Just a few words concerning my experience with the ASTP system during WW2,which hopefully will not offend anyone,but rather will help people understand the very broad scope of the program. My path to the program began with my enlisting in the Army in November of 1942. I was assigned as a draftsman (I had two years of Engineering college as well as two years gainful employment as a draftsman) at the Brooklyn Army Base. In February,1943 I was transferred to the ASTP unit at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I did not apply for this posting-I was ordered to report there,so I went! They put me in a Civil Engineering course. There was also a very large contingent studying foreign languages-such as Arabic,Rumanian,and the one I mentioned in an earlier post--Greek with a Bulgarian accent! Truly a great time to be alive and young! This all came to an end in early February,1944 when ASTP was basically terminated. Yes,quite a number of men were reassigned to jnfantry training, but some 54 of us wound up in the Manhattan Project and were sent to Los Alamos,New Mexico for the duration. We were all ranks-I even saw one guy with First Sergeant's stripes.Since I had come to know most of these guys during our stay at the UofP and since I wondered how the Army had picked us for this particular assignment, I made it a point to "chat them up" and found that there indeed was a common thread! This is not to say that none of the guys sent to the infantry would have otherwise qualified,but every one of us sent to the Manhattan Project had been gainfully employed before the war-draftsman,truck driver,electrician,carpenter,etc. In case you didn't know,or forgot--we helped produce the atom bomb that ended the war.