirements still in effect for all hands. Combatives include boxing, wrestling, and rough and tumble, while the competitive conditioning activities, required once a week of all but non-swimmers, include those listed for the first half of the term.
Trainees who measure up to established physical standards, as determined by the Navy standard physical fitness test near the end of the first term, go on with the Maintenance Training Program; but those who fail are reassigned to the basic course until they meet the requirements. The maintenance program, like the basic, requires five hours, each week in addition to the 20- minute period of calisthenics each morning. The emphasis on swimming continues, with one hour required for swimmers and three hours for those classified as nonswimmers. Three days a week the men engage in organized competitive sports, which vary with the seasons. At Dartmouth for the winter these sports will include boxing, wrestling, basketball, indoor track, handball, and squash. The maintenance program originally called for one of the five periods to be devoted to general conditioning, but a recent directive has changed this into a requirement of one hour of military drill, originally confined to the first term only.
Trainees in the maintenance program must undergo the Navy standard physical fitness test every eight weeks, and those who have fallen below the required standards must return to the basic course until they again measure up to par. This test is an important yardstick in the Navy physical training program, and it forms the basis for the comparative records on each individual trainee which the Physical Training Officer keeps. Lieutenant Avery has designed a record card kept on file for each man and at a glance it tells the story of the trainee's physical fitness when he first reported to Hanover, the successive stages of his physical development, and his classification as a swimmer. It indicates also those abilities in which a man is weakest and in which he needs special guidance and corrective work in order to round out his physical skills.
The Navy standard physical fitness test which discloses all this consists of five events designed to test strength, endurance, stamina, and agility, particularly in relation to the special needs of Navy personnel mentioned before. The events are squat-thrusts, testing speed, power, agility, and endurance; sit-ups, testing the abdominal muscles; push-ups, testing the pushing muscles of arms and shoulders; squatjumps, testing leg muscles; and pull-ups, testing the pulling muscles of arms and shoulders. Basing its scoring tables on the performances of a group of well-conditioned Navy men, the Navy has given from 1 to 100 points for the number of times each event is performed and has set 50 as an average and acceptable standard of physical fitness.
The over-all average of the Dartmouth V-12 Unit when it first reported to Hanover was 46.7 points, and in the tests given at the end of the first term this general average had risen to 59.8 points. In the individual events, the average number of times performed rose from 27.1 to 33.9 in the squat-thrusts; from 40.7 to 60.6 in the situps; from 21.8 to 29.6 in the push-ups; from 39.8 to 58 in the squat-jumps; and from 7.8 to 10.2 in the pull-ups. Some individuals were phenomenons in a particular event, one trainee doing 301 sit-ups when the Navy rates 205 perfect, and another doing 200 squat-jumps when 127 rates a score of 100. The top man with 27 pull-ups was viewed with awe by the trainee who managed one and the negotiator of 62 push-ups was just as much of a marvel in the eyes of the low man with ten.
THE SWIMMING PROGRAM
For obvious reasons the Navy gives paramount consideration to the swimming skills of its personnel, and not only because it may be the means of saving one's own life or sombody's elses but also because it is a great body-builder and developer of coordination and endurance, swimming bulks large in the Navy's physical training program. This activity and rope-climbing, another skill with practical emergency value, have received most emphasis at Dartmouth since the V-12 program started. The supervisor of V-12 swimming instruction in Spaulding Pool is Ensign S. C. Minor, who was formerly a national staff field representative for the American Red Cross, teaching and promoting first aid and water safety.
Special Navy swimming tests must be taken by all trainees, and until a man can pass the third-class test of entering the water feet first from a height of five feet and swimming 50 yards, he is classed as a non-swimmer The number of such nonswimmers when the Dartmouth Unit first reported was 190 men, or about to per cent of all trainees. By the end of the term this group had been reduced to 23 men, and the majority of these were able to swim 25 yards and were well on the way toward completing the third-class test.
The Navy's second-class swimmer, classified as one who "can take care of himself," must be able to enter the water from a height of ten feet, remain afloat for ten minutes, and during this time swim 100 yards using each of three strokes for a minimum distance of 25 yards. A Navy first-class swimmer, who is rated as one who not only can take care of himself but can render assistance to his shipmates, must be able to (1) demonstrate one "break" or release on a man his own size, get him in a carry position, and tow him 25 yards; (2) swim under water 25 yards, breaking the surface twice for breathing during this distance, at intervals of about 25 feet; (3) remove trousers in water and inflate for support; and (4) swim 220 yards using any strokes desired.
At the end of the first term, 1179 or 60% of Dartmouth trainees were designated swimmers first-class, 455 or 23% as swimmers second-class, and 297 or 15% as swimmers third-class. Efforts to increase the size of the first-class group continue, and along with fundamental instruction goes special training in abandoning ship and other ter skills that the modern sailor must have.
This excellent swimming record, the over all and steadily improving average of the Unit in physical fitness, and the intensive efforts of the physical training staff to achieve the Navy's objectives, all mean that a top-notch physical training program is in operation for the benefit of Dartmouth's V-12 trainees. A Commando course, running uphill through the old stone quarry east of Chase Field, has just been completed by Ross McKenney and his DOC helpers, and a new and rugged addition is about to be made to the Navy program. What with a 12-foot ditch, logs forming a great variety of impedimenta, and the old rock crusher ledge serving as a natural obstacle, Dartmouth trainees may have occasion to prefer devoutly the darksome, 6:05 calisthenics.
No mention has been made of intercollegiate athletics, but these form part of the V-12 physical training program, in keeping with the Navy's general advocacy of competitive athletics. Trainees in good standing, other than first-year first-term students, may participate in intercollegiate sports, and this participation may serve as a substitute for all physical training requirements other than swimming and the 20-minute morning program. Intramural athletics also are an important supplement to the prescribed physical fitness program, and during the final hour of the afternoon schedule large numbers of trainees engage in these on a voluntary basis. The College, through Mr. Delahanty and his assistants, maps out this side of the physical training program and the Navy has responsibility for carrying it out. Last term the intramural competition was run on the basis of companies and platoons, but for the winter the regular College plan of inter-dormitory competition will be adopted.
The V-12 physical training program at Dartmouth has many ramifications and the foregoing covers just the fundamentals and a few highlights. It is a huge program, involving some 1800 trainees a day, and is handled with an economy of manpower. The V-12 program may be basically academic, as was stated at the outset of this article, but it provides no chance for the bookworm who never stretches a muscle. The Navy has told the College to take full charge of classroom instruction while it tackles the job of building up the bodies and physical skills of its future officers. One can only say that, in Navy fashion, it is doing no half-way job.
A TOP COMBATIVE ACTIVITY during the second half of the basic period and also during the maintenance periods that follow is wrestling, demonstrated by this V-12 class.
LT. LESLIE C. AVERY, USNR, who as Physical Training Officer is in direct charge of the Navy V-12 fitness program at Dartmouth.
ABANDONING SHIP in life-jackets forms part of the thorough drilling in swimming which all trainees of the Dartmouth V-12 Unit receive. Swimming rates at the very top of the Navy physical training program and is a required activity for all hands every week.
A PRACTICAL NECESSITY for Navy officers and gobs alike is the ability to go up and down ropes in a hurry, and this figures prominently in the V-12 training program.
STRENGTHENING THE ALLIES with both pen and sword, Lt. Richard Brooks '39 USNR, author of "Elmer Squee" and ice sculpturist for Dartmouth Winter Carnival, illustrated the above slide for the U.S.O. The slide will be shown to Allied soldiers everywhere.
