Jim Bradshaw: St. Landry Jesuit school signed up to train doughboys

It’s pretty well known that during World War II SLI president Joel Fletcher and academic vice president Joseph Riehl persuaded the Navy to locate V-12 and V-5 officer training programs at the Lafayette school.
Part of the reason we remember those programs is because Alvin Dark and other All-Americans who transferred to the little school gave the future UL Lafayette a phenomenal football team that won the first Oil Bowl in 1943.
It’s less well known that the Jesuit’s St. Charles College in Grand Coteau attempted a similar program during the first World War.
Father M. A. Grace announced in September 1918 that more than 100 young men could be trained in a Student Army Corps that year, and that “those who show the proper qualifications will be transferred either to the regular army or to an officers training school.”
Father Grace said St. Charles was one of 300 schools across the country being considered and that the training would be “personally supervised by a United States army officer.”
The Opelousas Star-Express said only “the most up-to-date colleges” had the training program, and “St. Charles, in following the example of the big universities, is but keeping with the tradition of remaining in the front ranks of the progressive colleges of the South.”
The newspaper said the program was another example of the “patriotism and love of country” shown by the school that “already has furnished three chaplains and … has now in the service, as officers and enlisted men, quite a large number of its best members of the alumni association.”
It was also a boon to the school, since the government paid tuition and room and board for the students, provided them with uniforms and equipment, and paid each student the equivalent of an army private’s salary — $30 a month (about $560 today).
The chances for advancement were also pretty good. Entry into the war meant the U.S. needed “hundreds of thousands of officers,” the Star-Progress pointed out, and supplying that demand was “one of the most serious problems that the War Department has had to face.”
The newspaper noted another incentive: “Those college students and high school graduates who will not take advantage of this generous offer of the War Department will of course be drafted into the national army as privates.”
Requirements for a commission were “very stringent” and education was “an absolute requisite,” the newspaper said. “The schools the War Department has selected [are] of an advanced standard.”
The curriculum for students in the army corps was to be “strictly military” and was “carefully mapped out by the War Department.” Students received 42 hours of “essential and allied subjects,” while also performing military drill for 11 hours per week.
Father Grace called upon “the old boys to flock back to St. Charles to make the one hundred required for the S.A.T.C. unit,” but it appears that not enough of them showed up.
When the 1919 term began, St. Charles College was pronounced “a genuine military school,” by the newspaper, but that was because of a new ROTC program. All students were to get basic military training, but not on the scale of a Student Army Training Corps.
There would be no $30 a month, no paid tuition, and no great athletes attracted to the campus — though it was announced that year that St. Charles would become the first college in the South to have its own golf course.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.