KU Goes to War

Faculty, staff share WWII experiences in Memory Tent

From a three-time prisoner of war escapee to a concentration camp survivor to an aide to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, KU faculty who served in World War II have a wide range of extraordinary stories to tell.

During the dedication of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics July 19 through 22, faculty and staff with World War II experiences will speak in sessions at the Memory Tent, which will be set up just outside the institute, and at the “KU Goes to War” program at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 20, at the Lied Center. Memory Tent speakers begin at 7 p.m. Saturday, July 19, and continue through 7 p.m. Monday, July 21.

The three-day dedication event has been planned to serve as the “ultimate WWII reunion.”

Besides those listed below, participants will include Francis H. Heller, retired professor of law; Louis L. Frydman, retired associate professor of social welfare; and Jaroslaw A. Piekalkiewicz, retired professor of political science.

Ogden R. Lindsley
Sergeant, U.S. Army Air Force
Served from January 1942 to November 1945
Lindsley was a college student when he joined the U.S. Army Air Force in January 1942. Although he had dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot, he trained as a flight engineer and was based in Italy when his plane went down in the mountains of Albania in July 1944. On his 19th birthday, Lindsley and the others were captured by the Germans and moved through camps in Yugoslavia to Stalag Luft IV in Danzig. From January to April 1945, he was on a forced march from Danzig to Hamburg. He vividly remembers Valentine’s Day as “so icy you had to flex your shoulders to break the ice coating your back.” He escaped in April, weighing only 114 pounds. He attributes wilderness skills learned in Boy Scouts and athletic cross-country training with helping him survive the POW camps and the forced marches in winter. His medals include a Purple Heart. Lindsley retired as a professor of special education in 1990.

Vincent Muirhead
Commander, U.S. Navy
Served from June 1937 to 1961
On Dec. 7, 1941, Muirhead was an ensign planning to spend a leisurely Sunday morning on board his ship, the USS Maryland in Pearl Harbor. As he and his shipmates were getting up for breakfast, they were jolted by loud noises, looked out the porthole and “saw aircraft with red meat balls [Japan’s Rising Sun symbol on Japanese aircraft] … at about 100 feet altitude. They had just torpedoed the USS Oklahoma, which was tied up to our port side and had protected [the Maryland].” Muirhead, a February 1941 U.S. Naval Academy graduate with an interest in designing aircraft, became a Navy pilot. He flew his last mission leading a dawn patrol of 16 Hellcats over Tokyo on Aug. 15, 1945. Muirhead retired from the Navy in June 1961 and in September 1961 began teaching aerospace engineering at KU. He retired in 1989.

Richard L. Schiefelbusch
First lieutenant, U.S. Army Air Corps
Served from December 1941 to January 1946
Schiefelbusch joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1941. “I had one of the lowest draft numbers in all the world,” he recalls. “We used to say that America’s first line of defense was the unmarried schoolteacher, and I expect that’s about right. I was about to be drafted — pure and simple, so I inquired around. I decided since it was going to happen I ought to try to guide it a little bit, so I enlisted in the Air Force and they called me up one week after Pearl Harbor.”
He became a navigator on B-24 bombers in the European theater. His plane was shot down while on a mission to disable German submarine pens at Kiel. He parachuted into the Baltic Sea, was captured and spent two years in prisoner of war camps — including Stalag Luft 3 in Poland, which was the subject of the 1963 movie “The Great Escape.”
After completing a master’s degree at KU and a doctorate at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., Schiefelbusch came to KU, founding the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic in 1949. The Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies, named to honor his 40 years of leadership, has more than 140 programs and a reputation for some of the best science on human disabilities in the world.

Lloyd Martin Jones
Second lieutenant, infantry platoon leader, U.S. Army 106th Infantry Division
Served from 1942 to 1946
Jones was a student at KU, living in the original Templin Hall, before he enlisted in October 1942 during his junior year. He was captured during the Battle of the Bulge and imprisoned in two POW camps until spring 1945, when he and other prisoners were forced to march for five weeks. They were liberated May 2, 1945, in the German village of Garsam-Inn. “No shots were fired. We had always wondered if our guards would shoot us if the Allies arrived.” Jones returned to KU in 1946 to complete bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He joined the faculty of the School of Business in 1947 and retired in 1986 as director emeritus of business and fiscal affairs for the Lawrence campus.

Warren Corman
Petty officer third class, U.S. Navy (V-5 and Lion 8 Seabees attached to the Marines)
Served from June 1944 to May 1946

Corman left his rural Kansas high school to enlist at age 17 and spent more than a year on Okinawa.
To follow in the footsteps of his father, who died while Corman wasserving in the Navy, he studied architecture at KU. He has been the university architect and special assistant to the chancellor since 1997.