Darrell B. Thompson
Headquarters Detachment
329th Medical Battalion
104th Infantry Division
ARMY SPECIALIZED TRAINING PROGRAM

During the Camp Wolters training, many of us signed up for OCS (Officers Candidate School) and would have been sent to the Infantry OCS in Fort Benning, Georgia if we entered into the program. Subsequently, we found out about a new Army program called ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program) and most of us that had some college background signed up for this program. These programs were in basic engineering and foreign languages and were at a large number of colleges throughout the United States. In addition to the fact that the Army was not ready to invade Europe, it was also a political move to keep the colleges from going bankrupt. During the war the colleges had but few male students and those that were not coeducational would have had a rough time without the ASTP and the Navy V-11 programs.

CAMP MAXEY, TEXAS
Those of us who were accepted into the ASTP program, were shipped to Camp Maxey, Texas near Paris, Texas on September 1, 1943 on nine Greyhound busses. This camp had had a large group of Japanese prisoners who had been transferred elsewhere before we arrived. To give us a good welcome, those soldiers who were already there were hanging on the wire enclosure to the camp calling for American cigarettes and water. They were disheveled in appearance and we could hear beatings and screaming coming from the barracks. Our apprehension of a new camp was heightened by this display. We spent over a month at Camp Maxey before we got orders to report to a college for the ASTP training.

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY IN NEW YORK CITY
I was in a group of soldiers who were transferred to Fordham University in the Bronx in New York City, and we left Camp Maxey, Texas on October 6, 1943 for a four day trip by troop train to New York. We arrived in Grand Central Station in New York City, and we immediately boarded Army trucks for the trip to the Bronx and Fordham University. At this time we still had all of our equipment--steel helmets, full field packs, gas masks, rifles and all of the rest. We traveled by truck right down the main part of New York City, and you would think that we were getting a ticker-tape parade with the amount of interest we drew from all of the offices along the way in Manhattan. The people in all of the offices naturally thought that we were in New York City headed for overseas with the Army, so they all leaned out of office windows, waved flags, and hollered at us. We were heroes for a few minutes. I even had a civilian on the street tell me in confidence that we were embark-ing on the Queen Mary, since he said that it was docked in New York harbor. The next day, I found out that sure enough the Queen Mary was in the harbor when I saw it from the top of the Empire State Building. The college course was intense. We took the first year of college in the first three months, and the second year of college in the second three months. It was fun being in New York City for six months or so. We went to a lot of Broadway shows, saw several radio broadcasts (no TV then) and enjoyed the benefits of the low prices for servicemen in New York City.  I remember getting into the show at Radio City Music Hall for 35 cents ($2.50 for civilians) ahead of a line that was about three blocks long. Even the New Yorkers stepped aside so we could walk to the head of the line and plunk down our 35 cents and enter the theater first. What a good service town was New York City!