College in a Dairy Town
Oshkosh, Wisconsin · April–June 1943
Classes at Oshkosh State Teachers College began in the first days of April. Geography and mathematics in the morning. An hour of physical training. An hour of drill. Medical Aid in the afternoon. A study hall where instructors sat ready to work a problem. The 96th College Training Detachment had stopped being a holding camp and become a school.
Dear sister & John, Was glad to get your letter this morning. We started our school this morning and it is going to be pretty easy I think. It will take all our time though to get our assignments up for the next day. I went to Geography & Math. This morning, we were also issued some Physical training clothes & tennis shoes this morning. We will have an hour P.T. every morning. We also drill an hour every afternoon. We have a class in Medical Aid every afternoon & have a study period where instructors will answer & help us with our problems. […] I went to a church Social party Sat nite. The people are all so nice to us. […] I went to the Methodist Church for S.S. and preaching. […] I went up town with two other boys and we met six high school girls who showed us around town. Lots & lots of love Austin
Historical note — the 96th College Training Detachment at worka/c/c Austin H. Winn 96th College Training Detachment (aircrew) Sqdn. C - Flight 7/1 Oshkosh, WisconsinCollege faculty taught the books. Army officers ran the rest. A typical CTD week mixed mathematics, physics, English, history, geography, civil air regulations, medical aid, drill, and a daily hour of calisthenics. Later months added meteorology, electricity, and plane identification. Fail the work and a man left aircrew for ground duty as an ordinary private. Austin told his mother the passing mark was 70. Pay while in school was about $50 a month; flying pay of $75 waited for later.
The town treated the first cadets as guests. Church socials, Sunday dinners, skating parties, and a Social Center with a bowling alley filled the weekends until study hall closed the evenings. Austin’s room was a stripped classroom: four double-deck bunks, eight men, a radio. Guard duty still came around. On Easter night, 25 April 1943, he walked a post from 2:00 to 4:00 a.m.
Historical note — squadron letters and a stubborn “Pvt.”As a class moved through the program it changed squadron letters — C, then D, then E — and flight numbers. By early May the envelopes read Squadron 52, Flight 1. A sergeant ordered the men to put Pvt. back on the mail. Austin was clear about what that meant: “Haven’t had any decrease in rank but the Sergeant here just wanted to act smart.” They were still aviation-cadet candidates. The Army just wanted the cheaper enlisted line on the payroll until flying began.
The work stacked up. A year’s geometry in four weeks. Then solid geometry. Then spherical geometry and logarithms. Physics ran from heat and light into magnetism and electricity. Meteorology meant learning to read a teletype weather sequence — ceiling, visibility, dew point, altimeter setting — the same coded line a pilot would hear before takeoff. Physical-fitness tests came every four weeks: chin-ups, sit-ups, a 300-yard shuttle. He improved on all three.
From Cherry the letters brought cotton chopping, a burned tractor, Hatchie water, and the question of whether the Mississippi was over Dunavant’s farm. Austin asked for snapshots of “good Tennessee land.” The boys in his room, he said, knew Sergeant York’s hills and rocks from the picture show and could not imagine level fields.
Historical note — spring 1943, at home and in the warTUNIS AND BIZERTE FALL — AXIS SURRENDERS IN AFRICA
On 7 May 1943 Allied troops took Tunis and Bizerte. On 13 May the last Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. About a quarter of a million German and Italian soldiers went into the bag. Austin heard the news in the barracks and wrote, “Have they heard since they cleaned up in North Africa?” On 19 May, while he was in study hall, Churchill addressed Congress. On the 24th he noted doughboys “winding up the Japs on some of the Aleutian Islands” — the fight for Attu, which ended 29 May.
Decoration Day, 30 May, the 96th marched with the Wisconsin State Guard, the Civil Air Patrol, the American Legion, and the police to a cemetery on the Fox River. Rain caught them at the speeches. That same letter he sketched the pipeline as he then understood it: three more weeks of class, then flying at Oshkosh, then a classification center at Nashville, San Antonio, or “San Juan,” then preflight, primary, and advanced. He had the stations slightly wrong and the week-counts too short. The West Coast pipeline would correct him soon enough.
Flying began the third week of June. On the 21st he went to the airport for the first time. The instructor walked him around the airplane. There were not enough parachutes that day. On the 22nd he was in the air.
Hello Folks, I'm back in the ground again and can't wait till tomorrow comes. Today in the hour I was up & flew the ship alone & landed & took off 3 times alone. The instructor was with me but I handled the plane. Really is a thrill & everything looks so differently from up above. There are lots of things to think about while in the air. It felt just as safe running the aeroplane as I would driving our tractor. It runs about the same as a John Deere tell John except that you have a stick to make it lean on its side by pushing sideways & makes it go either up or down by pushing it forward & back. You work the rudder with your feet the same as brakes on our tractor. The other boys in my room have all been up but none have landed or took off. […] There have been no accidents at all since this program has been going on here. Love Austin
Historical note — first hours in the airCollege Training Detachments contracted with local civilian operators for a few hours of light-plane indoctrination — enough to show a man the stick, the rudder, and the ground from a thousand feet, not enough to pin wings on him. The field at Oshkosh was the municipal airport on Lake Winnebago. Austin’s comparison to a John Deere was the right one: a slow, docile trainer, throttle and stick, feet on the rudder bar. Dual instruction first. Solo would wait for primary school.
By 24 June he was flying figure-eights and rectangular courses. A check pilot told him to use more rudder in his turns. Jack wrote from somewhere that he was working on the film Guadalcanal Diary; the letter arrived censored. On the last day of June the weather over the lake was cool enough that Austin wanted a coat in the cockpit.