Naval Radio School at Harvard University
By Jim Potter
By January 20, 1918, when Seaman Second Class Robert Parks began classes at the Navy School of Radio Electricians, on Harvard University’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the training facility was overflowing with men, graduating four hundred radio operators a week.
The Navy was doing its best to meet the immediate shortage of trained wireless operators for merchant ships, troop transports, armed guard vessels, and coastal shore stations, not just traditional warships. Plus, most ships required at least three operators so they could maintain continuous, twenty-four hour watch.
Prior to the official declaration of war signed by President Woodrow Wilson on April 6, 1917, Harvard University President A. Lawrence Lowell stepped up to the country’s challenge by offering facilities on its campus to the United States Navy. The government accepted Lowell’s offer, and it became a premier training facility or finishing school for radio operators preparing roughly nine out of ten Morse code wireless operators used by the Navy during the war.
Due to the war, Harvard University’s civilian enrollment decreased over fifty percent. This allowed the private institution to offer its facilities to the Navy, beginning with the Cruft High Tension Laboratory building, constructed two years earlier. Seemingly overnight, the campus turned into an active naval base. Recruits commandeered Harvard dormitories (like Walter Hastings Hall and Perkins Hall), academic classrooms, and dining halls, and sailors engaged in drill practice along the Charles River. Swimming instruction and practice took place in the Charles River and the Boston YMCA where radio trainees were sent to satisfy the Navy’s swimming requirements. The swimming test was mandatory. Recruits who could not demonstrate proficiency in the water were held back until they passed, directly delaying their graduation and assignment to active service.
While Parks attended Harvard Radio School, he was assigned to one of the half dozen dormitories scattered around campus. Even in quarters, the naval training continued trying to create a routine that would serve the men once they were on board a ship. The following is an excerpt from a newspaper article regarding the barracks on campus in 1918.
“The two [sic] tier cots are stripped to the springs every morning and the bedding placed in a neat pile at the foot, with a suit case or small tin box of personal belongings at the head. When it is time to turn in, the boys spread out the bedding with a speed and deftness which their mothers and sisters at home might envy.
“Absolute neatness and order is required. Many a boy who at home left his belongings for mother to pick up learns in the barracks to stow his things away properly, and keep everything ‘shipshape and Bristol fashion.’
“The big white seabags, in which the boys keep extra clothing and various adds [sic] and ends, are hung on an arrangement of metal bars at one end of each room, which, in naval lingo, is a ‘jack stay.’ When these boys go on board their first ship they won’t be land-lubbers even if it is the first time they have ever seen salt water.”1
To be admitted to the intensive, standard, sixteen-week program, sailors had to be able to handle sending and receiving Continental Morse code at a minimum of ten words per minute. The program combined classroom lectures in electrical theory with radio operation and Morse code practice. For Parks and his student peers to graduate from the Navy School for Radio Electricians, the speed and accuracy requirement increased to twenty-two words per minute.2
Morse code was difficult to learn. It required months of intensive practice to build speed, accuracy, and muscle memory. Trainees had to shift from visually counting dots and dashes to instantly recognizing rhythmic auditory tones. Recruits practiced hours of daily headphone drills in crowded, noisy classrooms, where they copied the messages by hand on message pads or manual typewriters.
It’s hard to imagine, but Robert Parks was one of a thousand sailors who sat at connected tables at Pierce Hall and practiced sending and receiving Morse code. Classrooms were equipped with specialized audio circuit wiring that linked student desks to a master transmitting console. This allowed instructors to send code at varying speeds to hundreds of sailors simultaneously.
The Navy understood that even the most dedicated student sailor needed a break from Morse code. Marching may have been the most common physical activity on campus grounds. It was designed to build discipline, unit cohesion, and physical endurance. Sailors practiced close-order drills, basic formations, parade alignments, color guard manenvers, and marching in dress formation for public reviews and military inspection.
Robert Parks was already in training when a Harvard University campus YMCA hut was opened in February 1918 on Holmes Field. It became the main social hub for thousands of US Naval Radio School trainees, providing writing desks, a canteen, library, and recreational space to support off-duty sailors. Recruits were able to relax, enjoy live entertainment, and socialize during off-duty hours.
Like all the seamen, during Parks’ five-month assignment he would have eaten meals at Memorial Hall. Even though the building was enormous, it still required the naval students to eat in two shifts. Here’s a sample menu from a typical day: Breakfast – bananas, oatmeal and cream, boiled eggs, rolls, muffins, butter and coffee; Dinner – chicken soup, roast loin of pork, mashed potato, green peas, apple pie, cocoa, bread and butter; Supper – beef bouillon, roast chicken, boiled new potato, spinach, vanilla ice cream, coffee, bread and butter.3
Though Memorial Hall was usually overcrowded, two days a month, on payday, sailor students who ate supper at the hall had plenty of elbow room. That’s because most of the radio men took an eight-minute subway ride to Boston where they enjoyed a change of scenery, including an alternative meal to their institutional food.4 By late 1917, even when the sailors were on liberty (and prior to federal prohibition), they could not legally drink alcohol. During the World War, orders strictly barred servicemen from purchasing, receiving, or being served alcohol. The rules applied nationwide, regardless of location, leave status, or whether the sailor wore civilian clothes. Of course, illicit drinking remained widespread off duty and among overseas forces.
Whether a competitor or an observer, the Navy offered recruits a wide range of competitive sporting activities, including baseball, a favorite of Parks. I didn’t find Robert on any of the baseball rosters, but he may have been a fan who attended Radio School ball games.
Sailors on liberty from their school, or station, could easily attend major league baseball games at Fenway Park by taking a twenty-to-thirty-minute streetcar ride for five cents, directly down Massachusetts Avenue from Cambridge, across the Charles River, or by taking the subway to Park Street and transferring to a Kenmore-bound streetcar. Boston Red Sox game tickets ranged from twenty-eight cents for bleacher seats up to $1.65 for box seats, which included a ten percent federal war tax on public amusements. Classic ballpark concessions like hot dogs, popcorn, peanuts, and Cracker Jack typically cost five to ten cents.
Being stationed in Cambridge, baseball fan Robert Parks could have attended Red Sox home games on Saturday afternoons beginning at 3 p.m., since the Naval students were typically granted liberty starting at noon, following morning inspection and drill. If Parks had been at the May 18th game against the Detroit Tigers, he would have watched George “Babe” Ruth playing left field, although the slugger also excelled at pitching and playing first base. During that game, Ruth, with a .407 batting average, was the American League’s front runner. In the sixth inning, he belted a long ball off the left field advertising sign for a double over the head of Ty Cobb. The Red Sox beat the Tigers 3-1 with pitcher “Bullet” Joe Bush showing his stuff, especially his high-speed fastball, in front of 10,230 fans.5
Most of the photographs displayed in this chapter were taken by photojournalist Edwin Levick on April 18, 1918. He operated his commercial photography studio in lower Manhattan, New York City. During the World War, Levick documented naval preparation, shipyard construction, and maritime readiness. He captured critical wartime efforts like the construction of 110-foot wood-hulled submarine chasers, patrol boats, and destroyers being built and outfitted at regional shipyards. Levick’s photographs were often circulated by federal agencies, including the War Department, and widely appeared in national news outlets to highlight war preparations on the home front.
Since the Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels reviewed three thousand students at the Harvard Radio School at Holmes’ Field on April 18, the same day as the photographs taken by photojournalist Levick, the two men may have conversed. Almost certainly, Robert Parks was in attendance—unless he had reported to sick call at early morning formations when a Navy Medical Corps doctor could have deemed him unfit for duty. (The war’s major influenza pandemic—often called the Spanish flu—occurred in two distinct waves. In the spring of 1918, there was a mild first wave that spread through military camps and troop ships. In the fall, a highly mutated, deadly, second wave caused most of the war’s fatalities.)
In his official address, Daniels compared the sailors of 1918 to the Minutemen active during the Revolutionary War, who had fought nearby “to save the country and make it a light of freedom for the whole world.” The main difference between the past and the present was that Paul Revere could travel only as fast as his “nag”, Daniels continued, but “you S. O. S. boys can travel as fast as lightning.” Compliments continued as the secretary of war explained, “You bring to it freshness and the spirit of youth and your readiness to answer to the country’s call gives the lie to the pessimistic thought of 30 years that the men of today lack the stuff of ’76 and 1860.” To Daniels, the courage and devotion he saw in the men equaled patriotism, and he understood that the men were anxious to make a difference. To address the question of when the men would start active duty, Daniels answered: “As soon as ships can be provided (you) will take your place in the danger zone.”6
While Parks received training at Cambridge, Massachusetts, the US Navy was given permission by the city to take temporary control of Cambridge Common, where George Washington took command of the American army. It was turned over to the government on April 10, 1918. The sixteen-acre park was needed because attendance at the radio school had outgrown its quarters. The plans were to build a cantonment around the Soldier’s Monument, most notably, wooden barracks for three thousand radio school students, a drill hall, central mess hall and galley, administrative and headquarter offices, and YMCA and recreation facilities for sailors. The cantonment would become an active encampment surrounded by a ten-foot fence with barbed wire topping and armed sentries stationed around the enclosure.7
As Parks’ June 13, 1918, graduation date approached, he would have watched construction begin on the wooden barracks. By graduation day, Parks had completed ten months of radio operator training, including his stint at the Great Lakes Training Station. He was qualified as Electrician (Radio) from his experience in the classroom, but without sea experience. At graduation, or immediately following it, Parks probably received his duty assignment. He must have been itching to learn if his orders would direct him to a coastal shore station, a boat, or a ship. There was a big difference.
Notes
1. Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts), October 27, 1918, 48.
2. Springfield Daily Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts), August 19, 1918, 6. In August 1918, the requirements for graduation from the Naval Radio School at Harvard was increased. The ability to send or receive Morse code was increased by three words, to twenty-five words a minute.
3. Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts), August 4, 1918, 39.
4. The Wireless Age, “Harvard Radio School: Photographs,” October 1918, 44.
5. Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts), May 19, 1918, 14.
6. Boston Evening Globe (Boston, Massachusetts), April 19, 1918, 4.
7. Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts), October 27, 1918, 43.
This is fascinating! How do you find out this stuff?
I’ve tried to learn Morse code = it’s not easy.
I find newspapers from a hundred years ago, much more interesting (and uplifting) than today’s news.