Paging Randolph Duke....
Recently, I had an aggy come at me with the following assertions,
While using links to Wikipedia (yeah, I know) and an A&M website (ditto).
Wikipedia -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_A%26M_University_Corps_of_Cadets …
Aggies War Exhibit -
https://today.tamu.edu/2014/10/13/aggies-go-to-war-james-hollingsworth/ …
*groan*
Please send me a link that thoroughly debunks much of this embellished corps turds nonsense while referencing verifiable DoD statistics or other military archives. I know you've shared links on ShaggyTexas to combat this idiocy.
First of all, when discussing aggy "history" one needs to keep in mind that aggy not only plays fast and loose with the facts, they also redefine words to have new meanings. The ags talk about their "former students." They bleat about "once an aggy, always an aggy." To that, I ask if OU winds the national championship in football, will they celebrate Kyler Murray as the only living aggy ever to play on a national championship football team and put up a statue of him next to E. King Gill?
A lot of what you are probably looking for is over on the aggypedia.com website. Start there, and then ask me what else you need.
The "military tradition" of aggy was started because in aggy's early days, it was essentially a reform school for incorrigible farm boys whose parents just wanted to get rid of them until they grew up. The aggy corps was started to enforce discipline on these boys, some of which were as young as 13. Yep, with a sixth grade education, one could matriculate to the farm college.
Because they weren't started as an educational college, they had very few students who ever obtained a degree from the school. From 1876 to 1918, the graduation rate was 8%. The low number of graduates was why the A&M Alumni Association disbanded and was folded into the "Association of Former Students."
Having no accomplished literary graduates, the ags began to fabricate their great "military tradition." I point out that the UT football stadium was originally named "War Memorial Stadium." The war memorials are on the north side of the stadium and have the names of each former student of each SWC conference school that fought and died in WWI. The aggy plaque has 52 names. The UT plaque has almost 100. During WWI aggy students fought in fewer number and dies in fewer numbers that UT students. To inflate their numbers of war dead, the ags include names of men who didn't even die in combat. One famous on was Jesse Easterwood, who died in Panama in Dec 1919. I defy you to find any aggy who can explain how WWI was being fought in Panama in Dec 1919.
As far as the claim you reference, without knowing how aggy defines the term "aggy" there is no discussion to be had. As someone pointed out one of the MOH recipients aggy claims if Horace Carswell. Carsewell went to aggy for a few weeks, hated it, transferred to TCU where he graduated after 4 years and was never mentioned by any aggy publication I have ever seen after he left as being an aggy. But once the TCU grad was awarded the MOH, he suddenly became an aggy.
I am sure you have heard the aggy claim of "more aggy officers in WWII than Wst Point and Annapolis combined. This is an outright lie. The ags had 7,000 ROTC graduates serve as officers during WWII. Another 7,000 were commissioned as officers through other channels. In total, just over 20,000 "aggys" served in all ranks. Annapolis had over 12,000 graduates serve as officers. West point had over 9,000 graduates serve. So each school had far more graduates serve than aggy, and the combined number of graduates from West Point and Annapolis exceeded the total number of aggy graduates and dropouts combined who served in all ranks.
Whatever the number actually is, the number of graduates who served as flag officers will be far less than half what they claim, and hardly any will be Admirals. aggy didn't have a Naval ROTC (only Army) program during WWII, just as UT Austin didn't have an Army ROTC program (only Navy).
As for UT Austin, individuals such a John C. Morgan (the only MOH recipient to be taken as a POW after receiving the medal and the inspiration for the main character in the old television series "Twelve O'Clock High) are not claimed as they were not graduates. Likewise, not many of us consider Tommy Franks to be a Longhorn, but he was a former student who "was not quite invited back by the dean." Neither is Ormer Locklear, who trained on the UT campus during WWI, and eventually was the inspiration for "The Great Waldo Pepper." We do recognize individuals such as Bill McRaven, Russell Steindam and, of course, Bobby Inman.
Another thing to remember is that because of the strong Navy presence on the UT Austin campus during WWII, UT became a center of applied defense research. Since WWII, UT Austin has been one of only five Department of Defense University Affiliated Research Centers. The work at the UT Austin Applied Research Laboratories has long been focused on submarine acoustics. The lab recently was awarded another $1.1 billion in grants for various research projects. Meanwhile, aggy concentrates on trying to develop maroon carrots (that was an intentional dig at aggy, Carrots date back to 3,000 BC and were originally maroon/purple in color).
So, this doesn't debunk what the ags claim, but doing so would be difficult because aggy uses the phrase "former student" to base their claims, and institutions with higher standards use "alumni" as the record keeping standard.
