When World War II began, no one in the University was immune to Harvard's transformation from an institute of higher learning to a military training center.

Students became soldiers. Chemists and engineers worked for the government, developing new munitions and sophisticated radar systems. President James B. Conant '14, a brilliant chemist himself, was a major player in the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

When the war ended and the soldiers returned to campus, the College had changed forever.

Whether draftees or volunteers, 93 percent of the Class of 1946 served in the armed forces. This military experience had a vast but subtle effect on the soldiers as they returned from the guns and bullets of war to the textbooks and classes of college.

In a class already so fragmented by time and experience, the men found that rather than wanting to relax, they just wanted to get through their studies as soon as possible.

"We had four years to make up for," says Robert F. Dee '46-'49, who fought for the Tenth Mountain Ski Troop. "We had lost so much time we were doing our damnedest to get out quickly."

Another member of the Tenth Mountain agrees, saying that having fought in the war also made some of the soldiers more eager to learn.

"Frankly, I was more ready to go to school [after the war] than when I was right out of prep school," says Kenneth P. MacPherson '46-'48. "I had a better appreciation of what college can do for me. As a freshman, all I had to look forward to was being drafted."

MacPherson's desire to complete his schooling as quickly as possible had a curious result when the time finally came to receive his diploma.

"Having gone through combat, and having lost a lot of friends, I never even went to graduation," he says.

MacPherson says he did not like the ceremony surrounding his final departure from college. "With all the pomp and circumstance, I just wanted my education. Give me my diploma."

Other soldiers say the war matured them intellectually, thus making their education more beneficial.

"It was wonderful to get back to that kind of thing," says H. Roderick Nordell '46-'48. "A lot of us coming back were...more serious about our studies."

Nordell says he remembers being told by an academic adviser: "You seem to have matured intellectually."

The regimented military lifestyle during the war also changed students' perceptions of the pace of college life.