It was 80 years ago next week when the last two of the award winning Atlantic Highlands High School basketball team joined the other three members of the team on the battlefields during World War II.
George Janus and Abe Pleasant left the Atlantic Highlands Draft Board on March 2, 1943 for training and destinations unknown as soldiers.
Already serving on the battlefields were Bob “Spicket” Morse, then a Petty Officer Second Class serving with the Navy someplace in the Pacific; Army Tech Sgt.Lou Papa, who had already been serving a year somewhere in England, and Jim Posten, brother of another acclaimed Posten, Capt. John Herbert Posten, a veteran flyer. Jim was serving in the African campaign.
The five were the heroes of the 1937-38 basketball season when they went brought great honors to their high school by scoring an undefeated season in the Shore Conference, then going on to win the Central Jersey Championships. That made them finalists in the Group 2 Championship in Princeton and heroes in their home town..
The five had played basketball under the highly respected and successful Arnold Truex, who lived on Grand Avenue and at the time of this team’s departures in the military was then with the Leonardo Lions.
In announcing that all five basketball stars were now in active duty in various battlefields overseas, the Atlantic Highlands Journal said they were “looking to secure the same success in the ‘big contest’ that they did on the courts.
