The way they were

Members of the advanced infantry ROTC class of 1943 who returned to campus recently for their 50th reunion were, front row from left, Ray Beckham, Bill Trotter, L.W. Jordan, Lynn Smith, Ira McCullen, Dean Andrews, and Elliott Cowand; and, back row from left, Bill Nettles, Ben Conger, Robert Hammond, N.W. Carver Jr., Frank Gwin Jr., Clyde Hamer, Mark Hazard, Emmett H. "Mickey" Walker, James Robertson, and Joh Robert Arnold.

"I trained veterans in farming for five years and carried the mail on a rural route for 32 years. I've fed cattle, hunted and fished, run my mouth, and loafed for the last 42 years."

"I was in dairy, cotton, and beef production until 1978. I accidentally got into manufacturing in 1957 and sold and liquidated in 1985. For the past 13 years, I've been quite involved in a church bus ministry."

"I returned to State and graduated in 1947. I then returned to Amory and went into the grocery business with my father. My brother and I are still operating the store."

"I worked for five years for the Georgia Department of Agriculture. I'm now completing 23 years with the Fulton Federal Savings and Loan in Atlanta as vice president of loans."

"I graduated from Mississippi State in 1947 and returned to Holly Ridge to begin farming. After serving in Korea, I returned home and married. I've been growing cotton and raising children for 40 years, and now I'm raising grandchildren."

Before all of that and before their paths diverged, they were college kids. Cokes were a nickel, Mrs. Miniver had just won an Oscar as best motion picture of the previous year, and James Cagney had been named best actor for his role in Yankee Doodle Dandy. If you turned on a radio, it's likely Glenn Miller would be belting out "Chattanooga Choo Choo" on his trombone or his band would be working through the haunting strains of "Moonlight Serenade."

There were 30 of them, and due to inexorable events, they were inseparable for a time. Later, many of them were back in college, but not together as they had been, and none of them was ever a kid again.

In December 1942, they were enrolled in the advanced infantry ROTC class at Mississippi State College.

Eight thousand miles away, an allied force under Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower struck at French North Africa, which was governed by a French puppet regime under German control. Eisenhower broke the regime's defenses and pressed forward. In February 1943, American tanks met Rommel's Afrika Korps at Kasserine Pass in the desert south of Tunis.

In order to take advanced ROTC, the infantry class at Mississippi State was told it would have to enlist in the Army, with the promise that the members would stay in school until they graduated. One semester later, they were called to active duty as a group and ordered to report to Camp Shelby at Hattiesburg, where they were inducted into the Regular Army. From there, they went to Fort McClellan, Ala., for basic training.

"While taking basic training, we were in the company of other ROTC students from throughout the United States," says L.W. Jordan, a member of the class who now lives in Kosciusko. "There were students there from The Citadel, Virginia Military Institute, Georgia Tech, and many other schools."

As air attacks against Germany continued and the Russians slowly pushed the Germans back from the gates of Stalingrad, the Allies invaded Sicily from Africa. In September 1943, they advanced to the Italian mainland.

That fall, the ROTC group returned--in uniform--to the Mississippi State campus and completed another semester of college work before being sent to Infantry Officers Candidate School at Fort Benning, Ga. Of the original group, about 15 graduated from Infantry OCS and were commissioned as second lieutenants. Most were sent to Camp Gruber, Okla., with the 42nd Infantry Division.

On June 6, 1944, the largest invasion force in history--the Allied Expeditionary Force--landed at Normandy in northern France and began the long and costly process of driving the Germans out of Paris and back across the Rhine River.

"Several of our newly commissioned officers were sent as replacement officers to other units and some were sent overseas as replacement officers in combat," remembers Jordan, who is retired from the furniture business and raises horses on his farm. "Later, the 42nd Infantry was sent to the European Theater, where they were soon in combat."

By fall 1944, most of the young men who less than a year earlier had been in school at Mississippi State were in France, Belgium, Austria, and Germany. They were new to combat, but the period of their service in Europe saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

The Allies liberated Paris in August 1944, about the time many of the members of the Class of '43 were arriving in Europe. They were just in time to help out with the push toward Germany. In December, the Germans launched a counterattack against the center of the Allied line in the Ardennes Forest. The offensive failed, but the Battle of the Bulge cost the United States 77,000 casualties and delayed Eisenhower's advance. By late January 1945, the old line had been reestablished, and the Allies drove forward to the Rhine, crossing the river into Germany on March 7. With the Russians moving toward Berlin from the west, the end was in sight. In April, Adolph Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin air raid shelter, and Germany surrendered on May 8.

Two members of the ROTC group, Maury Box of Corinth and James Tucker of Hamilton, were killed in combat.

Three others--Frank Gwin Jr. of Tchula, Homer C. McNamara of Dunwoody, Ga., and John Robert Cooley, now deceased--were prisoners of war.

After their discharge from active duty, many of the members of the Class of '43 returned to Mississippi State College and earned degrees.

Cokes were still a nickel and Ray Milland won an Academy Award for his role in The Lost Weekend, a movie whose title could stand as a poignant symbol of the era. The world had changed in many ways, and had changed forever.

They graduated in '46, some in '47, some in '48. Many of them remained in the military reserves or the National Guard, and many returned to active duty during the Korean War a few years later.

They went on to become engineers, businessmen, farmers. They married and had children and then grandchildren. Some have retired, while others have hardly slowed down.

They still have occasion to get together formally and informally.

"This group is very close," Jordan said. "We have had some great times and some bad times together."

Last April, 17 of them came back to Mississippi State for one of the great times--the 50th anniversary of their days in school together. They shared old stories and new ones, great and bad, and remembered the ones who weren't there.

At Homecoming 1993, they met again. One of their own, Emmett H. "Mickey" Walker of Jackson, was honored in a campus ceremony as the Outstanding Honor ROTC Graduate. After being discharged from active duty in 1946, Walker was recalled during the Korean War. He remained in the Army Reserves, served at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., for a decade, and retired in 1986 as a lieutenant general.

In a recent phone call to Jordan, we asked if there was anything we were overlooking in the story.

"We were the last advanced infantry ROTC class from Mississippi State during World War II," he said.

Then he hesitated a moment and added, "You need to put something in the story about Col. Randolph, who was the professor of military science and tactics. He was very well known and well thought of. George N. Randolph . . . you could look him up in some of the old Reveilles. And the instructor was 1st Lt. W.L. "Jack" Maxey Jr. He's still living. He had graduated from State and was back there on active duty at the time. The other one was a fellow by the name of Small--1st Lt. James B. Small. He was a State graduate, too, and was one of our infantry instructors. They were good men."

There you go, Mr. Jordan. They're in here.