Bob was in the Army Specialized Training Program  ASTP after boot camp

Organization of the ASTP

THE ARMY SPECIALIZED TRAINING PROGRAM was organized by the War department in collaboration with civilian educators in December, 1942, and the program was launched early in 1943 under the direction of the Army Specialized Training Division. The announced purpose of the ASTP was "to provide the continuous and accelerated flow of high grade technicians and specialists needed by the Army." To achieve this purpose qualified soldiers were sent to colleges and universities selected by the War Department for terms of prescribed study in fields where the Army's own training facilities were insufficient in extent or character. While in academic training the soldiers were on active duty, in uniform, under military discipline, and received regular army pay.

Trailblazer IQ gets big boost from new men

TASTP, Army Specialized Training Programs, began in 1943 just before the 70th was formed. It sought enlisted men who had scored high on post-induction intelligence tests. They had to score at least five points higher than men chosen for Officers Candidate School. It sent them off to college with the idea of utilizing their mental rather than physical abilities in waging war. From this pool would be drawn the specialists the Army needed as warfare became more and more high-tech. A great many candidates for OCS would come from this program also.

But the intensity of European combat demanded ground troops and ASTP was abandoned early in '44. The cutoff came in the middle of a semester and many soldiers were given degrees before formal completion of academic requirements.

Most of the soldier-scholars who came to the Trailblazers had been studying at the Universities of Idaho and Montana although there were a few from some of the other 212 colleges that were in the national program.

The Air Force cadet program, too, required high intellectual capacities. In that program, as in ASTP, men received military training even as they underwent intensified academic training. All of the transferred men must have been disappointed at this drastic change of assignment: some were vocally bitter. Not long afterward, Gen. George Marshall, America's highest military man, visited the 70th - and other similar units. While it was officially described as a general inspection trip to assess the readiness of the huge reinforcement, many observers believed, and still believe, that its primary purpose was to halt the bitterness before it grew to infect the whole Army.

It had that effect among Trailblazers. The new men quickly became excellent Infantrymen and many of them distinguished themselves in combat. And their boosting of that IQ score gave much satisfaction to those enlisted men who liked to snarl about the "dumb brass."

Taken from the spring issue of the 70th Infantry Division Association magazine

Trailblazer

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