Drill Sergeant

There is something Walter Mittyish about an Air Force R.O.T.C. parade. Row upon row of alert little men clad in sharp blue uniforms parade endlessly around the Lacrosse field while the band plays and the brass looks critically pleased. The cars on Boylston St. slow almost to a crawl as the occupants lean out and smile proudly at the "Hahvad soljers."

Spring parades are the high point of the Air Force drill program. The transition from the pevious fall, when groups of seedy freshmen patiently learn which foot is left, seems miraculous. But if the cadets who march on parade have caught Mitty at the moment of glory, no man is happier than a small bawling sergeant named Walter William Amolsch.

Most freshmen develop an immediate fear of Amolsch, and a great deal of respect. From the first "chewing out" on the drill field they are prone to address him as "sir," instead of "sergeant" as they have been taught. Despite periodic admonitions, some cadets go through the first year inadvertently sirring Amolsch, unable to comprehend that on the drill field they actually outrank this holdover--or so it seems--from the barracks life of James Jones.

Amolsch works very hard to sell himself to the first year men as a screaming monster. He has a powerful voice, which he combines with an arrogant, scornful look and a faultless drill manner. Yet when the first impression finally wears off, Amolsch appears as the most terrible Mitty of them all. Away from the drill field he becomes jovial, a sympathetic "good guy," best liked by the cadets who know him best.

Amolsch's life has always centered around government payrolls. The son of a naval man, he went through grade school and a year at Commerce High in New York City before he had to quit and take a job. The New Deal was beginning to flower then, and Amolsch signed up as a pest control officer for the Department of Agriculture. When he tired of that he joined a surveying team with the Department of the Interior. In 1938 he returned to New York and on the 21st of August enlisted in the Army for the first time.

Amolsch lived an easy three years in the peacetime army, quartered with the Field Artillery at Madison Barracks, New York. When his enlistment ran out he tried civilian life for only a little more than a month before re-enlisting. "I guess the military life was in the blood." But when he went back in, the peacetime army was beginning to toughen up for a war which came soon afterwards.

In 1945, the war won, Amolsch was shipped home to New York. He had been office chief of transportation for General Ross, whose headquarters was in Paris after the liberation. Having had enough of the army, he remained a civilian for a surprisingly long time, two years, working in the registry department of the U. S. Postal Service. "The blood," however, get the best of him for a third time.

Amolsch arrived in Cambridge as Air Force sergeant in January of 1949. He liked the post immediately. He was even happier to discover that Harvard men "are good material to work with." He readily defends their martial qualities, the lack of which is a popular butt, by testifying that "Harvard turns out Licutenants just as good as those of any other school."

For Amolsch the R.O.T.C. is more than another job. "Military training," he says, "is advantageous to all young men." He believes in that without question and without qualification, and he is able to impart that belief to much younger men of completely different background and ambition.

Almost any cadet will speak reverently of Amolsch. He is tops because he likes his work, and he likes the life of a professional peacetime soldier. "I'm married," he says, "two girls plus a cocker spanicl." Then he smiles.