Critical Mass

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During World War III was an Air Force weatherman, mostly in Italy. My friend and collaborator Cyril Kornbluth had a varied career. He started out as a machinist with the artillery, a safe and reasonably satisfying job, as well as one pretty useful to the war effort. Along came ASTP. ASTP was a marvelously do-gooding program whereby certain soldiers could effectively drop out of the war entirely, attending college in uniform instead of fighting or holding down posts in the United States. I have never really understood what it had to do with the job of defeating Germany, Italy and Japan, but it surely was a dream of delight to every GI, and Cyril signed up for it at once.

Catch-22 came along in 1944. The Army perceived that what it really needed was not so much well-rounded officer material as warm bodies to throw against the enemy. ASTP was canceled without warning, and everyone in it was immediately reassigned to the infantry, as a private. The rest of us in uniform-even the rest of us-could not help feeling some compassion. When I went overseas it was on a troop transport that had once been a fruit-company freighter, called the Cristobal. About a hundred of the troops on board were weathermen like myself. The other 1,800 were former ASTP students, now about to join the Fifth Army’s infantry divisions at Cassino. Some of them were still in their teens. Some of them had not been in the Army more than a few weeks. And some never walked away from Cassino.

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