Carroll H. Dunn
Q ..
And because of your major field, that sort
A
That tended to put me in the engineers. My going into the Army revolved around the
fact that in 1936,
the flood on the Ohio River of that year, Congress in its civil
works legislation passed a bill to enlarge the officer corps of the Corps of
Engineers--as I remember it-by 108 officers. My memory is that the number of
officers already in the Corps in midyear 1936 was on the order of 600 to 700. In
passing this legislation, my understanding is that Congress felt not only that there was
a need for additional Corps
but it was also desirable that some of them have
an engineering background in civil life. So they set up this program for the enlargement
and specified that 72 of the 108 would be engineers who had engineer degrees in civil
life. The remaining 36 would come from increased quotas for West Point graduates.
It was established that 72 would be taken in increments. The first increment, I believe,
of 18, was commissioned in February 1937, the second increment in September 1937,
and the third increment of 36 was taken in 1 July 193 8. During my senior year (in late
1937 or early 193 the senior engineer officer with the ROTC at Illinois announced
that this opportunity was available and strongly encouraged me to apply. The
encouragement was so strong that, more to get him off my back than anything else, I
did submit an application as did one other officer at Illinois. As I remember, in January
or February of 1938 the application went in. This involved both a physical exam and
a professional exam. The professional exam was in two parts, one verbal before a board
of officers and the other a written examination. There was also a provision that, if I met
certain criteria, I could accept a fixed grade on the written portion of the exam and be
exempt from the actual examination.
The question was whether there would be enough people taking the exam and making
a higher grade score so that there wouldn't be any vacancies left if I took the
exemption. That was the risk that I took. My understanding is that there were about
1,800 nationwide who took the examination for the 36 vacancies. The criteria for
exemption, as I remember, was to be in the upper 10 percent of one's class, to be
recommended by both the Dean of Engineering and the senior engineer ROTC officer,
and possibly grades or activities. Anyway, I chose the exemption route. Frankly, part
of the reason was that I still wasn't certain that I really wanted a commission in the
Army, but I was going ahead because of the strong urging of the Professor of Military
Science and. Tactics.
At the same time I had been fortunate in job interviews. Jobs were still scarce in1938.
I had interviews with Caterpillar Tractor Company, General Electric, and International
Harvester. I remember at least those three; there were possibly others. Actually, I had
accepted a job with the Caterpillar Tractor Company to go to work on the 5th of July
1938 in an outstanding program. I would be an engineer trainee at the magnificent
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