Veteran shares his story: Indiana Central College alum Ralph Davis recalls war experiences and their effects
Ralph Davis was drafted into the military shortly after he graduated from Indiana Central College in 1942. Photo contributed by Ralph Davis
The University of Indianapolis, established in 1902 as Indiana Central College, has witnessed many changes since it began. UIndy has had graduates experience two of the most destructive wars in history, numerous police actions of the U.S. military and the current engagements in the Middle East.
According to “Downright Devotion to the Cause: A History of the University of Indianapolis and Its Legacy of Service,” Frederick D. Hill’s 2002 text, the peace-time draft enacted by Congress in 1940 threatened to greatly impact the university’s enrollment. Furthermore, the university struggled to fill faculty positions following World War II, as did many other educational institutions in the nation.
As President Good stated in 1938, Indiana Central had striven to maintain its standards while facing “such cataclysmic forces as a world war, the spread of paralyzing materialism, the pathetic industrial breakdown, the loss of stability and assurance in governments” and a host of other societal issues.
The combination of apparent societal breakdown at the time combined with the U.S. entry into World War II affected all Americans, including UIndy students.
Ralph Davis, a 1942 graduate of Indiana Central College, was drafted shortly after his graduation.
“I tried to enlist in the Air Corps shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but they turned me away,” Davis said. “So I waited to be drafted after graduation.”
Davis said that many of his classmates attempted to enlist in the weeks following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
“People were very impacted by Pearl Harbor,” Davis said. “A lot of my friends tried to join the Air Corps after it.”
After he was drafted into the Army, Davis spent four weeks at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Lawrence, Ind. receiving medical training. Davis said the training covered basics such as physiology and anatomy to help prepare him to be a medic, before being transferred to Camp Breckinridge in Kentucky for further training. He shipped out of Boston to the European theater in Oct. 1944.
Davis was stationed in France in Dec. 1944. While in Verdun, he worked in an operating room of the 101st General Hospital.
“After the war I considered going to medical school, but I couldn’t,” Davis said. “I had to go to work in sales to support myself.”
Davis’ older brother, Chester, and younger brother, Howard, also served in the military during WWII. Chester served in the Navy construction battalion while Howard served aboard a Naval transport vessel that served Marines.
“I’m sure it had a great impact on my mother and father,” Davis said. “But I think that they handled it well.”
Davis felt that the war did impact him, but not to the same degree as combat troops. He returned from Europe in March of 1946.
“I didn’t have it as hard as some of them did,” he said. “I just came back [to the United States] and went to work and did what I had to do.”
Davis noted that several UIndy alumni flourished in the military.
“We had a number who achieved high ranks and were officers both in the Army and the Navy,” he said. “We also lost two or three students in the Air Corps.”
Davis specifically referenced Walter Brenneman and Emerson Barker, two UIndy graduates whose planes went down in the South Pacific while flying missions for the Air Corps.
Brenneman was shot down over New Guinea while flying his 29th mission. In 2009, he was posthumously inducted into the UIndy Athletic Hall of Fame for basketball and track.
Barker, who had received extensive training from the Army Air Force starting in 1941, quickly reached the rank of Major and became the commanding officer of the 419th Night Fighter Squadron. The radar-equipped P61 Black Widow planes were assigned to the Japanese invasion. Barker’s plane exploded on June 14, 1944 and was lost in the Pacific. He is memorialized at the Manila Military Cemetery of the Philippines in The Tablets of the Missing.
Davis felt called to defend his home country.
“You owe it to your country to help protect it,” he said. “I think a lot of that is lost today and is becoming a thing of the past. We owe it. Everybody does.”
