Villepigue served in the U.S. Army Band Training Units, as teacher of modern orchestration, from late 1943 to early 1946. During these years, he was stationed first at Camp Lee, Virginia, and then at Camp Edwards and at Fort Devens, both in Massachusetts. His mother, sister, and

wife Maxine were able to visit him at

various times, and he took leave briefly

to Kansas in the summer of 1945 to see Maxine and their baby daughter, Janelle, who was born in February. Upon release from service in the spring of 1946, he headed, with wife and child, directly to 

New York City, the heartbeat of bebop.