In my student days long ago one professor was much above the rest.
Dr. James W.Green, Jr., Brig Gen US Army (retired) previously a
professor at West Point.  One time we got him to speak at a meeting
of the ham radio club - needless to say a bunch of interesting stories.
One I recall was about a message center in the Philippines which was a
torn tape relay station.  They had the equivalent of clothes lines
strung across the center and used clothes pins to hold pieces of tape
awaiting transmission, sorted by destination and precedence.

When he first went on active duty after graduation from USMA he was
sent to the Philippines.  He had built his own ham equipment and had
it shipped to his new duty station.  When it got there, the vibration
caused by the ship's engines had taken it completely apart - he had
not used any lockwashers.

The Officers' clubs, Army and Navy, requested live reports of the
annual Army-Navy football games from the radio people.  Every year partway
through the game propagation would go out and leave the game unreported.
The clubs decided the service radio people were incompetent and one year
contracted with RCA to report the game.  Same thing happened - there was
just a time and place when propagation did not exist.

He told about the communications arrangements for Mac Arthur's return
to the Philippines.  I don't remember the particulars, but lots of
RTTY channels and some AM voice broadcasts.

At another time he was in charge of the Signal Corps radar school.

One of his reasons for retiring and joining the engineering faculty
of the university in his home state was that at West Point he was
teaching mainly future Army officers who needed a good education in
communications and electronics, but he wanted to spend some of his
remaining years teaching students who would be practicing engineering
as a career.

In studying RTTY communication I wanted to get a look at the manual for
the AN/FGC-1 demodulator, a Bell Labs design much used in WW-II, a 7-foot
tall rack of equipment.  I asked Dr. Green how to get a copy.  He picked
up the phone, called a nearby Army fort, and said to someone
"This is General Green
       At the University of Arkansas
            and I need a copy of (the manual number)"
It came a few days later.

How I loved that man!  It would almost be worth starting the degree
program all over just to be able to take all his courses.

Jim W6JVE

        ---

        "Ya can argue all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was."
        "No it ain't! No it ain't!  But ya gotta know the territory."
                Meredith Willson, The Music Man
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