World War II
Kasten enlisted in the U.S. Army following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Kasten was initially assigned to the medical corps but ended up in the engineers corps where his artistic skills were used for camouflage. After Officer Candidate School he was deployed to England to serve with the 295th Engineer Combat Battalion. On D-Day he was promoted to Captain and put in charge of the Intelligence unit of the Battalion. Kastens' memories of the war are dark and he recalls bluntly, "My job was to kill people", and "I was pretty miserable inside."
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