Veteran’s Day Ceremony to Commemorate 1943 UMaine Army Unit
Contact: Steve Adam, (207) 581-2262; George Manlove, (207) 581-3756
ORONO — A special Veteran’s Day memorial ceremony will be observed Thursday, Nov. 11 at the University of Maine to commemorate the addition of newly discovered names of World War II casualties who attended UMaine in 1943 as part of a specialized U.S. Army training program.
A plaque bearing the names of former Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) members will be hung near a plaque bearing 52 original names put up in a Veteran’s Day commemoration in 2002.
ASTP veteran Robert McKinney of Old Town will formally present the plaque to UMaine Interim Provost John Mahon. Also representing UMaine at the presentation will be Larryl Matthews, dean of the College of Engineering, and Maj. Diane Dunn, executive officer of UMaine ROTC.
The informal public ceremony will be held at 2 p.m. in the lobby outside the Minsky Recital Hall auditorium in the Class of 1944 Hall, where the original plaque is displayed.
The ASTP originated when the U.S. Army sent soldiers to various colleges to learn special war skills. The detachment assigned to UMaine was designated as the “pre-radar” group, and arrived on campus beginning in the summer of 1943 to study electrical engineering and other related disciplines. Army records list the maximum number of ASTP soldiers at UMaine was 516.
In March of 1944, the army decided need for infantry replacements was more pressing than the need for technical specialties, so the army disbanded the ASTP and sent detachments to combat units in Europe. Most of the UMaine ASTP troops first went to Tennessee to join the 104th Infantry Regiment and the 26th Infantry Division (Yankee Division).
Between 1944 and 1945, more than 10 percent of the UMaine ASTP soldiers were killed in action, with as many as 75 percent wounded, in historic campaigns that included the Battle of the Bulge and the crossing of the Rhine River.
In 2002, the UMaine College of Engineering hosted a reunion for the surviving ASTP members who began their service in Orono. About 60 ASTP veterans attended, many seeing each other for the first time since the unit disbanded.
The reunion included a memorial service in which a plaque was presented to the university commemorating the names of 52 UMaine ASTP veterans identified as killed in action. Since then, surviving ASTP members have located the names of several additional members who were killed in World War II.
Additional information is available by calling Steve Adam, advancement officer, UMaine College of Engineering, at (207) 581-2262.