89th Infantry Division of World War II: Memories: ASTP and Air Cadets

ASTP/Air Cadets

ASTP AT OSC
(The Army Specialized Training Program)
As conducted in Oregon State College
(Now Oregon State University)
Prepared by Raymond E. Kitchell

Purpose

A veteran of the 89th Infantry Division in World War ll who attended ASTP at OSC, with the indispensable cooperation and assistance with OSU staff, particularly Larry Landis Archivist and Chris Bell, Associate Dean of Research, College of Engineering where the majority of ASTPers matriculated, has prepared this story. The support and encouragement of Paul. G. Risser, President of OSU, is also gratefully acknowledged. Given the historic impact of the program on both GIs and the institutions they attended and the more than 50 years that has since passed, it is hoped this paper will of interest to both contemporary students and alumni of OSU as well as many ASTP Veterans, World War II historians, academicians, war buffs, and all Oregonians who should take pride in this critical period of service and growth. Most inputs for this article have been provided by the vets themselves, with pictures and personal stories, and gleaned from the archives of OSU. More than just a nostalgic trip down memory lane, it is hoped that this story will again highlight the huge and continuing impact that ASTP and the GI Bill had not only on veterans and the country at large but also on the cooperating institutions themselves of which OSU is an excellent example.

The article has been prepared with the expectation that it will be published, fully or at least partially, in the OSU Alumni News and perhaps picked up by other interested organizations in Oregon (e.g., local and state publications) and elsewhere, particularly historians, and will receive worldwide distribution on the Internet by publication in the website of the 89h Infantry Division WWll at . It will also be published in The Rolling W, the magazine of The Society of the Eighty-Ninth Division WWll. In summary, this article is intended to: (a) record and circulate a summarized history of the ASTP at OSC, and (b) highlight the impact the ASTP had, followed by the GI Bill, not only the GIs themselves when they re-entered civilian life, but on OSU and its student body with the premise that this was not unique. It is intentionally not copyrighted.

Description of the Nationwide ASTP

A comprehensive and official version of "The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops", was published in 1948 by the Department of the Army. (The full document can be obtained on the ASTP website at www.contibutions@astpww2.org/main/procure.htm). Selected extracts and abridgments from this publication and from "Scholars in Foxholes: The Story of the Army Specialized Training Program in World War II", by Louis E. Keefer, are used to put the 89th soldier's personal stories in context. Readers desiring more information on the ASTP and the Air Cadet Programs are referred to these sources.

During World War II, the U.S. Army ran the single biggest education program in the nation's history. The Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) sent more than 200,000 soldiers to more than 200 colleges and universities to study engineering, foreign languages, personnel psychology, dentistry, and medicine. Selected for their high IQs and previous educational experience, the young men believed they would eventually be assigned to technical duties requiring such training. Many expected to become officers. The results were quite different.

The ASTP was formally established in December 1942. It differed from some of the preliminary proposals in placing attention not so much on the production of officers as on the production of specialists who might or might not ultimately be commissioned. The specialties were chiefly scientific, engineering, medical, and linguistic. The maximum number of men to be in the program was set at 150,000. Enlisted men under twenty-two years of age, and having an ACT score of 110 or more (later raised to 115), were eligible. During 1943 about 100,000 students for the program were taken from the three major forces, and about 50,000 from new inductees. Unit commanders were not pleased about releasing such men to the ASTP.

With the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, a heavy demand for replacements set in. With Selective Service falling behind in the delivery of its quotas and with RTC quotas incorrectly adjusted to the actual rate of ground causalities, the replacement training centers could not meet the demand. The Army Ground Forces was obliged to take replacements from divisions and other units in training to meet the heavy current demand. Shortages reappeared, training was interrupted, and readiness of units for combat was delayed. The number of infantrymen taken from divisions for replacement purposes, about 26,000 by January 1944, was comparable to the number of replacements who might have begun training in the summer of 1943 if replacement-training facilities had not been reserved for ASTP trainees (new 18 year-old inductees) who had failed to appear. The ASTP thus happened to contribute to the quantitative crisis, which prevailed in the Infantry at the end of 1943. The crisis soon overwhelmed the ASTP.

The ASTP, operating on a scale of 150,000 trainees, became increasingly vulnerable when personnel shortages threatened to impede military operations in late 1943. The efficiency of divisions (including the 89th) in training was being gravely impaired by the wholesale transfer of their infantry privates to the replacement stream. The program was immediately cut and eventually abandoned. A large number of trainees, almost overnight, became infantry privates. For its trainees, the ASTP was series of disillusionments. Some, had they not been sent to college, would undoubtedly have gone to officer candidate schools, to the advantage of themselves and of the Army Ground Forces. Others had lost any rank (all trainees were reduced to the rank of Private no matter what rank previously achieved), which was not automatically returned when transferred, and indeed, promotion was difficult because officer and non-commission ranks had not been diminished.

The first element to be sacrificed to the growing need for combat soldiers was the ASTP. Following the virtual dissolution of the ASTP in February 1944, the Ground Forces obtained 73,000 men, virtually all in the youngest and most vigorous age group and in AGTC Classes I and II. Almost 50,000 of these men had been members of the Ground Forces before their assignment to the ASTP.

A few weeks later, on 29 March 1944, the War Department ordered the transfer to the Ground and Service Forces of 30,000 aviation cadets who were not needed by the Air Force and who had originated in the other two commands. Of the 30,000 transferred cadets the Ground Forces received 24,000, of whom 20,000 had formerly been members of the Army Ground Forces. Most of the aviation cadets were in AGCT Classes I and II and they were physically an even better lot than the ASTP students.

The AGF assigned virtually all the aviation cadets and 55,000 of the ASTP students to divisions, the remainder of the of the ASTP students going to non-divisional units. Thirty-five divisions, infantry, armored, and airborne, received on the average over 1,500 ASTP students each. Twenty-two divisions received on the average about 1,000 aviation cadets each. All divisions still in the United States, except those scheduled for earliest shipment overseas and the 10th Mountain Division, which contained and exceptional proportion of high-grade men, received infusions of new manpower. Some infantry divisions, those which were most depleted (like the 89th) or which had the lowest intelligence rating, obtained over 3,000 men from the two sources combined. All divisions assigned the ASTP student and aviation cadet mainly to their infantry components.

Some division commanders thought that the majority of replacements whom they took to port were inferior to those men who had been lost, not only in training but also in stamina and other qualities essential to combat effectiveness. This was not true of replacements received from the ASTP and the Air Corps, who generally were recognized as superior in all respects save training to the men whom they replaced. The typical division subjected to large-scale stripping in 1944 received about 3,000 replacements from these sources.

Stephen E. Ambrose aptly describes the effect of ending the ASTP and its release of soldiers and airmen to principally infantry divisions, in his excellent book Citizen Soldiers. From the beaches to the Bulge, infantry divisions and RTCs were largely composed of ex-ASTPers, former air cadets, and very young draftees and enlisted men. About half of the reinforcements flowed from the States to France---usually Le Harve---organized by divisions, such as the 99th and the 106th Division, the latter hit first by the Germans in The Battle of the Bulge. The remainder were not organized at all. They were simply privates on their way into battle wherever they were needed. Ambrose quotes Captain Roland, Closing with The Enemy, "The marvel is that the draftees divisions were able to generate and maintain any esprit corps at all. Formed originally by mixing men indiscriminately from throughout the nation, thus severing all personal, social, community and regional bonds, identified by anonymous numbers and replenished through the notorious Reppel Depples, their only source of morale, other than their shared experience of hazard and hardship, was the character and patriotism of the soldiers. Fortunately, that proved to be sufficient."

When the 200,000 ASTP and 71,000 Air cadets were released for the ground forces, suddenly "there were 190,000 of the best and brightest of the Army's inductees from 1942-43, enough for more than 10 divisions, available for assignment. What an asset at a time when every other combatant was taking conscripts too old, too young, to ill to fight, the U.S. Army was feeding into its fighting force its best young men. More than half of the ASTPers got sent into rifle companies as replacements. The Army had promised them a free education, then changed its mind and put them into the front lines, where most of them would never have ended up if they had declined the offer to enter the program. There was some bitterness and much bitching, then off to a brief basic training course." Still, in retrospect, at least for those like this veteran, the ASTP training and the subsequent GI Bill gave those who survived a big jump on life.