Freshman on the Commando Course at Springfield College (ca. 1942)
Description:
This black and white photograph shows freshman training on the Commando Course at Springfield College built by the students themselves (ca. 1942). A student is jumping off the pile of logs. Standing beside the obstacle is Charles E. Weckwerth supervising with his assistant Howard McMullen. The wall to Pratt Field is in the background. There is a bit of text on the back of the photograph. Charles E. Wecworth, director of recreation and camping for the college, carefully supervised freshman training on the Commando Course. Leslie J. Judd adapted the course from one at the pre-flight school at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Built entirely by freshman volunteers, the ten-obstacle course took full advantage of the natural terrain on the shores of Lake Massasoit. The course, which starts and finishes in the rear of Woods Hall, includes uneven ground, a sand pit, steep hills, embankments, a vaulting fence, log pile, a series of “under and over” obstacles, a “roof run” (an inverted "v" made of large logs), a maze, and an eleven-foot water jump. The pit was dug by the freshmen at lake level so that it would always be filled with four feet of water by natural seepage. Furthermore, the cement foundations of the former ice-house, which burned down some years before, provided ready-made six and eight-foot scaling walls. Conditioning on the commando course was obligatory for the entire freshman class and was used by upperclassmen in their military track program.
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