Rough Tough Real Stuff (From Texas A & M)

by Jim Noles

Earlier this month, as West Point claimed the Patriot League championship over Navy, I tipped my hat (service cap?? helmet?) to the young men of an earlier baseball team – those of the Class of 1944.? Not only had those cadets of eight decades earlier notched a record-setting 11-1 season, but they had swiftly followed it with service in a world war that scattered them from Europe to the Philippines to the China-Burma-India theater.

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But, as the road to the Men’s College World Series begins this weekend for West Point and 63 other teams, it would be unfair to have looked back to 1944 and, whether on the baseball field or the battlefield, not given full credit where credit was due – to the Aggies of Texas A&M.

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After all, according to The Handbook of Texas, about 20,000 Texas A&M former students served in the armed forces during World War II.? These included some 14,000 officers, with twenty-nine reaching the rank of general. ?Those numbers mean that the Aggies provided more officers for the armed forces during the war than West Point and the Naval Academy combined.

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Texas A&M baseball teams from the 1943 and 1944 seasons were no exception to that record of service.?? For example, Leo Daniels, who also quarterbacked for the Aggies, had left college early for service as an artillery officer in the U.S. Army’s campaigns in Italy.? His teammate William D. Walker would serve 21 months as a paratrooper with the hard-fighting 503rd Regimental Combat Team in the Pacific and earn a Purple Heart.

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And then there was James E. Newberry, of Gonzales, Texas.? Newberry played ball for the Aggies in the ’42 and ’43 seasons before being commissioned in the Army.? By August of 1944, 2nd Lieutenant Newberry was outside of Senonches, France, leading an anti-tank platoon with the 48th Armored Infantry Battalion of the 7th Armored Division.? A German artillery shell exploded by his jeep, killing him; the former A&M shortstop was the first of many fatalities the division would suffer in the months to come.

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Daniels, Walker, and Newberry were just a few of the men from Texas A&M’s World War II-era baseball teams, although, whether named in this short article or not, they all warrant remembrance.? And, in the meantime, if you want to understand the title of this particular article, go find an Aggie and ask him or her -- and maybe you'll understand it that much better.

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Jim Noles is the author of several books on World War II and sports history, most recently Undefeated: From Basketball to Battle – West Point’s Perfect 1944 Season (Philadelphia: Casemate Publishers, 2018).