WWII Advanced Service Rating Score (1 Viewer)

[Shannon Reuss]

As some of you may know one of my main hobbies is compiling my family history, and tonight I was going over my grandfather's Army discharge papers. The very last item on the paper was "ASR Score (2Sep45) 74".
That of course sent me right to Google to see what an ASR score was.

This may be common knowledge but I was not aware of it so I thought I'd mention it here. It was basically a point system to determine who got to go home and who stayed. I found a great website explaining how it worked:
http://members.aol.com/ItalyWW2/Points.htm

I found it interesting that the minimum number was lowered to 75 but my grandfather's score was 74. By that time he had been in the service from 11 Apr 1942 to 26 Oct 1945 and was discharged for the "convenience of the Govt. RR1-1 (Demobilization)" so maybe they weren't really paying attention to the ASR score by that point.

The website said that the ASR system was mentioned briefly at the end of "Band of Brothers" and I know many of you are big fans so in case you were wondering what they were talking about, now you know.

Regards,

 

[jazzeum]

I'll leave it to the experts to discuss this in detail but on the BoB, there was a whole episode on Points. After the war in Europe had ended and the Army was turning into an Army of occupation, for servicemen to go home, they needed a certain number of points in order to leave. I believe that's what you're referring to. I will let others elaborate.

 

[DMNamiot]

Hi Shannon,

You are very lucky to have your grand fathers records keep them safe. A lot of them were destroyed in a big fire and many more are still in files waiting for who knows who to do a sorting and cateloging of them so be very glad you have the records. I am in the process of hunting down my Great Uncles information and my Grandfathers records so I can see who went where and did what, I wish my father had kept his dads information but as with a lot of people he either chucked them or they were tossed when my grandfather moved from his house to an apt. Fortunately my uncle has a lot of papers and photos that he says he will go through for me someday I guess I will have to keep bugging him. I have also been trying to find out more about my great uncles dad who was in the cavalry in the Philippine Insurection so if I had some of those papers I would be a lot happier.

Yes you are correct Brad that it was a way to get folks out of Theather in a semi fair way at least for the Military it was a good way to do things. You built up points for things like days in combat, awards and wounds, etc. That way they got people out of there as quickly as possible with out destroying morale. Shannons Grandfather would have been at about VE DAY + 5 months if he was in Europe. So they would have gotten a lot of the folks with higher numbers home by then and they would have begun the massive process of downsizing our Army to a more manageable size. Of course like anything else there would have been problems and GIs will always find a way to grouse and complain about nearly anything. So if you look at the system it was about as fair as the Army could get it. Not perfect but fair.

Anyway keep those records safe.

All the best

Dave

 

[maddadicus]

Yes, that warehouse fire made my father's war participation in the Korean War disappear. I have been futively trying to recreate those records without success. Sometimes the relatives unit has an active website. You may get lucky and glean some help there.....Michael