A.S.T.P.
   Sometime in 1942 or so some smart S.O.B. figured out two important things.  With the United States gearing up for all out war,  first was that very soon there would be no young men left on the college campuses,   secondly some time in the not to distant future there would be an urgent need for a large number of militarily trained young men on hand for an invasion of the European Continent.
  Thus was born the A.S.T.P. , also the Navy had a similar program which was labeled V-12 and served the same purpose.    I am convinced these programs became the genesis of at least the educational facets of what later was to be known as the GI Bill.  This was a good deal as it got a lot of young men into college who otherwise wouldn't have been there, mainly for financial reasons.   Many were brought into the program who had already been inducted into the military.  The main thrust however was aimed at boy's in High School and tests were given in schools for this purpose.   The requirements were quite high and  the required entry level IQ was 115 whereas the O.C.S. entry level IQ was set at 110.  The main kicker for any one passing the test's from High School, was that after enlisting in the services, 13 weeks of Infantry Basic training was required prior to being assigned to a College campus.  (smart move here )  The basic Infantry training was quite rigorous,  For my part I was assigned to the 15th Company, 4thBn..., 6th Regt. A.S.T.P.  Fort Benning, GA  Oct. -- Dec. 1943.  The cadre was very professional as I recall the NCO's were all folks who hadn't quite made it through O.C.S. for one reason or another.  The Company commander was Capt. Arnold and he stands out in my mind, as he was reputed to have been a track runner in the 1936 Olympic games held in Munich Germany.
    In January 1944 a large contingent of the Engineering students were sent to A.S.T.P. Unit 3413 at Clemson college in South Carolina.  There was also Air Corps. future pilots getting their college requirements on the Clemson campus.  This occasioned some more or less friendly rivalry's and one such I remember was the air cadets calling the A.S.T.P. shoulder patch which was supposed to represent the lamp of knowledge,  the " Flaming Piss pot".  But you can rest assured that these compliments were returned in full measure. The least being delivered in the form of a platoon marching cadence song referring to the  " Jr. Bird men flying upside down into the wild blue yonder" with the balance of this commentary being unprintable in the presence of children. These programs were really accelerated and one was supposed to come out the other end in 18 months of 6 three month terms with a four year degree and a commission.  On arriving at Clemson the first dire threat laid on was that any one busting out of the program would have an immediate transfer back to the Infantry.   However I did notice on the bulletin board that many who had failed in the previous term were being sent to the Signal Corps., the Field Artillery,  Ordinance Corps and such which didn't sound to bad.
    After the first few weeks it didn't seem possible to me that any one could pass through three months of this educational rat race, but there was no need to worry as at the end of the first term in April 1944,  just two months before June 6, 1944 (Guess What?) the entire program with a few exceptions, such as the medical field, was disbanded and my entire unit 250 strong was sent en-mass to and scattered throughout  the 87 Infantry Division at Fort Jackson, SC.
  The 87th Division known as the Acorn Division was being used as a training unit for overseas infantry replacements and it was the last full Infantry division still in the U. S. and as such the Golden Acorn shoulder patch was sometimes spoken of somewhat irreverently as the "Cringing Lemon".
    Many of this Clemson class of 44 were sent overseas as replacements and landed on D-day with various Infantry units. Others later shipped out with the 87th Division and acquitted themselves very well with the Third Army in the relief of Bastogne among others.  Others of us were sorted out and sent to various and sundry other units to fill out their compliments.
    The small group I was with was sent, for reasons beyond our comprehension, to the 488th Engineer L. P. Co. at Fort Jackson , which was just being formed and starting basic training.  This meant another 6 months of stateside training and to this day at our reunions we often mention how fortunate a turn of events this was for us as individuals, making it much more likely we would be able to survive through those war years.   In world war II the survivability rate of an infantry replacement soldier in Europe was measured in days, the new replacement in the order of things became a squads point man, with the word being that if he survived the first two days of combat he may acquire enough savvy to survive for another week or two.
    The 488th met up once more with the 87th in the summer of 1945 back at Camp Lucky Strike, France.  I recall visiting them and able to locate only two or three of our original 250 from Clemson.
    A fellow 488th A.S.T.P.er, Robert Lipson of El Paso, TX informs me he has a copy of a book written about the A.S.T.P. program by Louis Keefer titled Scholars in Foxholes.  I am trying to obtain a copy and if successful may be able to embellish this segment a bit.   Bob has offered the loan of his copy but I am some what hesitant as you know so often what happens to borrowed books.
    After receiving a copy of Keefer's book,  (Any one who is interested in obtaining a copy of this book may contact Louis Keefer at,   (The  COTU Publishing  Co.,    P.O. Box  2160,   Reston VA,  20195-0160)),     After explaining the history of the A.S.T.P. his book is made up mostly of accounts of A.S.T.P.ers.  Not only their college experience but also the military trails taken after the break up of the college program in April of 1944.  These accounts come across very interesting from a historical perspective and are very much a precursor of TomBrokaw's greatest generation books.    I learned from Keefers prologue that my S.O.B. was none other than Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, 1940 - 1945, and self professed "father of the ASTP," who would write after the war that with Congress limiting the size of the services, the Army's need for combat soldiers finally became far more crucial than its need for college trained men.  In his book, On Active Service in Peace and War, Stimson explained:
    "Each step of the ASTP story was tied in with the ups and downs in the Army's estimate of its manpower requirements.  In all such changes, the college training program, as a marginal undertaking, was sharply affected. [The choice was] between specialized training and an adequate combatant force."
    Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, an era of extreme isolationism,  the armed forces of the United States were absurdly small, and most Americans seemed content to keep them that way even after the European war began.  Before the fall of France in 1940, it was hoped that the "good guys" would win without United States intervention.  Journalist Walter Lippmann argued,  "As a matter of fundamental strategy, our role [should be] on the sea and in the air and in the factory -- not on the battlefields of Europe or Asia."  Many Congressmen obviously agreed.  Many of us even today feel that had the United States actively joined the fray in 1939, our very limited and meager military resources, would have been lost along with the French and British at Dunkirk.  The result of that may have produced a very different out come on both fronts in WW II and an entirely altered world from the one we know today, especially so as this may have forced Germany and Russia to remain the Allies that they were in 1939.
    In retrospect, [given two years to build up] the nation ultimately stood up extremely well to the twin challenges of producing as well as fighting.  Although the manufacture of certain durable good was curtailed, and some consumer products had to be rationed, war production exceeded early targets and the nation's armed forces eventually numbered more than fifteen million men and women.
A Few Notable  A.S.T.P.
Alumnus

  Robert J. Dole: Kansas born Robert J. Dole joined the ERC in December 1942 after a year and
                                                a half at the University of Kansas as a pre-med student.  After basic training
                                                at camp Barkley near Abilene, Texas, the 20 year old Dole was sent to
                                              Brooklyn College to study engineering.  He was there five months before
                                                being transferred to the 75th Infantry Division.  After earning his 2nd Lt. bars
                                              at Ft. Benning OCS, he was assigned as a replacement in the 10th Mt. Div.

  Edward I Koch    The future mayor of New York City, was a trainee at Fordham U in the Bronx
                                                for six months.  Koch served in Holland with the 415th Regiment of the
                                               Timberwolf Division.

  Heywood Hale BraunWas a language trainee at the U of Pittsburgh and speaks of his experience
                                                "Although there were thousands of Pittsburgh second generation Americans
                                                who spoke Serbo-Croatian in their homes, twenty six soldiers were chosen to learn
                                                it from scratch and then, at the course's end, be distributed at random back in the
                                                Army.  I managed to get to Europe, where I amazed Serbian escapees from German
                                                camps with the information that their language was taught in American Universities.
                                                I didn't tell them that the Universities were one in number."

 Henry A. Kissinger  Long before his days as U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was a skinny,
                                                baggy pants, basic engineering trainee at Lafayette College in Easton, PA.
                                                He later served as an interpreter in the European Theatre.
                                                His room mate Charles C. Coyle wrote " Kissinger didn't read books. He ate them,
                                                with his eyes, his fingers, with his squirming in the chair or bed, and with his
                                                mumbling criticism.  He'd be slouching over a book and suddenly explode with
                                                an indignant, German accented  "BULL-SHIT,"  blasting the authors reasoning.
                                               Then he'd tear it apart, explosive words prevailing, and make sense of it.

  Gore Vidal

  Andy Rooney

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