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HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?

Do you remember how hot it was? We began arriving in July and it was pretty bad; a terrible dead weight of heat pushing down all day and most of the night. The quarters were all lined up in little rows and the first impulse was, "Oh boy, this is great; bet they'll be hotter than sin!" And they were hot but not so bad as we had thought.

The furniture was spread all over the place, (if it had arrived at all) and we spent days sorting and washing (or helping the Little Woman). D'you remember we'd go to Austin Hall a dozen times a day "to get the mail", or "check the bulletin board" or "just to see what's cooking". The real reason was because it was cool there and you could meet an old soldierin' partner, or a classmate at the Point or at Flying School, or a lad you'd sweated with in New Guinea or frozen with in Italy. You could talk a little and be cool doing it. Remember how envious the "Chief of Staff" was when you came home and told her about the Air Conditioning? They were great days getting settled.

And then on the 22d of August (that would be 1949 as I figure it) they convened the class. We rolled into that magnificent classroom (a later speaker called it "Byzantine Luxury") and looked for likely places to sit and met some old friends and shook hands with new ones. And then the Commanding General and the Commandant and the Faculty entered and, while you stood at attention, you thought, "Well, here we go; another year of school. Hope it's a good one."

General Kenney started it off. A short talk, right to the point. Very concise. Humorous too but no holds barred and no punches pulled. He laid it on the line. Glad to see us, a compliment to us to be there. (And so it was). Our future would be different from now on and this year we'd see and hear and learn a lot. Much would be expected of us from now on. It was a good talk; sounded just like him and made you feel good to be there. And so the course was launched.

You remember the studies of course. "Oral Communication" and "Problem Solving" were two for the book. And we got involved in Semantics and "by-passing" and the "pragmatic" view. Someone said recently we probably hadn't learned anything really new to us all year except maybe how to solve a problem. And really, when you stop to think about it, if we learned that well, the course paid off.

At any rate the seminars were formed and reformed with each new study and the business of meeting new people and new problems progressed. The curriculum of the College was divided into three portions. The first portion was the "Academic" which included the two studies above; followed by the Military Science Phase and then the Planning or Application Phase. Looking back it seems to us to have been well conceived.