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LIEUTENANT GEORGE GRIMES, Ex-'18
Just to help out Uncle Sam as efficiently as possible in the war that was finally recognized in April of last year, some three or four hundred of the students and alumni of Nebraska University entered the reserve officers' training camps at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. For three months they toiled in intensive training as privates in the ranks, the first camp men in the heat-ridden, mosquito-bitten summer months; the second camp men in the cold-gripped autumn.
Nearly every Cornhusker who began the training came out a commissioned officer. Some of them are already in France. The rest will be found in nearly every western national army cantonment or national guard encampment, training the enlisted men whom they will later lead over the top.
The record for thoroughness, for ability and for pep and enthusiasm made by Nebraskans at Fort Snelling, in competition with students of rival universities of Minnesota, the two Dakotas and Iowa, added another splendid page to the war history of the university, begun during the war with Spain. And when in future Nebraskans gather to talk over the old college days, memory will often turn to that training period at Snelling, which marked the end and was yet a part of the men's university career.
On a high bluff overlooking the junction of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, between the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Fort Snelling was a fitting place for a training camp. A long avenue of gray brick barracks housed the students. The great military reservation was a beautiful spot, and he was lacking in imagination indeed who did not thrill at the early morning walks through the woods to the rifle range. Most of Minnesota's early history centers about the fort. All this had a part in the life of the men.
That life will be remembered as the period of hardest work for most of them. After an hour of physical exercise, an hour of bayonet combat, four or five hours of company drill, a practice march under the weight of the full pack for an hour and a half, two hours of conference, a period of sketching, two or three hours of study, the instructor might call it a day.
To any but a doughboy, those words in the paragraph above are just so many words. But to the reserve officer they are far more apt to be visualized into blistered feet, the soreness of soft muscles, a keen appetite for army chow and sound and dreamless sleep at the end of--often--a hell of a day.
Ask any of these X Cornhuskers who is now wearing the black and gold hat cord how he liked the training, which is the usual question, and he will say that it was absolutely the finest thing he had ever been into. It was all day in the open air, it was development of the body, it was keen mental work, and it was preparation for the big adventure.
The first introduction to the army was the issue of the uniform, and with it came the feeling of pride that only the man in some branch of the service can feel. Next came the rifle and bayonet, the pack and haversack, the blankets, the shelter half and the meat, bacon and condiment cans and canteen. The rookie soon learned to drape these on his back so that the weight could be borne with comfort.
Then followed books, one after the other, of the technical and confidential military publications in which, each night, the students
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Commencement at Ft. Snelling, June, 1917
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