1933
It is with the deepest regret and sorrow that Dartmouth men have received the news of President Hopkins' resignation. All are mindful of the magnitude of his achievement in bringing the College through two world wars and the unsettled period of the twenties and thirties with a steadily expanding plant, enlarged resources, an ever growing body of loyal alumni, and with an endowment that has been enriched under his leadership in countless intangible as well as tangible ways. He has given us vision, leadership, and human wisdom in such generous measure that it is hard for us to think of Dartmouth without his strong and steady hand at the helm. As he retires he has our profound gratitude and our hope that he may enjoy many years of good health and the peace and happiness that he has so richly earned.
When John Sloan Dickey '29 takes over the responsibilities of the Presidency on November 1 we know that he will have the wholeparted support and best wishes of all Dartmouth men.
Most of our news this month is of the preatom bomb and pre-VJ Day variety, but not, we trust, without interest for that reason. Most of the lads who have been fighting "round the girdled earth" are still far from home, and some of them have found a little more time recently to let us know what they've been up to. A couple of items reached us almost simultaneously about recently promoted Lt. Bob Sands. One, relayed through Worthington, who by the way was stationed on Saipan with his Marine flying outfit preparing for a strike at Japan when he wrote, told of Bob's two-year hitch in India and Burma and prophesied that he could see at least another year of fighting the Japs in that area. A second, and somewhat fuller account, reached us from the west coast in the next mail. This one quoted Bob as having written:
It grieves me to learn that "no one seems to know what has happened to you." Well, it shouldn't have happened to a dog, but for the record here I am in India. It has been two and a half years since I left California at the invitation of the government, so it really is not surprising that some of my contacts are in need of repair. You deserve more of a letter than I am in a position to write at present but I can give you a brief outline of my career out here. Last year I was a supply officer with the First Air Command, making trips into Burma with mules and other supplies, landing behind Jap lines at night and sweating to get out before dawn. I'm working with them again this year, but don't know any more than what I read in "Terry and the Pirates," sent from home.
Harvey Hopkins Jr. has been promoted to Lieutenant, USNR. He has been serving with the Navy Air Arm of the Atlantic Fleet, after having been stationed previously in Newfoundland and England with a headquarters squadron.
Here is one post-atom bomb item from Capt. DeHart Krans, who had managed pretty successfully to keep everybody in the dark about himself all through the war up to that point. After a few choice insults in the best Kransian manner, which we shall spare you, he goes on to say:
I still keep bumping into "Farmer" Kirkham everywhere I go in the Pacific. He has a new love. He's given up mosquitoes and taken up schistosomes. There's something funny about that guy. He wades around in puddles that are marked off limits because of the deadly little flukes and apparently they refuse to bite him. I'd love to examine his liver post-mortem just to satisfy myself that he didn't have a few flukes concealed on his person. John Pringle, of an air-force weather squadron, sends me occasional weather reports from Australia. He reports the beer is still 10-15 degrees warmer than in the U. S. As for me still a medic with the Amphibian Engineers, and will soon complete my thirtieth month in these parts. It looks as though the atomic bomb may make us amphibians obsolete and superfluous.
Dick Rocker received a battlefield commission while serving in Italy with the 10th Mountain Division. He was also awarded the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantry Badge, and the European Theater Ribbon with two battle stars. At the end of the war he was serving as assistant battalion staff officer in the 87th Mountain Regiment. The following is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to Sam Black some months ago:
From the time we landed in Italy until the end of things here we were permanently on the front; we spearheaded every aggressive action the Allied armies made in our sector; we were the first division to crash through the Apennines and the German defenses there; the first to race, on foot, across the Po Valley; the first to cross the Po; the first to make the mountains beyond—and I can tell you it wasn't easy. The Germans had twenty-nine of their best divisions in Italy, they had millions of tons of supplies, and they had for their defenses a terrific, endless mountain wall. I mention these things so proudly because the terrific, ceaseless battle of our troops in Italy has never had the newspaper space it deserves, from Salerno to today; because no one at home seems to conceive of the fact that blood and sweat sacrificed in Italy or some other heartbreaking, unheralded part of the globe is just as nobly shed as that that drenched France and Germany, which was better sung; because the 87th Mountain Infantry was, and still is, a peculiarly Dartmouth organization with at one time probably two hundred Dartmouth men among its members; and because I have seen these men, and other friends of three years standing, shapelessly dying on a hundred unremembered hills of endless Italy. Yes, our Dartmouth men too. There have been many, too many. I am one of less than 30 per cent of the Division who has weathered the last four months. By the sad process of elimination not so much the elimination of officers as of key noncoms who should have rated over me—l was given a battlefield commission, so I have finally become an officer in spite of myself.
Secretary, 20 Valley Rd., Hanover, N. H.
Treasurer, 2812 Grant Bldg., Pittsburgh 19, Pa.
