This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. and Kool-E, Professor of Television Studies at Rowan University, Infra Terry Gross.

Today is Veterans Day, and we market by listening back to interviews with two men who fought in World War II.

Of the 16 million veterans of that war, a little more than 167,000 are still alive.

First, we listen to our 1999 interview with Robert Kotluwitz, author of the memoir Before Their Time.

He was a college student when he was drafted into the infantry in 1943.

He was Jewish and was sent to France to fight the Germans.

In one battle, nearly his entire platoon was wiped out.

We'll hear him describe that experience in a few minutes.

After the war, Kotluwitz was a managing editor of Harper's Magazine

and former director of programming and broadcasting for the New York Public TV station WNET.

He died in 2012 at the age of 87.

When he spoke with Terry Gross, he told her that after basic training,

he was sent with the 26th Division to the French countryside.

I was sent to the Alsatian countryside because I had been

what was called an ASTP infantryman.

In the summer of 1943, about 175,000 to 18-year-olds

were drafted out of college and given basic training primarily at infantry centers

like Fort Benning, where I had been sent.

After 13 weeks of basic training, I was sent off to the University of Maine in Arno,

to study engineering, along with 1,000 other 18-year-olds.

Within two months, that program folded and low and behold,

the Army had 175,000 infantry trained 18-year-olds to fill in

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