On October 25, 1918, the Chief of Coast Artillery sent memo to the Col. R.R. Welshimer, Commandant of the Coast Artillery School at Fort Monroe, VA inquiring about the state of officer candidates that they were receiving. Six days later, Col. Welshimer replied, stating that he was unsatisfied with the state of the SATC men. It seemed that a majority of the SATC men had not received any military or academic training prior to arriving, many failed the preliminary mathematics course, and overall were “young and immature.” Welshimer also noted that, “Those from the North and West average sophomore college men. Those from the South on the whole are below average.”¹

In response to this report from Col Welshimer, and presumably others, on November 5, Brigadier General Robert I. Rees, Chairman of the CEST, wrote a letter to the entire CEST and SATC command structure about the academic performance of SATC men. He acknowledged that organizational issues and the Spanish Flu were contributing factors to the unsatisfactory performance. Despite this, Brig. Gen. Rees also pointed to the “practice of detailing men to military duties which conflict with their [SATC member’s] academic programs and to the prevalence of the idea that academic grades will count for relatively little in the selection men for Officer’s Training Camps.” Brig. Gen. Rees ordered that SATC Commanding Officers were to take all possible actions to ensure academic success. These included working with college and university administrations, lowering the number of military training hours to 6 hours per week on a case by case basis, restricting military assignments such as guard duty and kitchen police, and reminding their men that academic standing will be evaluated when deciding which men go to Central Officers’ Training Schools.³

It is difficult to determine the effectiveness of these measures, since less than a week after Brig. Gen. Rees issued this directive, the Armistice was signed and the SATC began its demobilization process.