As the military presence increased, Frost says, Harvard seemed "a dinky little college" to those who had not yet been drafted or in the service.

Upper-class students were leaving at the rate of at least 15 per week when the draft age dropped from 20 to 18 in the spring of 1944, making the class of 1947 the dominant class as first-years.

The dwindling number of civilians affected student life in a number of other areas.

As more students entered the service, extracurricular activities faded.

The Advocate published its last wartime literary magazine in the fall of 1943 before collapsing for almost four years.

The daily Crimson was no more than a myth for the class of 1947, for "Cambridge's only breakfast table daily" had been replaced by The Service News, a twice-weekly paper that was almost entirely military in flavor.

Unlike The Crimson, which had usually functioned as the undergraduate mouthpiece, the Service News published mostly military news and had no opinion page.

The Lampoon was the only student publication the appear continuously through the war years. One issue was written entirely by the president and illustrated almost entirely by hid wife, but the Lampoon averaged nine issues a year during the war.

Even that staple of the Harvard experience, the Harvard-Yale football weekend, disappeared during the war.

The informal wartime football squad played only local teams such as MIT, Boston College, Boston University and Northwestern University.

Still, athletics remained one of the few extracurricular activities that attracted student participation during the war years.

Greeley recalls his first year at Harvard, when there were so few teams around to compete with that the "Dunster Funsters" house football team played--and beat--Boston University's varsity squad.

Athletics and activities were not the only aspects of student life affected by the war. A social life also fell by the wayside as many students kept constant come-and-go of Harvard men made it especially difficult for members of this class to get to know one another.

"Socially speaking, people came and went, and it was different from today in that it was difficult to make any lasting relationships," says Louise Connelly Sullivan '47.

Radcliffe women remember watching friends leave for the war, and corresponding with them while they were overseas.