Texas AMC and WWI

The plaque names the Signal Corps school of meteorology but not its teachers. One was Charles F. Brooks, a Blue Hill Observatory meteorologist, who taught meteorology to aviators at College Station in the summer of 1918. The Texas A&M atmospheric sciences department lists him among the instructors of the temporary weather school. The next year he founded the American Meteorological Society and served as its secretary from 1919 to 1954. A&M's formal meteorology instruction, though, did not begin until the early 1950s.

What the plaque says

Texas AMC and WWI World War I allowed the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas to expand beyond military training and directly contribute to the war effort with staff and students volunteering for service in large numbers. Students first served for other countries before the U.S. entered the war. As early as Sept. 1914, Georges Pierre Ferdinand Jouine, class of 1907, enlisted as a private in the French army. In Mar. 1917, the school offered their programs and facilities for use during the war. By Dec. 1917, TAMC was designated a U.S. Army training base. Along with the normal instruction of its college students, the college became a base for three lines of intensive military training. In Dec. 1917, soldiers reported to train as radio mechanics. They were assigned to Goodwin Hall as their barracks, and received technical instruction from the Department of Electrical Engineering. The service training detachment of auto mechanics and carpenters was in operation by summer 1918. The third area of training was in the Signal Corps School of Meteorology, established in May 1918 to train men for aviation, gas and flame attacks, bombing expeditions and many other military and naval operations. The school operated out of the Civil Engineering building and was the only one of its kind among allied nations during the war. With the U.S. Calling on the male faculty to serve, for the first time in the college's history women served on the faculty, teaching botany and French. Despite an influenza outbreak in Sept. 1918, the college and community continued their support through liberty bond drives and increasing agricultural production until the war ended. More than 2,200 Aggies served, with at least 62 making the supreme sacrifice from a dedicated community of students, faculty and citizens during a time of war. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 1.5 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 21 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Navasota — 22 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 23 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• Main Drill Field, Texas A&M University — steps away
• College Station Railroad Depots — 0.2 mi
• Texas A&M Corps of Cadets — 0.3 mi
• Early Play-By-Play Radio Broadcast of a College Football Game — 0.3 mi