A Proud History-A Bright Future

DEAMON DEACON BATTALION HISTORY

Early in his administration, Wake Forest President Dr. Tribble worked to secure a unit of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps for Wake Forest. Of the three hundred schools which made application, the Defense Department chose thirty two, and Wake Forest was one of them. Dr. C.S.Black, who had been a chemical warfare officer during World War II, was named coordinator of the program and acted as liaison between the campus and the Pentagon.

In September 1951, a ROTC unit which was a branch of the Army Chemical Corps Reserve was activated with 274 students enrolled. LTC Joseph S. Terrel was assigned as commandant, and the unit was given four classrooms, officers, and supply cupboards in the basement of the gymnasium. Its first several gatherings, however, were held in the Chapel basement. The Army provided uniforms and textbooks, and drills were held on the athletic playing field below the gymnasium. The unit was reoriented in 1955 toward general military subjects, and LTC Wythe M. Peyton Jr., succeeded Terrel as commander. In 1959, COL John F.Reed, a thirty year Army veteran who had been on the staff of General Maxwell D. Taylor at the Pentagon, took over from Peyton, and he in turn was succeeded in 1963 by COL Julian Boyles, a career chemical officer. LTC M. Keith Callahan is serving as the department's seventeenth professor of Military Science.

In 1967 when students opposition to the war in Vietnam made military training unpopular on many campuses, the Wake Forest ROTC program saw its highest enrollment. There were 276 freshman and sophmores in the basic course and more than 100 juniors and seniors in the advanced course. At graduation, fiftyone seniors earned their commissions.