looked like a bunch of old elephants wandering around trying to find some place to die. The name stuck and the tradition continues to the present. Beginning in 1939, the U.S. Army required all cadets to be in either infantry or field artillery units. Therefore, the band was split into two separate units at opposite ends of the campus dormitories and named Infantry and Artillery Bands. When the two units performed together, they formed the Combined Band. 1942 saw the band expand to 250 members, but the need for manpower for the war effort caused membership to plummet. By the end of the 1942–1943 school year, it dropped it to only 90 bandsmen. As "a crusty old army man", Dunn understood the nation's urgent need for troops, and he accepted the fact that the Aggie Band could only return after the war was over. Along with conducting the Aggie Band, Dunn started his own orchestra with the newly built A&M Consolidated High School on the Texas A&M Campus, called the "Little Symphony Orchestra". Dunn was also the founder of the famous A&M Consolidated High School Tiger Band in 1947. Adams era Dunn once told then-cadet Edward Vergne Adams, "One day I want you to direct this band." Adams thought the Colonel was joking, but "went to music school after graduation just in case he wasn't". After music school, he joined the army and put his musical skills to rest for the duration of the war, with one exception: while on regimental staff during the retreat ceremony at the end of the day, the assigned bugler had no experience and couldn't play a single note, so Adams stepped out of formation, took the bugle from the bugler's hands, blew the appropriate calls, handed the bugle back, and marched back into his spot in the formation. This intolerance for incompetence served him well when he accepted the invitation of Dunn to be his replacement as director of the Aggie Band. Adams began his tenure with an undisciplined band devoid of experience and ravaged by years of war, but in his first year of leadership, the ranks of the band quickly swelled to 225 members. Infantry and field artillery associations were no longer required by the Army and Adams changed the units' names to the Maroon and White Bands. Adams began to make the drills far more intricate and precise than they had