The Long Road: From Oran to Pilsen - Saint Vincent College

The Long Road: From Oran to Pilser
The Oral Histories of United States Army Veterans in the European Theatre of Operations, World War II.

This publication is available for purchase from the SVC Bookstore

General Editors: David Wilmes, Richard David Wissolik, John Hill, Gary E. J. Smith. Profusely illustrated with photographs from the collections of the interviewees. Original drawings by J.S. Downs. Produced under grants from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Community and Economic Development and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. ISBN: 1-88585-13-8. Hardbound, Smythe-sewn. 1999. $30.00.

Comments on the Book

"It speaks well for the candor of these veterans that they openly acknowledge the attacking or victorious soldier's tendency to pay himself for the dangers he has weathered by helping himself to food, drink, and souvenirs in the cities and towns that the Army overruns. Had they denied or simply concealed this universal result of war, they would have compromised the frankness which makes this book a masterpiece." G. Foster Provost, Ph.D., Emeritus, Duquesne University

"Over and over again, the following stories roam the back roads and dark detours of war and continue to arrive at questions of ultimate value. While their stories are filled with the details of an army's ordinary operations and soldiers ordinary preoccupations, the men who remember them are also capable of transcending the limited horizons of their individual experiences and question the larger moral dimensions of war." Mark Gruber, OSB, Ph.D., Sociology/Anthropology, Saint Vincent College.

"This book presents one of this century's defining experiences. Many who read The Long Road and the Center's companion pieces might not unhesitatingly support our country's summons, though the majority of narrators would. Herein are moments of strong and unhindered emotional experiences now recollected for audiences in the tranquility of a half-century's reflection. In life's twilight, these men all regard life as good. To squander this miracle on alien ground has to be the great contradiction of global diplomacy. And the travesty of war is surely revealed by western Pennsylvania's saving remnants as preserved herein. One can only conclude that these men survived as harbingers. As counsel. To remind all who read their words that Wilfred Owen spoke a lamenting truth when he wrote about The Great War: My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory/The old lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori." Charles John McGeever, Ph.D., University of Maryland, Asian Division.

"I am just a young historian who has hardly lived through my own history, but the past of these men persistently beckons and haunts me. I have not been to Europe to experience first hand the places these men describe. Nor have I seen the countless graves standing sentries for the future. I have only begun understanding this past through the eyes of the men I interviewed. Jack McDaniel, Joe Kay, Al Kormas, Enrico D'Angelo and Jim Coletti have allowed me to recognize what courage and freedom are and what patriotism isn't. By listening to these men and examining the occasional diary and numerous photographs buried away for fifty years in their homes, I am appreciating this past and reaping the benefits of its future. It is a future that hasn't lived up to all of the expectations these men had when they returned home, but it is certainly better than living in fear, something they did for a good part of their youth. When I look at myself in comparison to what they did at my age, I realize I have it good and always will have it good because they traveled the long road before me. Only a few remnants are left from their journey, but I continue to retrace their steps into the past meeting their ghosts along the way." David Wilmes.

'What I have read in this book about about my brother Mario's military experience is all new information to me. He simply never talked about it. Without this book, I would never have known the extent of his pain and anguish during that terrible time. Elsewhere in these pages we are privileged to read about the exploits of other young Americans from Southwestern Pennsylvania who found themselves in harm's way, in places far from home and hearth. They were all part of the heroic World War II generation. God bless them all." John DePaul

The Men of the Long Road and Epigraphs to the Histories

Dr. Richard R. Buchanan, M.D.

Amerigo John Casini

Rocco James Catalfamo

William Louis Ciavarra

James J. Coletti, Sr.

James Walter Herrington

"The Old-Timer." Joseph Kasperik, Jr. United States Fifth Army 1st Infantry Division ("The Big Red One") 26th Infantry Regiment Company B. Smithton, Pennsylvania, 13 April 1916. "Then you get hard-nosed and you just don't care for nothing except your buddies. If you saw some dead Germans or even some Americans that you didn't know laying on the side of the road or half-buried in a ditch, it's almost like looking at a dead animal. We lost 4,000 men in the Hurtgen Forest. We went through every campaign, every invasion. It was a long road!"

"Sherman's March." Harry Thomas Bee. United States Seventh Army 63rd Infantry Division ("Blood and Fire") 253rd Regiment 2nd Battalion Company D. Swissvale, Pennsylvania, 7 August 1922. "All of a sudden, a woman came running down the street hollering in German. I couldn't understand her. She's pointing up the hill. I jump in the jeep, and I'm the first one up there. There were kids scattered all over the place. Some were dead. Some had their arms off and their legs off! This one was lying there with his chest all open. You could see his lungs moving up and down. I took sulfa powder and poured it in there. For the first time since I got to Europe, I got out my emergency bandage. I pulled it apart and put the pad on his chest. I got him in the jeep. The kids had found that live round and it exploded when they banged it with a rock. I forgot all about it, but occasionally it still haunts me. Seeing that kid with his chest blown open… But I just went on with my life."

"The Recruiter, The Stenographer, The Counselor, The Engineer, The Driver, The Recon-man, The Soldier, The Jeep, and the Colonel." Robert F. Black 1261st Combat Engineer Battalion Jeannette, Pennsylvania, April, 1921 "In the south, where we had the same quotas that we had in the north, we were dealing with backward country situations. Men living in the mountains, swamps, and woods were largely uneducated. Going strictly by numbers alone, men were taken into the service who could not read nor write, nor handle themselves physically. They were absolutely frightened when they left their environment. Most of them had never been to a city. A good many didn't know what a car or what electricity was! They came into the service and got scattered all over the country in camps. Camp commanders went crying, "What are we going to do?"

"You Had to Go Like Crazy!" Richard Brown United States Third Army 5th Armored Division ("Victory Division," "Patton's Ghost Division") 85th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron Headquarters Troop Stoystown, Pennsylvania, 12 June 1920 "The other tanks just ran over Kraut corpses and smashed them. They just seem like road kill. Our dead gave me a totally different feeling. One time, in Hofen, I went down over a hill and found a dead guy. He was our mailman. He was just laying there, with his blue eyes wide open, holding the mail. I didn't know whether to try to pick up the mail or what. Sometimes they booby trapped the corpses. So I just went back to the outfit and told them. Some of the guys went down and gathered him up. I can still see that pair of blue eyes, staring up at the sky."

"To Hell With the Germans! Drive on, Garrison!" Dr. Richard R. Buchanan, M.D. United States Third Army 4th Armored Division Battalion Surgeon 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion Cincinnati, Ohio, 28 May 1914 "There was a time soon after I came home that Emily and I would get a baby sitter and we'd go to the movies. One time it happened to be a war movie. There came a cry, ‘Medics, medics!' I began to cry, and I had to get up and leave! I can remember the other time I cried, it was after the bombardment of Luneville. We had evacuated all the casualties, we had done our job as best we knew how, we were evacuating the area, we were moving out in the dark with the battalion to Arracourt to face the German tanks there, and all of the sudden I began to sob. In between sobs I said, ‘Now, men! I'm not going combat-fatigued! I'm all right!'"

"I'm Alright, Ma!" Amerigo John Casini United States Fifth Army 13th Field Artillery Brigade 36th Field Artillery Battalion Scottdale, Pennsylvania, 7 September 1915 "I had some close shaves at Anzio. Once, down in my foxhole, I had loosened the top of my boots. They shouted ‘Red Alert' and I jumped up to get to my machine-gun. The Germans began to shoot artillery at us and a piece of shrapnel hit the side of my machine-gun and went down into my boot. That shrapnel is red hot. It just blistered the Hell out of my foot! Another time a piece of shrapnel hit the dirt in front of me, caught my shirt and just scratched my side by my rib cage. It didn't bother me at all. This guy said to me, ‘If you go to the hospital you might get a Purple Heart for that!' I said to him, ‘Jim, you can shove that Purple Heart up your ass!' That's the way we felt! I mean, you get the old GIs, they're like that!!"

"What the Hell's Cannon Fodder?" Rocco James Catalfamo 83rd Infantry Division 330th Infantry Regiment Company C Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Candandaigua, New York, 10 May 1926 "The war made a man out of me. I was full of piss and vinegar and a little wild. I never got involved in anything criminal, but was rough around the edges. I think it straightened me out for the rest of my life. But I wouldn't do it again. Period! I just learned too much about killing. I found that you couldn't have any good buddies, because you don't know what's going to happen to them. I found out, also, that you need good bud dies, so they can protect you while you're sleeping, and you can protect them while they're sleeping."

"Hot Shots" William Louis Ciavarra 63rd Infantry Division 253rd Infantry Regiment 3rd Battalion Company M Fayette City, Pennsylvania 1925 "I had never been away from home before I went into the service. I was wondering what it was going to be like. A lot of the men were ashamed when we went for our physical in Greensburg. They had to stand naked. I went in with two men from Fayette City, Neal Marshall and Ralph Gill, and we tried to stay together. The three of us tried to get into the paratroopers because they had really great boots! We figured we could pick up a girl really quick with good boots and wings! We weren't thinking about having to jump out of an airplane. We were concerned about what we were going to look like! We thought that we would be hot-shot soldiers. Only my buddy Ralph made it. When we got to New York before we shipped out, they gave us our combat boots. If you wanted to see a bunch of smart-ass people going down the street we were it! There we were with our pants up showing off the boots. We were just like paratroopers, only their boots had laces whereas ours had buckles."

"It Made A Man Out Of You" James J. Coletti, Sr. United States Seventh Army 71st Division 66th Infantry Regiment 1st Battalion Headquarters Company Greensburg, Pennsylvania, 5 March 1919 "I remember when Steinmetz got hit. He was about an arm's length away from me. We were on the ground in this wooded area. He didn't even know he was hit, but I saw his field jacket started to get all red on his shoulder where he was bleeding. The bullet went clean through. It never hit a bone. But, still, since I was there, he wasn't alone. You have to depend on one another."

"I Guess I'm Gonna Make It!" Enrico D'Angelo United States First Army 69th Infantry Division 880th Field Artillery C Battery Saltsburg, Pennsylvania, 8 April 1918 "My dad lived down by the railroad. I was coming home about eleven-thirty one night from seeing my girl and there was an oncoming train. They used to put what we called torpedoes on the tracks, dynamite caps, to warn a train to be careful because another train was ahead. They went off. I stopped the car, jumped out, and laid flat along the road side. I thought for a minute that I was over there again!"

"Cowboys and Germans" John J. DiBattista United States Third Army 4th Armored Division ("Olympic") 25th Cavalry Reconnaissance Battalion Greensburg, Pennsylvania, 4 January 1925 "You know those John Wayne movies where that guy Ben Johnson used to play the ex-Confederate and he'd be the scout. John Wayne would be like, ‘What'd we got here.' Then he would go down and look at the hoof prints. ‘Kiowas. See this little chip. This is their trade mark. This deep chip here that's Kiowas. I'd say a war party of ten braves!' Mayforth used to do the same thing with tire marks. Mayforth knew all the tire marks, and we were on dirt roads a lot."

"That Damn War!" Mario DiPaul Seventh Army 63rd Infantry Division ("Blood and Fire") 253rd Infantry Regiment Company G Ligonier, Pennsylvania Greensburg, Pennsylvania, 16 February 1926 d. December 6, 1998 "This brave medic came by, took a look at me, cut a hole in the back of my jacket, pumped some sulfa in there, a shot and he said, ‘You're OK, Tiny. You're OK!' I said, ‘Yeah,' because I still couldn't feel anything. He called six guys from nearby holes, and those guys came, put me on a stretcher and ran me through a field of fire the whole way to an ambulance. That took guts! While they were running I saw people who were dead! I mean heads blown off! It took me years to get over that. Every time I'd have a slight fever my mother knew I'd have nightmares about that damn war!"

"It Was A Darn Shame." John Dudek VII Corps 195th Field Artillery Battalion Battery C 4th, 7th, 90th Divisions Mowein, Pennsylvania, 20 August 1922 "I was with a guy whose name was Harvey Farthing. We both had to dig a foxhole in the snowy, cold ground. After digging the foxholes, we had two hour shifts on guard duty. I had to go at 4:00 a.m. and he had to be on at 6:00 a.m. He said, "Hey, John, I have piles. Would you trade with me?" At the time I didn't know they were hemorrhoids. "I'm not going to trade with you!" I said. "I could get more sleep." I traded with him anyway. He was sitting on top of the foxhole. I was down there with the straw. At about 4:00 a.m. these Screaming Meemies hit us and I heard him screaming. I found out later he got hit with thirty-two pieces of shrapnel."

"Goodbye, Jack!" John Dumnich United States Fifth Army 36th Infantry Division 753rd Tank Battalion Captured near Lyons, France Dec. 14, 1944 Liberated from Moosburg, Germany, April 29, 1945 Salemville, Pennsylvania, 23 July 1923 "I went to Naples with a couple buddies. We were standing around and the kids would come up to us. We would give them candy, cookies, or fudge. One of their fathers came and invited us to supper. After supper we talked for a while and then left. We tried to pay him for the meal, but he didn't want it. It was like an insult, me paying him. I had the feeling that we should offer it to him because he may need it. He finally took it. After that it was Goodbye Jack. "Good-bye, Jack," meant that we were moving out. They gave us a little two-day break and then boom, we were taking off again.."

"One Day Was Enough!" Samuel A. Folby United States Fifth Army 1st Infantry Division ("The Big Red One") 18th Infantry Regiment 1st Battalion, Company B Latrobe, Pennsylvania, 4 July 1919 "You're walking for miles and miles, and your feet get wet, everything gets wet. If you don't have the temperament, then something is going to snap. The same thing in combat. I was in combat for one day. Then I got wounded. One day was enough!"

"Whoever Shot First Was the Lucky Guy." Michael J. Gatto 29th Infantry Division 116th Infantry Regiment 3rd Battalion Company M Carlton, Pennsylvania, 24 November 24 1916 "Many Germans tried to surrender to us that first day. They claimed that they were Poles who were forced to fight, but we couldn't trust anybody, so we shot them all. After all, they were wearing German uniforms. Whether they took prisoners behind us or not, I don't know, but our orders were to keep moving. If I couldn't stop and take care of a buddy who got wounded, then I sure wasn't going to stop and take prisoners."

"I Thought It Would Be Good For Me." Norman Haglund 102nd Cavalry Group Mechanized 102nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron Mechanized Troop C "Then I was carried to a plane, was put in on a rack with other wounded inside and given a shot. First thing I knew I awoke in a bed, and I was screaming. I was on fire and that my leg was rotting, because I picked up maggots coming out of the top of my cast! I was then taken to the operating room where the doctors explained that the maggots were put in to eat the dead flesh only."

"Wings Like Eagles" James Walter Herrington 101st Airborne Division 327th Regiment 1st Battalion Scottdale, Pennsylvania, 18 November 1920 "I think God has forgiven me for killing people. But it was a matter of either you or him. I think I was in a different world when I was doing this. And a lot of the other guys were, too. But it was a matter of life or death. I was interviewed by psychiatrists at Indiantown Gap when this all was over and we were being mustered out there. And he asked me that question. He really made me cry, that sonofabitch. That psychiatrist really brought it home to me. And I think the way he handled me when he talked to me made me think whether it was right or wrong, but it had to be right. This was just something that had to be done."

"The Kid From Brooklyn." Joseph Kay United States Seventh Army 63rd Infantry Division ("Blood and Fire") 254th Infantry Regiment Company G Brooklyn, New York, 15 August 1926 "We had pulled behind this hill and were unloading when the sergeant came around and told us to move it out. Some voice piped up, ‘Is it all right to load our weapons now, Sergeant?' Then he laughed. That was the moment of truth because we were now at a place where no one would give us a hard time for having a bullet in our rifle with which we could kill someone. All the old rules had gone."

"We Wuz No Heroes, Plus the Food Was Terrible" William David King United States First Army 99th Division 393rd Infantry Regiment 3rd Battalion Company L Derry, Pennsylvania, 3 March 1920 "The books that have been written, all the books that I've read concerning the Bulge and Remagen Bridgehead, Central Eu rope, These books, they're all heroes. I didn't see any heroes in the war. The guy that's carrying the rifle on the front lines, for him there's no glamour, and the food is terrible. The living conditions are horrible. You're just like a groundhog and treated like dirt under their feet. And you're expendable. They would much rather lose a man than lose a tank or a jeep."

"'Howitzer' Al" Alex Kormas United States First Army 69th Infantry Division 879th Field Artillery Battalion Headquarters Battery Cleveland, Ohio, 19 May 1921 "The dead must have been some part of a unit caught in the Bulge. We looked pretty dirty and crummy, but compared to these guys we dressed well. There was this one guy holding his knife. I'll never forget that man. He said, ‘Half of you guys are going to be dead.' When we got back, we rested for the remainder of the day and began combat after that. We learned that no matter how much training we had combat was different. I saw many frozen, dead Germans. That was the first big scare that I got. Another one was when I once went into the basement of a house. There were three young Germans laying under a couple of blankets. Their guns were upstairs. I noticed that their face had a very pale, olive color, indicating that they had froze to death. I got out of there. Really, I was down there looking for some wine, because every German house had great German wine."

"I Was Young, And This Was The Big War" John "Jack" McDaniel United States First Army 86th Infantry Division ("Black Hawks") 341st Infantry Regiment 2nd Battalion Company C Uniontown, Pennsylvania, 12 September 1925 "I always thought it would be so much better if we knew where we were going. As I look back on it now it really didn't make that much of a difference if we learned the big picture. Keep the rifleman ignorant and gung-ho. Young, dumb, virile kids make the best soldiers. They're too dumb to know they can get killed."

"There Was Nothing We Could Do..." Richard Radock United States Third Army 80th Infantry Division 319th Infantry Regiment 305th Medical Battalion Company C Fairhope, Pennsylvania, February 4, 1921 Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania "I told a lot of people that the soldiers in our company were more than brothers to us because we knew more about them and they knew more about us than our own brothers did. It was like a family. If you live at home a long time, then you see your brother once at the dinner table. Then they go their way and you go your way. That's it! But your life depended on your buddies in the Army. The Army would emphasize this. They had to know what each other was thinking, especially if they were riflemen."

"I Was Just A Guy With A Uniform" William Smolcic United States Seventh Army 45th Infantry Division 179th Infantry Regiment 2nd Battalion Company E Yukon, Pennsylvania, 9 April 1925 "I was one in particular who would carry as much ammunition as possible. I likened myself to Pancho Villa. I carried bandoleers across my chest. In addition to those I had an ammunition belt full of shells. In my pockets I had stuffed as much as I could get. Your field jacket had two big pockets on each side, and your trousers had two big pockets running down the legs. These were all jammed with bullets and I had a couple of grenades."

"The Foot Soldier" Anonymous United States First Army 112th Engineer Combat Battalion Various Division Attachments Attached to the 29th Infantry Division June 6, 1944 Greensburg, Pennsylvania, 16 March 1917 "I was there eight months. Eight months they kept saying they'd get me shoes. They made six pairs of shoes for me, and I was shipped over, but I didn't get the shoes until I got overseas. They sent me those six pair of shoes. They give me two pair and the supply sergeant got the other four. They said to me, "I don't know who's going to last the longest, you or the war."