With so great a number of Michigan men with the expeditionary forces, the University was particularly interested in their welfare while "over there." From the first Michigan took a prominent part in the establishment of the American University Union in Paris, of which President Hutchins was one of the first Board of Trustees. Professor Charles B. Vibbert, '04, of the Department of Philosophy was appointed Director of the Michigan Bureau by President Hutchins and was made one of the Executive Committee in Paris. Here he rendered most effective service to the hundreds of Michigan men who used the club house, a large hotel in the heart of Paris, as their headquarters. He was also assigned as his special duty, the promotion of friendly relations between the Americans and the French people of Paris, and so successful was he in this task that he was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government. After the end of the demobilization period he remained in Paris for a time as Director of a permanent Union which succeeded the war organization. Two other representatives of the University, Mr. Warren J. Vinton, '11, for some time Professor Vibbert's assistant, and Assistant Professor Philip E. Bursley, '02, one of the general secretaries, were on the Union's staff.
No review of Michigan's record in the war would be complete without a word as to the share of the Faculty. As never before this was a war of scientists and technically trained men. There was hardly a subject taught in the University which did not fit in somewhere, while the work of such departments as chemistry, physics, astronomy, mathematics, and the various branches of engineering, to say nothing of the Schools of Medicine and the Colleges of Dentistry and Pharmacy, proved absolutely indispensable. Long before this country entered the war Dean M.E. Cooley had offered his services to the Government, when the crisis which he and many others foresaw, should come.
In all there were 162 members of the Faculty in various forms of war service, a large proportion of them in uniform. Among those to whom were assigned particularly noteworthy tasks were Dean Victor C. Vaughan, '78_m_, of the Medical Advisory Board of the Council of National Defense and later Colonel on the staff of the Surgeon-General in Washington, where was also Dr. Walter R. Parker, '88_e_, Professor of Ophthalmology, who as Lieutenant-Colonel in the Medical Corps had charge of head surgery. Dr. Udo J. Wile, Professor of Dermatology, Major in the Medical Corps, was among the earliest medical officers abroad, where he was in charge of the first American hospital in England, near Liverpool.