Page 17 - Georgetown Preparatory School Alumnews Winter 2021

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS WILLIAM A. “BILL” ROBERTS, JR. ’43
UNITED STATES ARMY INFANTRY (DECEMBER 1, 1944, NEAR AACHEN, GERMANY)
responded by attempting to prepare the students mentally as well as physically for the military service in their futures. Students took on more tasks of maintaining the campus
as the draft and more lucrative jobs in war industries drew off buildings and grounds staff. Special wartime courses such as Basic Mathematics (useful for the difficult math sections in the Army and Navy IQ tests)
and Aeronautics were introduced into the curriculum. Beginning in the summer of 1943, rising seniors, who would turn 18 before completion of their senior year in June 1944, were given the option of accelerating their progress by completing 1st semester of senior year during the summer and 2nd semester during the fall. This would enable them to obtain their high school diploma in January before they were drafted.
Bill played a big role in newly required activities of the Military Program directed by teacher/coach Mr. Augustine J. Coupe. The program attempted to prepare students for basic training in the army. A commando course was erected with hurdles, mazes, walls, and broad jumps. According to The Blue and Gray,
a student quarterly publication, the commando course “strained the arms of the underclassmen and low tunnels scraped the senior’s back.” Every afternoon featured a drill period, led by the student commander of the Georgetown Prep Victory Corps. The Corps consisted of four companies (A through D) under a senior captain. Bill, a broad-shouldered, 6’ tall scholar- athlete easily recognizable on campus with
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Bill Roberts, a day student from Washington, D. C., who entered Georgetown Prep as a sophomore in the
fall of 1940 and graduated in June 1943, was the youngest (by about 8 months) of the 12 Prep servicemen lost during WWII. During his time at Prep, he directly experienced many of the significant changes in school life wrought by the war.
One of those changes involved a major increase in the number of day students. This growth sprang in part from the school’s addition in 1940 of 7th and 8th grade classes,
but also from better economic conditions in the country and an influx of civilian and military population into the wartime D. C. area. When Bill began at Prep in September 1940, there were 48 day students; by the time he graduated in June 1943, there were 94. (During that same period, resident students had increased from 116 to 162.)
The modification of the draft bill in December 1942, which provided for drafting 18-year-olds, also weighed heavily on Bill and his classmates, making the war a more immediate concern. School administrators
Prep teacher, coach, and director of the Military Program, Augustine J. “Gus” Coupe, taught courses
in Aeronautics to juniors and seniors.
ALUMNEWS | winter 2021 15
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