1933
Dipping into our mailbag this month we come up with plenty of evidence that "Round the girdled earth ..."is no empty phrase.
Lt. Al Rienzo of the 83rd Division, 9th Army, acting as '33's official representative, escorted Prime Minister Churchill across the Rhine. An INS photo shows Al and Winston, flanked on either side by other such newsworthy fellows as General Simpson, Major General Anderson, and Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery.
From the other side of the world, a letter recently from Lt. John Rockwell, who'd had us guessing as to his whereabouts ever since he and Phyl visited us in Hanover last summer. At that time John had just returned from Atlantic duty. He writes:
As you may remember I was navigator on a 2200-ton destroyer at the time. Not very long after seeing you we came out here to the Pacific. In the Fall, when the skipper of my ship was made commander of the other division in our squadron, he took me with him as staff officer, a job which I have been in ever since. I wish I could send you long, interesting descriptions of things out here, but I can't. ..... We were in part of the Leyte operation and all of the Mindoro and Lingayen affairs. They are far enough in the past to be mentioned. Since then we have been, generally, in the most interesting things going and have seen more action in the relatively few months we have been here than some of the ships that are, comparatively, oldtimers in the Pacific. We even had a small operation just for our division that was one of the hottest engagements anyone has had I like my job, find it very interesting and, as well as I can be, am glad to be where I am. It is platitudinous to remark, but amazing to realize what changes the war has made in what we are doing. When I was first assigned to duty in the District Legal Office at Great Lakes over three years ago I barely hoped that I might, possibly, some day get to sea. It just didn't seem within the realm of possibility that I'd ever stand top deck watches on a new destroyer in a combat area. And that ain't nothin' compared to what some of the boys have done This time of year I generally look forward to the class newsletters. I hope someone back home will keep a file of them so I can see them some day. My contribution to the Alumni Fund is enclosed. I really get a kick out of contributing to it • each year. It's a tangible expression of the feeling I have for Dartmouth, the only one most of us can make these days A couple of months ago I was having a beer at an Officers Club, and went through that "Don't I know you?" business with a Lt. (jg). It was Bill McCombs, who was then (and still is as far as I know) Armed Guard Officer on a merchant ship contracted to the Navy and carrying very important cargos. He had some wonderful tales to tell of some Australian ports and we had a good chat for an hour or so.
Coming back to this hemisphere, we invite '33s in and around Chicago to attend the ordination o£ Ted Purcell, S. J. on June 13 at West Baden College, located in the southern Indiana hills at West Baden Springs. The following Sunday, June 17, Ted will offer his first solemn Mass at Evanston. He writes that any Dartmouth men in the vicinity of either place will be most welcome to attend. You will be interested in the following excerpt from his letter:
Well, it's been nine long years of .study, study, and more study most of the time. First I discovered for myself this neo-Thomist school of philosophy that Maritain and Adler are always talking about. Then I taught Economics and French for a year. Now I'm finding out that Thomist theology is neither dusty, medieval, nor anti-scientific as I had always suspected any kind of "theology" of being. Then this last year before ordination I've learned how to say Mass, baptize babies, marry adults, confess anybody who wants to come in, give Extreme Unction to the dying and bury the dead. That about runs through the gamut, I guess This summer I expect to be an auxiliary army chaplain at some of the Indiana prison camps and hospital posts. And then if the war last on in the Far East I might get in there as a chaplain yet. I'm certainly hoping so Hope to get up to Hanover after the war. Maybe for our 15th. Our hills down here are beautiful enough—but I'd really like to tramp some of those DOC trails once again.
Ted Allen's streak of bad luck continues. Twice wounded, twice returned to action in Italy, Ted has been laid up now for several months with complications following jaundice that have the medics buffaloed. Laura writes that he is very lame.
Li. Comdr. Vinny Young, who, as previously reported, spent a couple of years of this war as a medic aboard destroyers (six months in the Atlantic, seventeen months in the Pacific) has finally come to roost in the Navy's marble palace of medicine, the Medical Center at Bethesda. He's doing Proctology, whatever that is, but it must be something special because it makes him one of the few Lieutenant Commanders who rate the rank of Rear Admiral. In spite of his work and/or his rank Vinny says that he does occasionally look at people's faces, but that in all these years the only '33s he's seen were Loppy Rich, BillKing, Jim Pimper, and Allen Jacques.
Recent news o£ our men in the Pacific included word that Lt. (jg) Forrie Branch is in the Philippines. Major Ed Hansis is also there, after having spent fourteen months in New Guinea and eighteen months in Australia. Sgt. Atwood Levensaler is with a Coast Artillery outfit, also in the Philippines, spending some of his time editing his battalion's newspaper. Way stations for At included New Caledonia and the Fijis. Cpl. Don Seixas was among those present at a meeting of the Dartmouth Club of Tinimanhat (Tinian) at the end of March. The eighteen Dartmouth men gathered together on that occasion wound up the evening by sending a fine letter to Prexy and forwarding $lBO. to the Alumni Fund, to be a gift to the College in addition to the gifts they made individually. Lt. Page Worthington, USMCR, will serve with the first allMarine Aircraft Carrier Group. He is adjutant in a fighter squadron now in training in Santa Barbara, Calif. Although Marine flyers have served aboard Navy carriers in the past, and are doing so today, this will be the first time the Corps has operated from its own carriers.
Service promotions recently reported: Lt. Col.James J. Doherty, Lt. Col. Robert M. Estes,Major Howard J. Farmer, Major Summer L. Rittenberg, Captain Gilbert IF. Beebe, Capt. Douglas W. Alden, Capt. Robert E. Bums, Capt. A.Jacques Mohr, Lt. (jg) Gail G. Geddes, 2nd Lt.Bertram R. Mudge.
ORDAINED A PRIEST on June 13, Rev. Theodore V. Purcell '33, S. J., will celebrate his first Mass in Evanston, 111., on June 17.
Secretary> 20 Valley Rd., Hanover, N. H. Treasurer, 2812 Grant Bldg., Pittsburgh 19, Pa.
