A flabbergasted U.S. supply officer in Paris received an order: dispatch to Biarritz 25,000 copybooks, 2,500 erasers, one dozen fresh frogs, 25 two-and-a-half-ton trucks, and two salamanders "sexually highly developed." Another order reached Washington by cable: rush 300 civilian professors, first class.
Thus, last summer, the Army took its deepest plunge into higher education. It has worked out swimmingly. Biarritz American University, a full-fledged university set amid the splendors of the fashionable Cote d'Argent, has already graduated an eight-week class of 4,000, is now schooling 4,000 more. They are probably the most contented G.l.s in Europe.
On the Spot. When B.A.U. first opened, officers half-expected their khaki charges to idle away their time on the glamorous Basque beaches. Instead, G.l.s lugged their textbooks to the beach when they went swimming, caroused—if at all—only on weekends.
Professors, some of whom were hustled off from U.S. campuses at only 24 hours' notice, found their new students quicker and mentally tougher than their old, and ready to say so if they were either bored or unconvinced. Says University of Chicago's Dean John Dale Russell, who heads the faculty: "We have never been on the spot like this before, but we love it."
Biarritz townspeople were at first resentful of the G.I. occupation of loo-odd of their famed hotels and villas, now invite students to dinner. The roulette wheels were stored away at the famed Casino, which became a hushed library supervised by a whispering ex-artilleryman. A prankish billeting officer quartered ten mild professors in what had once been the fanciest whorehouse in town. The professors were bothered almost nightly by old customers.
Three Cuts. Two-thirds of the B.A.U. faculty are civilians; the rest includes both colonels and privates, so that privates teach colonels and argue in class with majors. There is no reveille, no retreat, no drilling. When a sternly military professor complained, "We don't do things that way in the infantry," he was promptly sent back to the infantry. The only ironclad rule at B.A.U. is against cutting classes. On the third cut a student is court-martialed and fined $2 to $15, depending on his rank.
The cuts are not many. One G.I. describes Biarritz University as "the best break I've ever had in the Army." By the end of the present semester, most of the homeward-bound G.I.s for whom it was intended will be "in the pipeline" towards home, and B.A.U. is scheduled to close its ornate doors. Last week its Army boss, Brigadier General Paul W. Thompson, flew from Europe to Washington to plead that it be kept open for U.S. occupation troops in Europe. Even if it meant two months off from their soldiering, he said, it would be worth it.