E. C. Quick, B BTRY 340TH FA

My ASTP story began in Pittsburgh, PA, where I was enrolled as a freshman-engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh. Pitt had a Coast Artillery ROTC program, which I joined, and on the advice of the CO, a number of us in the program also signed up in the Enlisted Reserve Corps. He said that this would keep us from being drafted until we had finished school. Three months later, the ERC was called to active duty and we were ordered to report to Ft. Meade, Md., and then sent to Ft. Bragg for basic training in Field Artillery. Halfway through the 13-week training, the Army discovered that a bunch of us Pitt ERC people were in the wrong service and should be given the chance to transfer into Coast Artillery. We were told, however, that if we transferred, we would have to start basic all over again. There were those of us who thought that nothing could be worse than Ft. Bragg, so we took the transfer without knowing where we would be sent. We heard later that those who stayed at Bragg went into the 15th Division. We couldn't have been luckier.

We ended up on Monterrey Bay in California near the town of Watsonville in a place called Camp McQuaide, where we trained in the use of 155mm rifles on Panama mounts _ defending the west coast against an enemy attack. Ft. Bragg it was not. Near the end of our 13-week basic, we were given the chance to take eligibility tests for the ASTP program. Most of us took the tests and a lot of us were accepted. Again, we had no idea where we were headed. Talk about luck. This time, after being processed through Stanford University, we ended up at Los Angeles City College, fifteen minutes from Hollywood. LACC was a quiet little campus in those days, with ivy-covered buildings and a faculty that looked like the cast of a 1930's Hollywood movie. We enjoyed this life thoroughly for several semesters until the Army caught up to us again...and in our gabardine suntans we ended up in Hunter Liggett Military Reservation...in the 89th Division...on maneuvers...and once again in a Field Artillery unit. I remember my first encounter with our first sergeant in a pyramidal tent city there. He had told me in which tent I was to bed down, and after looking inside, I went back to him to report that there were no cots in the tent. He didn't say a word. He just sighed.