Torbie MacDonald, '39 Football Captain, Back from Pacific Duty

"When I was in the College," said Torbie Macdonald, captain of Harvard's 1939 football team, "I always wondered how old grads got that way. I never got enthusiastic about anything in Cambridge; Harvard was just another college. But out in the Pacific in a PT boat, I began to understand. I found myself hoping that when I returned home I'd find here still the traditions of the wonderful life I led.

"It isn't quite the same. With the exception of Dillon Field House, everything at Harvard looks just a little different from when I saw it last. There are the uniforms that everyone wears, the lack of that famous carefree Harvard spirit, and the emptiness of the stands in Soldiers Field at a Varsity football game. But it's still Harvard."

17 Months of Sea Duty

Lieutenant Torbert H. Macdonald '40, USNR, is back home after 17 months of sea duty, with a record that has won him the Silver Star, the Atlantic and Pacific Theatre ribbons, and a Presidential Unit Citation, the only one given to a PT squadron.

He looks scarcely older than he did when he was making his number 55 famous as the scourge of opposing linemen. One of Coach Dick Harlow's speediest, halfbacks, Torbie was the only member of his class to win his letter as a sophomore, and the only one to start on the eleven that smashed Clint Frank and Yale's hopes for an undefeated season, one November afternoon of 1937 when Harvard Stadium saw Crimson on top, 13 to 6.

Action in New Guinea

Having gone to the Law School for a year and a half after his graduation, "Torbie joined up when Pearl Harbor was struck. Assigned to a PT squadron, he first got into action at the beginning of the New Guinea campaign, after preliminary training at Melville, Rhode Island, and in the Atlantic.

"We were just about at our lowest ebb when I got there," Torbie said, "but the tide began to turn at Buna. Our job was to keep reinforcements and supplies from reaching the Japs, who were still advancing down the coast.

"It was here I first learned about the Japanese mind. It is really impossible to predict the actions of one of them, to understand his thinking processes, to analyze his mind. The Japs don't live, work, or even think the same way we do.

Jap Mass Suicides

"You hear a lot about their being anxious to die for their emperor, about mass suicides and disregard for their own lives. That isn't always the case. Take this one story: it may be an exception to the rule, but at least it proves that all Japs aren't fanatics.

"A certain PT squadron commander had managed to capture a Jap naval officer after sinking a fleet of Barges which the Nipponese commanded. The U. S. officer questioned his captive on all sorts of routine matters, such as where he was bound for and where he came from.

"The Jap answered all the questions, something he has certainly not required to do, and in perfect English. At first the American officer believed his replies, but when Nip willingly gave him the exact time and place for the appearance of the next barge fleet, he became skeptical.

"He decided to send part of his squadron home, leaving a few ships just in case the other Japanese boats did arrive. And just 20 minutes after the hour the captured officer had named, around the bend came a string of barges, perfect setup for another attack. The Jap had been telling the truth."

Torbie says he took a riding when W. P. L. defeated the Crimson in the Stadium last year. The boys in the ship did not realize that both teams were almost

entirely composed of Navy men. Several Harvard men were in the same area, although there were none in his own squadron, and he exchanged Alumni Bulletins with them.

According to Torbie, the Australian troops are among the hardest-hitting fighters in the world, ranking with the United States Marines. "Toughest guys I've ever seen," he says. "While our men can 'get along' on one dinner of K Ration a day, the Aussies eat a can of Bully Beef and think it's a good meal!"

Torbie's squadron was gradually disbanded this year. He himself few back from New Guinea on August 22. His leave lasts until Monday, October 23, when he will report to the Melville, Rhode Island base once again.

Harvard's informal team looked good last Saturday to the eyes of a former star. Torbie called the eleven one of good potentialities, but said it was lacking in finesse, a result of too little practice. He thinks that except for the shortage of time to practice, a Crimson formal Varsity would have been possible this Fall. As a matter of fact, he described Coach Henry Lamars eleven as "looking very much like a Harlow-coached team."

Out at sea Torbie thought more than anything else about the friends that he hadn't seen for months or years. The friendliness between officers and men out at sea, and when on short leaves, took the place of any old acquaintances for all on board, he says.

Torbie is looking forward to the day when he will be back in Cambridge for good to continue his law studies, but he predicts that it will be 1946 before that play comes