Upon our arrival on campus, we were marched in formation to a house that served as headquarters for ASTU 3890. We stood at attention as a Captain, in sharply tailored dress "pinks", followed by a 1st Lieutenant in officer's "greens" stepped out onto the porch. The Captain's cap had an "Air Corps crush" and he wore it with the bill pulled way down over his eyes. He had a swagger stick tucked firmly under his left arm. The similarity to "Blood and Gloves" and his riding crop struck us all.
The Captain introduced himself, "I am Captain Connette. It rhymes with bonnet. I am the Commandant of ASTU 3890."
He said it in a tone that suggested Stalag 17 rather than a college campus.
"This is my adjutant, Lt. Mc Giver."
The 1st Lieutenant nodded.
Captain Connette then said, "If you think, Joe College, that this is going to be a soft assignment, you are wrong, dead wrong."
He then went into a half hour harrangue in which he told us how heavy the class load would be, how many hours we would have to spend each night to keep our heads above water. The little martinette strutted about the front porch occasionally flourishing his swagger stick and whacking his palm sharply for emphasis. He pounded on the point that most of us would flunk out in the first few weeks and would then be sent to the "real" army. He made it clear that this was a military garrison and he intended to run it like one. Captain Connette kept us standing at attention for the whole brow-beating speech. He finished by saying that we looked like a bunch of hoboes and bums and ordered us to have our uniforms custom tailored and pressed before the first formation Monday morning.
" Lt. Mc Giver will assign your quarters."
The captain did an "about face" clinched his swagger stick firmly under his arm and strutted back into the building.
Lt. Mc Giver said, "At ease", and gave us a rundown on the location of the mess hall and other facilities, briefed us on a our room assignments, and then told us that we would be free for the weekend to get our bearings, and explore the campus and Denton. We liked Mc Giver right away.
He then said, softly, "He means it about your uniforms. Get them done by Monday." He then handed out shoulder patches to be sewn on our uniforms. He explained that the patch symbolized the '"lamp of learning and the sword of valor", told us where the local tailor shops were located, and dismissed us. Lt. Mc Giver was both a gentleman and a gentle man.
Standing next to me during this briefing was Tom Lutze, a fellow of great wit, and instantly likeable. He looked at the new patch and said, "Well, I guess that we are now in the "Gravy Boat and Butter Knife Corps".
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Denton wasn't so bad after all. There were about 250 of us in the ASTP unit but there were three or four thousand female students on the North Texas State Teachers College (NTSTC) campus and more than double that number at the Texas State College for Women (TSCW) on the other side of town. Texas is noted for its beautiful women and it seemed like all of them had been assembled in a veritable smorgasbord in Denton.
Captain Connette had told us, in no uncertain terms, about our studies. We would be carrying 24 credit hours plus military instruction, close order drill, and physical ed.
How in the world would we be able to do it all ---- and still have time for those studies?
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The first night at evening mess I discovered that a friend from my hometown, Jack Steptoe, was already there. He immediately filled me in on the layouts of the town and the two campuses, the location of the USO, and other important matters.
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We had only been on campus for a week or two when, at our evening retreat formation, Lieutenant McGiver stepped out onto the porch at headquarters and said, "Captain Connette has been assigned to another post. For the moment, at least, I am your new Commandant."
There was a roar of approval from the ranks.
The rumor quickly spread through the unit that Captain Connette had been put in charge of a Prisoner of War (POW) camp somewhere out on the desert. Perhaps a little wishful thinking was behind that rumor.
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Major Menefee, Captain Connette's replacement, arrived in a few days. Lt. Mc Giver stayed on as his adjutant. They made a good team.
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We were quartered, initially, in near-campus houses, available because the civilian student population had dwindled somewhat due to the war. Chilton Hall, a new men's dormitory, was temporarily occupied by Air Corps Cadets but when they shipped out our new Commandant, Major Menefee, made a successful pitch to get ASTU 3890 into Chilton, a major improvement over our original quarters.
Chilton Hall was a U-shaped two-story dormitory with a quadrangle in the center that was well suited for military formations and close order drill.
Our room assignments in Chilton Hall were along alphabetical lines. My room mates were Bert Erwin, Bob Enterline, and Gustav Enyedy.
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There was a great USO in Denton and we had dances in the North Texas State Gym every weekend. The ASTP unit contained some excellent musicians who organized a band (along the lines of the famous big bands of that era) and they had all of the latest arrangements of the Big Bands, so the dances were outstanding.
At one of these dances I spotted an attractive young lady who lived right there in Denton. I thought she might be a good candidate for a Denton "steady" so I danced with her almost every dance. Then it turned out that Jack Steptoe already considered her his own private preserve. Who would have thought that with that many females in Denton, two guys from the same town would both be attracted to the same one?
There was no need for a confrontation over this. With thousands to pick from, I just found another girl, a lovely young lady from Dallas residing on campus in Marquis Hall.
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We all dreaded the days when our regular Physics professor, Dr. Carrico was absent. On those days, the Department Head, Dr. Black, would take his place. Most of Dr. Black's lectures were given, in a soft voice, while he was facing the blackboard. He held the chalk in his right hand, wrote the formulae chest-high on the board and holding the eraser in his left hand, carefully erased everything before it came into view. We sat there for an hour of his whispering, chalking, and erasing and learned absolutely nothing.
The studies were tough. Some nights there was just not enough time to read all of our assignments. In Physics we were studying heat transfer and one morning Dr. Carrico gave up a pop quiz. One of the questions was, "Define a perfect black body."
One student who obviously had not read the assignment wrote, "Lena Horne."
He got no points for originality.
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It was not all fun and games at North Texas State. Twenty-four credit hours plus the military time was a heavy load to carry and some of the guys flunked out. Actually, they didn't all flunk out, some were victims of North Texas State's ignorance of how we got there and how the Army perceived our grades.
North Texas State had civilians taking the same subjects as we were taking and they were graded on the curve. However, what they did not realize was while the civilian students represented a normal (bell curve) distribution, the ASTP students had been through a rigorous selection process that eliminated the lower two thirds of a normal bell curve distribution so the Army expected us to make only "A"s and "B"s. When NTSTC tried to grade us on a curve it didn't work. Students doing a level of work that would normally have earned a "B" found themselves pushed down into the "C," "D," and "F" end of a badly skewed bell curve. Recognizing that something was wrong they tried to combine us with the civilian students for grading purposes, and we pushed most of the civilian student population down into the "D" and "F" end of the curve so they gave up on that.
Meanwhile, we got numerical grades that were scaled in a somewhat arbitrary manner. NTSTC considered 70 to be a low "C," a passing grade, but the Army considered 75 to be a "D" and they considered a "C" to be the lowest passing grade. A "D" wouldn't cut it. The bottom line was that a lot of guys busted out of ASTP when both they and the college administration thought that they were getting passing grades.
There came a day, in the Spring of 1944, when none of this really mattered anymore. All good things come to an end and the Army decided that it had an urgent need for more Infantry troops. The ASTP programs were summarily terminated at many colleges and most of us were shipped out to infantry divisions.
At North Texas State Teachers College they had put our feet to the flames of the "Lamp of Knowledge" and we were about to find out about the "Sword of Valor". In the upcoming months, many of the young men of this unit would be severly tested in combat and some would be decorated for valor. And some would make the supreme sacrifice.
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We had a military ball in the NTSTC Gym and one bittersweet party in the dining room with just the ASTP candidates and the faculty. It was a good party, one that I will never forget. There were comedy skits, a great jam session by some of ASTP's finest musicians, singing of the oldies but goodies, and some new songs including "Pistol Packin' Mama" that we had converted into a fine marching song back at Camp Hood, and one or two maudlin speeches by faculty members that we did not let dampen the spirit of the party. We concluded by singing "Let's Give a Cheer for North Texas State" (the NTSTC fight song) and "The Eyes of Texas are Upon You," then "God Bless America," and the party was over.
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Well, that was it; our ASTP unit was broken up. Because of my electronics knowledge and the fact that I could already copy Morse code at better than 15 words a minute, I was shipped to nearby Camp Howze, Texas and assigned to the 103d Infantry Division Signal Company as a radio operator, without ever attending an Army radio school.
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