The First World War changed the course of history and — for a time — the UW’s mission. To help with the war effort, the campus shifted much of its focus to educating and training future soldiers. “When the war was declared … there was not an instant’s hesitation in the decision of the faculty that the University should participate in carrying the war to a successful conclusion,” UW President Charles Van Hise wrote in the Wisconsin Alumni Magazine in November 1917. Read the related article, “The Great War at Home.”
UW President Charles Van Hise gives a convocation address titled “What Does War Mean to Me?” before a capacity crowd at the Stock Pavilion in April 1917. UW Archives S05419
By 1918, when the federal government established the Student Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C), the UW had joined hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities in offering both vocational and military training to students. More than 2,000 students at the UW registered for the program during the first week of the fall semester. UW Archives S05389
A group of World War I-era student cadets bounces a new recruit in the air during an initiation ritual. “The University is reorganized on a war basis and is now in full operation as a military institution so far as the S.A.T.C. students are concerned,” acting UW President E.A. Birge said of the Student Army Training Corps in a talk to alumni in Chicago in 1918. UW Archives S05412
Several university cadets participate in a machine-gun drill as part of their military training. In 1917, the U.S. War Department accepted the UW’s application to establish an ROTC infantry unit on campus, provided there was compulsory training for all physically fit male students during their freshman and sophomore years. Students could then elect to participate in the advanced course their junior and senior years, which would lead to a military commission. UW Archives S05387
The UW agreed to train 400 volunteer soldiers from Iowa in the construction and repair of airplane parts. In April 1918, the men moved into the Red Gym, which was also the home court for the Badger men’s basketball team. The score from its last home game of the 1917–18 season — played March 6, 1918 — is visible in the background. UW Archives UW.VocationalSection.p.0010
A group of student soldiers demonstrates gas masks. World War I was the first war to involve poison gas and UW researchers studied chemical warfare in the basement of Science Hall — an effort that was known as “the gas project.” In February 1918, the Wisconsin Alumni Magazine reported that UW scientists “have been working night and day to test the effects of gases and to devise automatic apparatus for detection of gases.” UW Archives S05411
“The war has come to Wisconsin and has profoundly modified our daily life and our daily work,” UW President E.A. Birge said in his talk to Chicago alumni. Every department offered classes geared toward war service, including instruction for telegraphers, wireless operators, aviation engineers, sanitary engineers, army doctors, and poison gas experts. There were also courses to train quartermasters, nurses, relief workers, county farm and home agents, and special war and reconstruction workers. UW Archives S06376
Radio telegraphers work in the “field” on Bascom Hill. President Birge worried about the long-term effects of the university turning itself over to the war effort. “The fundamental question for the university of the future is whether the University will return to its former condition when peace comes or whether the vocational and technical work will continue to predominate,” he said in 1918. “The war has shown the country the value of this work as never before, and there will be a strong pressure to over-emphasize it at the expense of liberal studies.” UW Archives UW.VocationalSection.p.0025
An illustration of a soldier returning to his alma mater from the battlefields of France appeared in the 1920 Badger yearbook. During World War 1, the university sent thousands of officers to fight in Europe. Not all came home: more than 100 alumni died in the effort. UW Archives S05415
Published in the Spring 2017 issue
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