"I found that I was on a little bit of a faster rhythm, and I was impatient when things went slowly or inefficiently," Nordell says, although he admits the slower pace of thought and conversation could be appealing. "It was wonderful to gradually get back into casual talking and thinking."

For Nordell, service in the war did not mean that he sat around trading stories. Instead, the time spent in the trenches and the jungles seemed almost unreal.

"The war was there almost...like a dream," Nordell says. "You could hardly realize that you had been on that boat and in the foxhole. The war was like an intermission."

When that intermission was over, the curtain rose on a College that had been permanently changed by the half-decade of war.

The University had begun to admit women into classes, although in an ironic historical note, Conant declared, "Contrary to certain scare-heads in the papers, this date will not mark the beginning of coeducation here in Cambridge."

The G.I. Bill meant that returning veterans across the country would be able to afford a college education. Prior to the war, Conant, originally from middle-class Dorchester, had created new "National Scholarships" for students from the southern and western states to broaden Harvard's student body. But it took the war and the G.I. Bill to have a significant impact on the homogeneous student population.

Another aspect of the war years at Harvard was the tremendous over-crowding on campus. Students returning from military service often brought wives and sometimes families to school with them.

Harvard's decision to admit veterans who had not previously been College students under the G.I. Bill also contributed to the cramped housing situation.

"There were quite a few G.I. Bill people who had not been at Harvard before and who were quite older," says J. Anthony Lewis '48, a Crimson editor who is currently a New York Times columnist. "There was a lot of crowding."

In order to cope with the numbers, the University applied for help in finding housing for married veterans. In addition, the University doubled the capacity of the Yard, leaving only 10 singles available for the entire incoming class. And new bunk beds in place of single beds also increased the capacity of the rooms by 30 percent.

Students who lived within a 45-minute commute to the College were not permitted to live on campus.

Even the social atmosphere changed when the students returned to Cambridge.

Harvard before the war was largely an institution of social clubs and prep schools.

Joseph L. Ousley '46-'47 was assigned to Leverett House upon his arrival at the University in the fall of 1942 and roomed with three juniors who had attended the prestigious Choate School. Coming from a public high school, he says, he and his roommates "couldn't have contrasted more."

Ousley says he managed to adjust to the social scene, but that the scene had changed after he returned from the war.

Ousley had joined the army in the fall of 1944 and was shipped off to the Pacific. When he returned to school in the fall of 1946, he says he noticed an immediate difference in the social atmosphere around campus. Apparently, some of the more egalitarian military experience had rubbed off on the veterans.