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on a freighter. He visited many of the major cities of Europe. In Berlin he witnessed the rumblings and first ominous stirrings of the government which turned into the Third Reich. Hitler and his armies were rising to power, the streets echoed the confidence of the resurgent German nation, and the man whose picture was everywhere would eventually bring Courvoisie back to German soil under far less attractive circumstances.
    After leaving The Citadel, Courvoisie joined the Georgia National Guard where he stayed for two years. He was commissioned in the Army Reserve in 1940. At this time the eyes of the world were turned toward Germany whose blietzkriegs were changing old concepts of warfare. The eyes of America turned toward England and suffered vicariously during the Battle of Britain. America suffered vicariously until December 7, 1941, when the Japanese Air Force left half our Pacific Fleet at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.
    The Boo’s first foreign duty station was Iceland. From there he moved to England in November of 1943. In England he managed to see a pretty Army nurse he had met and liked several years before. Her name was Captain Elizabeth Cosner. They dated as frequently as possible in England. Then she was moved out to the continent. By this time, the D-Day invasion had put the allies on French soil.
    Courvoisie hit France in September of 1944. He and his unit surged through France and into Germany. His division was planning to meet up with Montgomery’s forces at the Rhine River. The Germans counter-attacked in a desperate, last-hour attempt to salvage their position. They fought well and hard, twenty miles south of Courvoisie, in what was to become known as the Battle of The Bulge.
    In 1945 the war ended. Captain Courvoisie and his pretty nurse, Major Cosner, were married in Liege, Belgium. Major Courvoisie went home at the end of 1945. Captain Courvoisie returned in May of 1946 after having spent forty-five straight months overseas. His daughter Helen awaited his arrival when he landed in the states.
    From 1946-50 he was at Fort Sill, the home of the artillery. His son Alfred was born here in 1947. In 1950, he was sent to Georgetown, South Carolina, as an Army instructor for The National Guard. He attended The Citadel with the permission of The Department of the Army. He graduated with the class of 1952.
    From 1953-54 he served in Korea. From 1954-56 he was at Fort Benning, Georgia. Then back to Fort Sill. A year at Leavenworth and finally in 1959 he came to The Citadel as Assistant PMS.
    His daughter Helen graduated early from the University of South Carolina, entered the Medical University of Charleston and became Doctor Helen Courvoisie in the spring of 1970.
    His son Alfred entered The Citadel in 1965, caught hell for being The Boo’s son, received a punishment order from his father, fought a major battle with the quality points, and graduated in August 1969.
    Mrs. Courvoisie has been a mother-figure to a generation of cadets. She visits them in the hospital, bakes cookies for them, has them over for coffee, invites them constantly for dinner, and proves the Army adage that the man is only as good as the woman behind him.

BITS AND PIECES
     
    The life of every man is a series of moments, passing interludes, and brief fragments which begin with his birth on the hospital table and end with the final benediction of a grim preacher at the open grave. Most events in one’s life do not merit retelling: the daily habits of bathing and eating, the morning shave, the reading of the afternoon paper. None of these ennoble or enrich the existence of any man, only make that existence both comfortable and possible. But some moments crystallize behind dark corners, unseen and unforseeable, and spring out like flushed quails when least expected. Some memories linger in a man’s mind longer than others, to be savored over, thought about, and remembered as old age approaches. And special people who appear in every life give