John W. Morris
A:
I really never thought I'd make the Corps of Engineers until the last weeks of my first-class
[senior] program. Following an average first year, each following year got significantly better
academically.
At the end of the third academic year [January
I was somewhere around 200th in my class
of over
too low for the Corps.
I was a fairly good student in sciences, and in the last year they loaded up on the technical stuff.
Well, as fate would have it, I improved my position a great deal in the last six months.
Q:
Were you really trying for an engineer commission?
A:
No, I really was not. I wanted to be a good cadet and officer. I would have been satisfied with the
artillery or armor. As you recall, I chose artillery branch training.
A couple of days before the branch selection, a professor came to see me and told me my class
standing would be quite a bit better than I might have thought and I would probably have a
chance to choose engineers. The professor was an engineer and indicated he would like me to go
into the engineers.
My roommate, Dirkes, who was so smart, knew all along he was going to be an engineer. He
knew from the beginning what he wanted. Phillips thought he would not have a choice. He'd have
ed out
to take what was left by the time they got to him, but he would have liked artillery. It
that Frank got the engineers and Jim got the artillery because his grades had improved also Frank
was working on my situation, and he told me I should probably take the engineers.
Q:
Who was the professor?
I don't remember his name. I could probably find out. He was a major. Nevertheless, I ta ked to
A:
quite a few people and thought I'd rather be a smart artilleryman than a dumb engineer among
my peer group. That was the big problem. Finally, I thought, "Okay, I like science. I like math.
I've always been interested in building things. So I'm going to do it." When my time came to
choose, there were five or six engineers slots left, so I took engineers.
I became a dumb engineer, relatively speaking. Years later, General [Ernie] Graves made a study
of the class standing of the West Point engineers who became three-star generals. They were
I was an exception to the rule. Graves, of course, is a brilliant man.
pretty high, except for
He had one of the highest academic averages ever achieved at West Point.
I never forgot my weakness in English. I worked hard after I graduated, learning how to write,
how to talk, how to read quickly. I think the fact that I was poor in language caused me over the
years to become better. I have always been a little bit self-conscious about it, so I have probably
worked on it more than most people.
Anyhow, I really was down in the pile. There's no question about that. I think I was 140 in my
class of about 5 16 graduates. Most of the graduates who get to be engineer generals-well, you
can go back and look-they're probably all in the top 20 or 30. You probably cannot find another
Chief of Engineers as far down the list as I was.
Q:
After you left West Point, did you keep thinking about your standing?
A
I never thought about it the rest of my life, except on an occasion like this interview.
The other thing, though, after our graduation there were so many people in the Army that a West
Pointer was seldom seen. At first I went to a training center at
Field, Florida, the 3d
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