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By Kelly Michaud
Editor in Chief
In 1943 and ’44, as battles were being won and lost overseas, a band of young soldiers trained for war at the University of Maine.
The enlisted men were part of a group of soldiers the Army began singling out in December 1942 for their exceptional IQs. Right out of boot camp, the soldiers were sent to select universities around the country to be trained as a specialized corps of officers to replace the engineers the Army predicted would be lost if World War II continued much longer.
The Army called the members of this Army Specialized Training Program, “soldiers first, students second.”
“After basic training we were fully qualified soldiers,” said Richard Glidden, 76, a retired chemist now living in Massachusetts and one of about 500 ASTP soldiers to attend UM. “We were very fortunate to leave the Army life and attend college. We had to stand reveille at 27 below zero and march to chow and a few other formalities, but life at Orono was wonderful.”
By March 1944, however, casualties were mounting rapidly in Europe and the ASTP was abandoned so that the soldier students could be shipped to the front lines.
Many of them died.
“We went immediately into the front ranks as infantry riflemen and there our odds were not good,”remembered Hugh Macaulay, 77, who lives in South Carolina. “We do not know how many were wounded, but almost everyone I know was in that category. On the front we longed for Maine.”
Those who survived are returning to the University of Maine next weekend for their first campus reunion – to reflect on their time here 57 years ago and to remember classmates who never made it back home.
“There is a strong bond between men who have been in combat together, especially if they had the advantage of studying together at Maine,” Glidden said. He is the main organizer of the UM event, which is being held during Family and Friends Weekend, Sept. 28 and 29.
After nearly six decades without any recognition from the university, William Lynch, now a retired doctor living in Milford, Conn., wondered if he and the other ASTPers had been forgotten.
“I don’t think many people knew these guys were there,” Lynch said. “The ASTP will have some place in history now and I don’t think it had a position in history on the campus before. I don’t think anyone was aware of it . .”
Glidden said the primary focus of the reunion is to honor those members of the ASTP from UM who were killed in action. The names of 52 men will be placed on a bronze plaque, which will be presented to the university during a memorial service at 11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, in Minsky Hall on campus.
Compiling the list of names of the deceased and tracking down survivors, however, proved a daunting task for Glidden and the two other organizers, former ASTPers Jim Drake of New Jersey and John Forest of Delaware.
Their first obstacle: The university no longer had a list of the ASTP soldiers who studied at UM.
“We had no base to start from,” Glidden said. “I do not understand why the university did not keep a roster of the ASTP men.
“After the war, when I returned home, I received an invitation from the university to enroll to finish my college training,” Glidden said. “So at that date, they knew each of us and where we lived.”
But the list didn’t survive the years.
In their desire to help Glidden, university officials put him in touch with U.S. Rep. John Baldacci.
In turn, Baldacci asked the Army to find a roster of Glidden’s unit.
“Using my name, they located two payroll records dated December 1943 of Companies A and B, totaling 513 men,” Glidden said. Since he didn’t have any current addresses, Glidden cross-checked the names with a mailing list he had from the 104th Infantry regiment, of which he was a part. The 104th was the principle military unit the men were transferred to after the ASTP was shut down, he said.
Glidden, Drake and Forest then sent out about 200 letters and waited.
More than half were returned for incorrect addresses, Glidden said, but he did reach some men and the families of others.
Through more correspondences and telephone calls, they learned how much the men from Maine had sacrificed.
“We found we really had a lot of people that didn’t get back,” said Drake, a retired business owner.
The numbers of those killed or wounded were massive, Glidden said.
“We lost a huge number of men from Maine killed in France and Germany,” Glidden said. “Almost everyone else from Maine was wounded in battle and a few lasted through to the end of the war.”
Fifty men were identified as killed in action but Glidden said he believes there were many more.
Without original records, however, he cannot be certain.
Forest, a retired pediatrician living in Delaware, was among those wounded; a grenade hit him while he was fighting in either France or Luxembourg – he’s not sure exactly which country he was in when wounded.
“This list of names is about 10 percent of the unit that was [at Maine] and killed in action,” Forest said.
While the list of those who died is incomplete, the three reunion organizers were able to find about 30 men who still were living and who could attend the event.
“When you consider we were there 57 years ago and fought through many battles in Europe, we are thankful that we are able to locate [them] to attend the reunion,” Glidden said. “We have another 40 to 50 men who cannot attend for health or distance reasons but all have contributed in one way or another to make this successful.”
Macaulay, now a retired professor, was among the wounded but he plans on attending. He left UM with the 104th Infantry Company B in 1944 and was wounded a few months later.
“We attacked Moncourt Woods [France] about 6 a.m. on Oct. 22, and by 7 a.m. I was shot and bleeding profusely,” Macaulay remembered. “An unknown medic came to my aid and staunched the bleeding, while we were still under fire by machine gun. He saved my life while exposing his to instant extinction.
“I wear a leg brace as a result of the wartime wound and am blind, but I feel most fortunate and love each day I live,” Macaulay said. “I survived. My time at Maine was among the best years of my life.”
While the spots on the plaque were at first reserved for those killed in action, two names were added- soldiers who were killed while they were still at UM.
Pvt. Herbert E. Guenther of Dover, Del., and Pvt. Thomas M. Gooden III of Evanston, Ill., died in February 1944 in a fire at Hannibal Hamlin Hall.
The fire of unknown origin destroyed the north wing of the dormitory.
“Although tons of water were poured into the blazing structure it burned with such rapidity that the rear wall collapsed within an hour from the time the fire was first discovered,” the Bangor Daily News reported Feb. 14, 1944.
“[A fire official] considered it a miracle that more student soldiers were not burned or otherwise injured in this terrific blaze,” explained a later BDN article.
Forest and Glidden agreed that Guenther’s and Gooden’s names should be included with the other 50 men.
Forest said there is still room on the plaque for other names of ASTP men killed in action if they are identified in the future.
On Friday, the survivors will reunite in a private ceremony and Saturday morning they will gather for the memorial ceremony.
Baldacci will give the memorial address and UM President Peter S. Hoff will receive the plaque.
The plaque will be hung on a wall outside the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps office in the Memorial Gym, with the hope that those soldier students from the university who died will not be forgotten again.
