Blog | IAVM

Paul Basile

September 17, 2020

Bataan Death March survivor Neil Iovino

Badly wounded in the early days of the war in the Pacific, Neil Iovino nevertheless survived the Bataan Death March and 44 months in jungle prison camps.

The youngest of eight children, Neil Philip Iovino was born on the West Side of Chicago on Jan. 3, 1918. His parents, Domenico and Richetta Serpico Iovino, came to Chicago from Scisciano, near Naples.

A graduate of Notre Dame Grammar School on Flournoy Street, he attended only one year of high school, but my dad was street smart. When people asked him where he went to school, he would say Notre Dame and they often thought he went to Notre Dame University.

His early life was marked by tragedy. His family lost their home during the Depression, and both of his parents died of strokes while he was a teen. Living with one or another of his two married sisters, he worked at whatever jobs he could find, including delivering telegraphs, shelling pecans, helping his brother-in-law sell produce and cutting out rain capes from sheets of processed rubber.

When he was 21, he saw a Marine recruitment poster touting “Education, Adventure, Travel” and enlisted on Dec. 7, 1939.

After boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, he volunteered for duty in Shanghai, China, and became a member of the Fourth Marines, who protected the 25,000 Americans living in the American sector. His duties in Shanghai included chauffeuring and interpreting Italian when needed.

He was stationed in Shanghai from May 1, 1940, to Nov. 28, 1941, when President Roosevelt ordered the Marines to evacuate all Americans living there to the United States. The Fourth Marines were then sent to defend the Subic Bay Naval Base adjacent to the city of Olongapo in the Philippines.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Subic Bay was under constant aerial bombardment, and my dad was the first to be wounded. Struck in the abdomen by several pieces of shrapnel, he was in critical condition when he was brought to the Riverside Cabaret, which had been converted into a hospital, where an emergency appendectomy saved his life.

While he was recuperating, the Japanese Army attacked the Philippines, overwhelming the American forces and forcing their surrender on April 9, 1941. What followed was the infamous Bataan Death March, during which 66,000 Filipinos and 10,000 Americans were forced to slog more than 60 miles through dense jungle and stifling heat by Japanese captors who killed any prisoner who lagged behind or paused to help a fallen comrade. Six days later, at least 2,500 Filipinos and 500 Americans were dead, and the remainder were subjected to inhuman conditions and inconceivable brutality until the end of the war.

My dad’s buddies helped him the first 10 miles of the march, but because of his injuries he was sent with other seriously wounded prisoners to Bilibid Prison Camp in Manila. Only by the grace of God was he spared being killed on the march. A surgeon and fellow prisoner operated on him in the Bilibid Prison Camp, where he stayed for over a year.

Despite his weakened state, his work detail included heavy lifting, airfield construction and road repair. Throughout his ordeal, my dad was a morale builder, holding onto the belief that they would be rescued. He believed God would let him see his family again and enjoy another pasta meal.

My dad was then sent to the Cabanatuan prison camp, where he endured two more operations. Even the doctors marveled that he pulled through. Because of his injuries, the Japanese spared him harsher work details and conditions.

However, the lack of food and its contaminated quality caused beriberi, dysentery and palagra. The mosquitoes carried malaria, and the heat could be extreme. Only the sickest prisoners remained in Cabanatuan prison camp but were still expected to do work details.

Imprisonment at Cabanatuan ended up being a lucky break. In the dead of night, the Sixth Rangers of the U.S. Army, led by Col. Henry Mucci, and with the help of Filipino guerillas, made a surprise attack on the camp, killing the Japanese guards. After nearly four years in captivity, my dad and the other POWs returned to the United States as free men in 1945, where they were wined, dined and treated to ticker tape parades.

Among the medals he earned were the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart Medal. A photo of him in the prison camp appeared in a story published in the February 1945 issue of LIFE magazine.

After a brief stay in three hospitals, my dad and other Marines were contacted by RKO Studios to promote the movie “Back to Bataan,” starring John Wayne and Anthony Quinn. The film features actual Bataan Death March survivors at the beginning and end. The last survivor shown at the end of the movie is my dad, marching to the song “California, Here I Come.”

RKO Studios engaged my dad and other Marine veterans featured in the movie as representatives. They went from town to town where the movie was being shown, also appearing at nearby defense plants to appeal for increased production of desperately needed war materiel.

At the conclusion of the RKO promotional tour, my dad made a large number of appearances on behalf of the war effort throughout Chicagoland, mainly to stimulate the sale of war bonds. During one of those appearances, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized, but his sisters checked him out of the hospital and cared for him at home.

He was honorably discharged as a gunnery sergeant from the Marines in 1946. Luckily for my dad, his sister Carmella had a best friend who lived across the street from the grade school that he attended. He and Laura Baldoni were introduced, they dated, and my dad proposed.

Because of his nervous breakdown, Laura needed my dad’s doctor’s permission to marry him in May 1949. Despite her family’s misgivings, Laura’s love, belief and faith in him resulted in 50 years of marriage, five children, four grandchildren, and one great-grandson that he was able to meet on Skype.

My parents lived for a while with his sister and her husband in Lake Bluff. He learned the printing trade under the G.I. Bill then went to work for the Waukegan News Sun, earning enough money to buy a small home in Knollwood.

They moved to Highland Park in 1954 and joined Immaculate Conception Parish. My dad worked the night shifts at the Chicago Tribune and then the Chicago Sun-Times. He also worked at the Highland Park Post Office and as a chauffeur for a corporate executive.

As children, we really didn’t understand what our father endured. When our father wore swimming trunks, we thought he had six belly buttons but learned those extra indentations were scars from shrapnel. His Marine Corps belt was used to discipline us. When we misbehaved, he would ask us, “The war made me crazy, what’s your excuse?”

There was always a lot of yelling in our house, and we just accepted it. We didn’t know how much was from being Italian and how much was a result of the prison camp experience. He could call us every name under the sun and then talk to us as if nothing had happened.

There was a lot of laughter, too, and our dad had a hearty, contagious laugh. He was very talkative and had to have the last word. He loved to walk and bicycle, and he was a good baseball player. At one Lake Forest Day carnival, he won so many prizes by knocking over dolls with baseballs, he was asked to stop playing.

There was always food in our house, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables. The biggest sin would be to have a party and run out of food so we always had more than enough when we had guests over.

He was a life-long member of several veteran organizations, including the American Legion Highland Park Post 145, Veterans of Foreign Wars Highland Park Post 4737, Disabled American Veterans, American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, American Ex-Prisoners of War, Military Order of the Cooties, and Military Order of the Purple Heart. He volunteered at the VA and sold poppies in Highland Park. He gave talks about his war experience at schools and veteran memorials.

In 1967, he and Laura travelled to the Philippines to take part in a 25th anniversary reunion of the Bataan Death March. During that trip, they also visited Japan.

In 1995, he was invited to Taiwan to receive the Medal of Honor of the Vocational Assistance Commission for Retired Servicemen, Republic of China, “in recognition of his outstanding contribution as a veteran of World War II, in upholding international justice, safeguarding freedom and peace, promoting veterans’ welfare and strengthening mutual relations and cooperation between our two countries.”

Iovino meets fellow POW John McCain.

His wife suffered from dementia for several years and in February 2000, he lost her to pancreatic cancer. When he lost his only son two years later, the family initially thought it was from a heart attack but the autopsy revealed that he had committed suicide. It was heartbreaking to see a person who believed in never giving up endure the loss of a loved one who died at his own hands.

For years on Tuesday mornings, my dad served coffee and pastries in his kitchen to friends from the local veteran groups of which he was a member. They were a blessing to him after the deaths of his wife and son.

After a brief stint in assisted living, he spent the last years of his life comfortably in his own home. He died at the age of 90 in 2008, after a tumble down six stairs in his home in Highland Park. At the time, he was wearing a white T-shirt similar to the one he had on in the movie “Back to Bataan.”

He taught his children: We are put in this world to help each other.

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Linda Grisolia

September 10, 2020

Air Force paratrooper Louis Venditti

Venditti (to the left of the soldier holding the flag) and his band of brothers.

As a paratrooper for the 101st Airborne during World War II, it was Louis Venditti’s unenviable duty to jump behind enemy lines in the pre-dawn hours before D-Day and pave the way for the Allied assault.

Louis Venditti was born in Chicago and grew up in the Hungry Hill neighborhood of Chicago Heights. He attended Bloom Township High School and was working in a factory that manufactured landing mats for airfields in the South Pacific when he was drafted into the Army in November 1942.

Venditti completed basic training at Camp Beale, Calif., and was attached to the 13th Armored Division. He learned how to drive everything from a motorcycle to a tank.

Two new airborne divisions were being formed, and when officers came around asking for interested men, Venditti volunteered, saying, “Sure, I want to jump out of an airplane!”

He went on to Fort Benning, Ga., where he learned the ins and outs of parachuting.

In the winter of 1943, Venditti boarded a crowded troop ship, crossed the rough North Atlantic Ocean and landed in Liverpool, England. He was with the 101st Airborne, preparing for an invasion by participating in daily maneuvers, which included combat training and studying sand tables of the projected jump areas.

Training continued until the end of May, when Venditti learned that the Normandy invasion was his objective and, as a paratrooper, he would be among the first men in, jumping behind enemy lines.

Venditti clearly remembers the D-Day invasion. The night of June 5, 1944, the paratroopers geared up and boarded their planes. General Dwight Eisenhower came around to each plane and talked to the men as long as he could before takeoff.

It took almost two hours for the 500 planes from the 101st and the 500 planes from the 82nd Airborne Divisions to get into formation. Instead of flying across the English Channel, the planes headed over the Atlantic Ocean to sneak in and attack the Germans from behind.

They ran into a fog bank as they reached the French coast, and when they came out, the low-flying planes were detected by the enemy. They were hit with all types of artillery: anti-aircraft guns, machinegun fire and small-arms fire.

Just off to his right, Venditti saw a plane get hit and spiral downward. The jumpmaster told the men to stand up, hook up and prepare to jump in case their plane was hit.

Nearing his jump zone, Venditti parachuted right after midnight under gunfire all the way down. “How I survived those few minutes, I have no idea,” he says. “I was very lucky.”

He landed in a field surrounded by hedgerows. “That kind of protected me a little bit,” he recalls. He peered through the darkness and discovered that nothing looked like the maps and photos he studied in England. “Right away panic set in,” he remembers. “I was really petrified.”

Venditti spotted movement, thought it was the enemy and was relieved when he saw cows instead of German soldiers. “That made me happy because where there’s cows, there’s no land mines,” he says.

Moving cautiously along the hedgerows, he met up with two other paratroopers. They knocked on the door of a farmhouse and two frightened farmers, relieved to see the American flag on the soldier’s sleeves, helped the paratroopers determine that their rendezvous spot was about two miles away.

They met up with more paratroopers along the way, using clickers almost continuously to find one another in the darkness. In the jump zone, Venditti saw paratroopers hanging from the trees, shot and killed in their parachutes. “Oh God, that was something you don’t want to see,” he says.

Less than half of the 600 paratroopers reached the spot, and General Taylor led them to their objective, the capture of Pouppeville and Causeway 1, the road leading inland down to Utah Beach, so the 4th Infantry Division could land.

Venditti’s battalion captured the town and waited for the invasion to begin. The Air Force bombed at 6 a.m. and the Navy started shelling at 6:30 a.m. Venditti moved in closer to the beach and saw all the ships. “There had to be thousands of them,” he recalls.

When the first of the soldiers who landed came up to Venditti and said, “Boy are we glad to see you!” he responded, “No buddy, you got that all wrong, I’m glad to see you!” If the invasion failed, Venditti and the other paratroopers would have been trapped behind enemy lines. “That night, no matter where you turned, there was a German,” he recalls. “Those were the most terrifying six hours I ever had.”

Venditti fought in Normandy for a month and his next mission was Operation Market-Garden. He jumped 20 miles behind the line in Holland where his objective was to capture bridges so the British-Canadian infantry could advance.

The fighting was non-stop and shrapnel was flying through the air. Crouching in a ditch, Venditti watched as the Germans approached, “walking artillery” toward them, setting it down every 75 yards, and firing. Suddenly, a shell landed behind him and a piece of shrapnel struck him in the foot. “If I was facing the other way, honey, I wouldn’t be here talking to you,” Venditti says.

He recuperated, rejoined his unit near Paris, and headed to the Battle of the Bulge.

The fighting in the Ardennes forest was as fierce as the weather. Venditti remembers burning charcoal in his foxhole to keep warm, and rubbing his feet to prevent frostbite. “I’m still cold, honey,” he says. “When the cold comes, I’m still cold.”

As the battle raged, Venditti saw countless soldiers wounded and killed. “When you’re in the thick of battle, your adrenalin is running and the only thought is to survive and to come home safely,” he says. “Your buddies are dropping around you and you wonder why them and not me.”

Near the end of the war, Venditti went through an abandoned concentration camp where only the dead and the dying remained. “Those are memories I don’t want to remember at all,” he says.

Venditti was discharged in November 1945 and returned to Chicago Heights, where he still resides. Widowed, Venditti has two children and two grandchildren. He is a retired Chicago Heights Fire Department captain.

His decorations include the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and the French Legion of Honor, which was presented to him in Normandy on June 6, 2009, on the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

At the ceremony, Venditti met French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his Italian wife, Carla Bruni; President and Michelle Obama; and Prince Charles. Venditti lunched with actor Tom Hanks, whose movie, “Saving Private Ryan,” was about the 101st Airborne Division. Venditti reflects on receiving the award and says, “It was an honor for me, a little Italian kid from the old neighborhood.”

For a pair of blog posts about Louis’ wartime memorabilia, click here.

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Linda Grisolia

Army Air Corps Captain Vincent Allegrini

Allegrini receives the Air Medal from General Clarkson.

Trained to fight in the deserts of North Africa during World War II, Vincent Allegrini earned the coveted Air Medal while organizing and overseeing a mission to bring desperately needed supplies to embattled troops in the jungles of the South Pacific.

Editor’s Note: The following profile was assembled from the diaries of Vincent Allegrini, interviews with his son Robert, and the official history of the 33rd Infantry Division.

In late December of 1944, units of the Army’s fabled 33rd Golden Cross Division, comprised primarily of soldiers from Illinois, were engaged in a ferocious firefight with the Japanese in a dense jungle on the island of Morotai in the Netherlands East Indies. For the Americans the situation appeared desperate as an entire regiment had expended most of its ammunition in battle. Rations and medical supplies were also running low.

That’s when the 33rd Division turned to 1st Lieutenant Vincent Allegrini, a quartermaster officer from the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, to organize a mission to resupply the endangered elements of the division by air beginning on Dec. 23 and lasting into January. As the first parcels of food and ammunition began falling from the sky on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the American troops gave thanks for a Santa Claus of a different sort. But for Allegrini, it was no sleigh ride. Determined to personally oversee the resupply effort, Allegrini’s C 47 cargo plane was flown at an altitude of only 200 feet as enemy fire exploded all around him.

The mission was a great success, with 95 percent of the supplies reaching the American troops. Soon the troubled regiment was on the move again, and by the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6 the battle was over, with 870 enemy losses to only 46 of their own.

For his role in organizing the resupply mission, Allegrini was awarded the coveted Air Medal — one of only 40 conferred on the division of more than 13,000 men during the entire Second World War. His official citation from General P.W. Clarkson reads, “With disregard for his safety Lt. Allegrini ignored the hazards of low altitude flights over mountain terrain and hostile fire, performing his duty in a manner which contributed materially to the success of the campaign and reflected the highest degree of credit to himself and the military service”

As Allegrini proudly wore his medal, he contemplated the surreptitious route that took him from the comforts of Chicago to the privations of South Pacific jungles.

Just three years earlier, on the afternoon of Dec. 7, 1941, the 23-year-old Allegrini was sprawled on the floor of his living room listening to the radio and reading the Sunday newspaper when an announcer broke into the broadcast to give the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He realized at that moment that his life would be forever changed. He had been studying finance at Northwestern University and was working as a junior accountant for the Commercial Investment Trust Corporation. But like thousands of other young Americans he knew he had to answer his country’s call to duty. As an only child, his sole concern was leaving his widowed, Italian-born mother alone. With her grudging support, he volunteered for service and reported to Camp Grant in Rockford, Ill.

From Camp Grant, he was sent to Fort Warren in Wyoming where he was accepted into Officers Candidate School. As he took up his diary again after successfully completing the schooling, he noted, “Today, I write not as an enlisted man but as an officer. Yes, on the 23rd day of December 1942 I realized my ambition … that of being an officer.”

Upon accepting his commission, Allegrini moved to join the 33rd Division at Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Wash. After several months of extensive training in the Pacific Northwest, the division was transferred to the Mojave Desert where it was trained for desert warfare. It looked like the division was destined to do battle in the North African Theater. That was just fine with Allegrini, who felt his fluency in both Italian and French — acquired from his mother who hailed from the bilingual Italian/French border region of Val D’Aosta — would be of considerable use there. But the fighting in North Africa ended before the division could make a contribution and as fate had it, the division was sent west to Hawaii to prepare to do battle against the Japanese.

For the next 10 months, the division was stationed on the Hawaiian “garden island” of Kauai. According to Allegrini’s son, Robert, his father’s time in Hawaii was the golden period of his military service. “My father loved everything about Hawaii from the climate to the culture,” said the son, who returned to Kauai with his father in 1978 to visit his old island haunts, many of which had not changed in the intervening 35 years. “I’m convinced my father would have moved to Hawaii after the war had my mother not been attached to her family in Chicago.”

But the 33rd Division soon paid for its lengthy stay in paradise when it was hurled into its first battles in the snake-filled, disease-ridden jungles of New Guinea. The division spent six months there slogging it out with the Japanese before moving on to the battles on Morotai.

During that period, Allegrini repeatedly attempted to transfer to the European theater but the Army had other plans for his linguistic skills. He was ordered to remain with his division in the Pacific and to await taking command of a contingent of Italian prisoners of war. The POWs had volunteered to serve the Allied cause after Italy’s surrender under a very successful program called “Italian Service Units.”

In the end, however, the expected Italian prisoners never materialized and for the 33rd Division, it was on to the pivotal battle to liberate the Philippines. Shortly after arriving on the island of Luzon, Allegrini’ s logistical skills again helped ensure an American victory as he established procedures that allowed his division to receive vital supplies in a minimum of time. For these efforts, Allegrini received a Bronze Star from General Clarkson, who wrote, “Lieutenant Allegrini by his untiring efforts and devotion to duty rendered outstanding service in providing a variety of subsistence items to combat and service troops.”

Allegrini completed his overseas military service as part of the occupying army in Japan, arriving there only two weeks after the Japanese surrender in September 1945 and remaining until December 1945. Ten days after his departure from Japan, his wartime exploits were recognized with a Presidential appointment to the rank of Captain in the United States Army Air Corp.

In the final entry of his diary before shipping out to the front lines in New Guinea, Allegrini wrote, “I pray that someday in the future I may read these words I have written in the peace and comfort of home all safe and sound.” Thankfully, his prayer was answered. Allegrini was discharged from active military service in March of 1946. He married in 1948 and graduated from the University of Wisconsin School of Banking in 1952. A long and successful career in banking followed. Vincent Allegrini passed away on Oct. 26, 2004, at the age of 85.

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Linda Grisolia

September 3, 2020

Air Force refueler Dominic Guerrieri

Refueling fighter jets during Desert Storm, Dominic Guerrieri flew over burning oil fields, saw bomb flashes and witnessed artillery launches into Kuwait.

The youngest of six children, Dominic Guerrieri was born in Chicago and grew up on the Far Northwest Side of Chicago near Foster and Cumberland. His father, Carmen, and mother, Rita (Mariano) were born in Chicago. His grandparents emigrated from Basilicata and Bari, Italy.

One of the youngest of 28 cousins, Guerrieri enjoyed his close-knit family. Christmas Eve was celebrated at home with the extended family enjoying the traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes. A favorite Easter dish prepared by his grandmother was calzone di cippola, onion pie. “I loved it so much,” Guerrieri says. “She’d make it for me in October, for my birthday, even though it was more popular at Easter time.”

Guerrieri attended Dirksen Grade School and Holy Cross High School. Three weeks after graduating he left for basic training with the Air Force. “I was 17 so my father had to sign permission,” Guerrieri says. His paternal grandfather fought with the Italian Army during World War I, uncles served with the U.S. Army and Navy during World War II, and his older brother Vic had an Air Force career. “I always felt that I would be in the military,” says Guerrieri.

He completed basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio and then technical training at Sheppard Air Force Base, also in Texas. He worked as a diesel generator mechanic for four years, stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma and then at O’Hare. During this time he also deployed to Puerto Rico and Germany. His unit’s expertise was in mobile communications, ensuring that air-to-ground communications, computer networking and telephone systems ran smoothly.

Guerrieri remained in the Air Force and trained to become a recruiter. He visited high schools and junior colleges and talked to students about career opportunities in the Air Force. They learned about military benefits, enlistment procedures and training.

After the recruiting stint, Guerrieri cross trained at Castle Air Force Base in California and became a boom operator on a KC-135 Stratotanker, a position he held for 10 years. “That was the best job of all,” he says. The tanker refuels military aircraft in midair. The crew included a pilot, co-pilot, navigator and Guerrieri. He was responsible for safely transferring aviation fuel from the tanker to another military plane during flight. He operated the long extendable pole with wings on it, called the boom, which was attached to the rear underside of the tanker, and connected it to the fuel receptacle of the receiving plane. He likens it to refueling your car. “It’s like you just pull up behind it and a pole comes out and sticks it right into your car for you, but you’re doing it at 600 miles per hour in the air,” Guerrieri says.

Guerrieri deployed to many countries including England, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Iceland and the Caribbean. During Desert Shield/Desert Storm he was in Spain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Some missions involved accompanying fighter jets being transported overseas. His tanker flew with four fighter jets and refueled them from the East Coast all the way into Europe to ensure non-stop flying. At times, the KC-135 carried 20 to 30 ground troops that needed to go along with the fighters.

Flying two big planes within 30 feet of each other at 600 miles an hour is risky. “The first time you refuel a plane, especially a big plane like a bomber, or when a big cargo plane is right behind you, it’s a little nerve wracking,” Guerrieri says. “But once you do it for awhile it becomes a habit.” For training, the KC-135 crews flew for four or five hours at a time practicing take offs and landings at different bases, air refueling, and doing navigational training. “There is an inherent danger in air refueling,” says Guerrieri, “but there’s also a lot of safety procedures, including training and discipline.”

Guerrieri was paired with B52 or B1 bombers carrying nuclear weapons. “So I spent several days straight on alert … if the alarm went off we’d have to go launch and refuel the bombers on the way to the USSR,” says Guerrieri. “We never had to actually launch against the USSR, but we were always ready for that.”

Stationed in Iceland, Guerrieri accompanied F15 fighter jets. “If the F15 went up in the air, we went up to make sure they had enough fuel to escort the Russian bombers away,” he says.

Guerrieri participated in a “tanker bridge” while refueling fighters going to the Mideast during Desert Shield. Tankers flew out of Maine and the Azores while Guerrieri was stationed in Spain with other tankers based in Sicily, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Fighter planes flew from the East Coast all the way to Saudi Arabia with tankers all along to refuel them in their non-stop flight.

Guerrieri deployed to Saudi Arabia in December 1990 and two weeks before Desert Storm moved to Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. During a crew briefing he learned a 20 percent loss of tankers was expected during the war. “Basically saying if you were flying in a tanker you had a 20 percent chance of being killed,” says Guerrieri. “So we had a little bit of worry going in, but thankfully we didn’t lose any tankers.”

During Desert Storm, Guerrieri flew nearly every day for six weeks, almost exclusively refueling fighter planes. Within a week to 10 days of Desert Storm beginning it was clear that the Iraqis, besides a show of force around Baghdad and a few other key areas, had little air defense capabilities. “They were built up to be a really fierce military and in reality they weren’t,” Guerrieri says.

He flew over burning oil fields, saw bomb flashes and witnessed artillery launches into Kuwait. “It was kind of surreal,” says Guerrieri. On most missions, his was one of eight to 10 tankers, each with four fighters behind it, about 30 or so planes all flying in formation. “It was a huge air invasion and there was a certain risk with flying in such large formations,” Guerrieri says. “You had to be at the right place at the right time at the right altitude and make sure you’re not in the way of anyone else.”

Later Guerrieri was stationed in Pisa, flying missions into Bosnia from 1994 to 1998. He then flew missions out of Frankfurt, refueling F117 stealth fighters flying into Kosovo in early 1999. This was his last deployment before taking early retirement in July 1999, after an Air Force career of nearly 16 years. His rank was Technical Sergeant.

After retiring, Guerrieri began a successful career in wine sales. He and his wife, Carolyn, have three children. His son, an Army ROTC cadet, is proudly carrying on the family military tradition.

Recalling Desert Storm, he says, “It was a pretty massive feeling, definitely a show of force that I would not want to be on the other side of.”

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Paul Basile

August 27, 2020

Air Force/Guard veteran Victor Guerrieri

A member of the Air Force and Air National Guard for 40 years, Victor Guerrieri was responsible for all communications on base and in the field of battle during a nine-month deployment to Iraq in 2010.

The second of six children, Victor Guerrieri was born in Chicago to Carmen and Rita (Mariano.) The family lived in his maternal grandparents’ building near Marmora and Higgins avenues before moving to the area around Foster and Cumberland avenues, where Guerrieri grew up. His parents were born in Chicago, and his grandparents emigrated from Bari.

Maternal aunts, uncles and cousins all lived close, and every Sunday the family gathered at his grandparents’ home. “Grandma made the meatballs, neck bones, the whole traditional Italian meal,” he says. “Even when we were young, we would always get a taste of grandpa’s homemade wine.”

A favorite pastime of Guerrieri’s was spending time with his grandfathers, who taught him about Italian traditions. They spoke broken English and were very proud that they came to the United States. “I wish I would have been able to learn Italian with them,” he says. They told him, “You’re in America, you speak English.”

Guerrieri attended St. Eugene Grade School and, after graduating from Holy Cross High School in June 1971, he joined the Air Force. As a child he loved listening to his uncles’ World War II stories. Also, “my paternal grandfather was in the Italian Army (WWI) and was one of my biggest influences in joining the military,” Guerrieri says. “It was just something that always fascinated me and I wanted to do.” His mother was skeptical but very supportive. “My dad was very proud of the fact that I joined the military,” he says.

Guerrieri completed basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and technical training at Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, Illinois. He was stationed at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, where he worked on the flight line as an aerospace ground equipment repairman. He serviced the generators, air conditioning and hydraulic systems of the aircraft on the ground.

Along with being in the military, Guerrieri also dreamed of becoming a Chicago police officer. In 1975, he took the entrance exam and upon his acceptance, left active duty with the Air Force, after serving nearly four years, and joined the National Guard at O’Hare. His rank was Airman First Class.

Guerrieri was sworn in as a Chicago police officer in 1977 and was assigned to the 20th District, at Foster and Damen avenues, as a patrol officer. His part-time job was with the Air National Guard. One weekend a month, Guerrieri participated in military drills and maneuvers. Every year, he took military leave from the police department for annual training. Most deployments were two weeks, with some lasting four and occasionally six weeks. During these sessions, Guerrieri did training exercises and at times attended classes. “In order to stay in the military and be promoted, you had to fulfill not only your career requirements, but you also had to have your educational qualifications fulfilled,” Guerrieri says.

He deployed to various locations throughout the country and also overseas. “We would do military exercises, training, simulating things that we would do if there was actually a war,” he explains. Guerrieri went to Italy several times as well as Germany, Honduras, Bolivia and Iceland. “I traveled places that I never would have seen if I hadn’t joined the military,” he says.

Guerrieri was attached to the 264th Combat Communications Squadron, which supported ground-to-air communications, telephones and, in later years, computers. “We would set up an internet network in the field, wirelessly, throughout the theater of operations for wherever we were stationed,” he says.

While at the NATO base in Naples, Guerrieri told the Italian soldiers that his mother’s cousin was a general in the Italian Army. “They treated me like I was a king,” he says. They took Guerrieri and his friends to their favorite bars and restaurants. “When they found out who my cousin was, they couldn’t do enough to make sure that I put in a good word,” says Guerrieri.

He never did get to meet his cousin, who was stationed elsewhere. However, he and his buddies visited his mother’s relatives in Bari. “They fed us like we couldn’t believe; we couldn’t eat enough,” Guerrieri says.

In 2010, Guerrieri’s National Guard unit was activated and deployed to Iraq for nine months. He was stationed at Sather Air Base at the Baghdad Airport. He had been promoted to Chief Master Sergeant with Combat Communications and became the Flight Chief for the squadrons.

Guerrieri’s unit was responsible for all the communications on base and in the theater, a particular geographic area in Iraq. This included air-to-ground, computer networking and telephones, both secured and unsecured. Secured messages were confidential and encrypted so they could not be intercepted.

Equipment and computers were continuously checked to ensure that all systems were up and running. If there was a breakdown, Guerrieri sent someone to fix it. “The biggest problem over in Iraq was the heat and the dust,” he says. “Our equipment would break down because of overheating.” Air conditioning systems were essential to prevent that. “We had to do a lot of maintenance,” Guerrieri says. “It was a huge responsibility.”

The base endured several rocket attacks. “What they were trying to do was destroy some of the runways to disrupt our air operations,” Guerrieri says. The security system set off sirens, the base went on lockdown and the men and women took cover in bomb shelters until the all-clear sounded. “Adrenalin is running pretty high. To talk about it to people who never went through it, you couldn’t really explain how you felt unless you actually lived through it,” says Guerrieri.

The U.S. Air Force was training the Iraqi Air Force at the time and they, along with their families, lived on base. Guerrieri’s unit helped develop their communications systems. “Actually, their families had to live within the security perimeter because their families would have been killed by the Taliban or other agencies that back then were still fighting the U.S.,” he says.

Chief Master Sgt. Guerrieri retired from the Air National Guard in 2012, after serving for 41 years total military service. He and his wife, Marie (Bednarek), have three children and one grandchild. Guerrieri fulfilled his childhood dream of being in the military and received 110 percent support from his family, especially his wife. “She had the hard job of all the responsibilities at home that she took on while I was gone,” he says.

Guerrieri retired from the police department in 2014 as a lieutenant and commanding officer of the Canine Unit. He is currently employed as the director of security for Wright College.

Proud to have served his country, Guerrieri says, “Being Italian, my Italian heritage, going back to Italy in a military status made me very proud, not only about being an American, but about being an Italian American.”

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Paul Basile

August 20, 2020

Army cameraman Gino Bartucci

Born in Italy and trained by the Army as a cameraman, Gino Bartucci toured the American during the Vietnam War photographing atomic bombs, filming bombers flying overhead and helping create documentaries.

Gino Bartucci was born in Malvitani di Rende, a small village in Calabria. Of the nine children born to Vincenzo and Maria Carmella (Pisello) Bartucci, six survived infancy. The family farm provided almost everything they needed. “We didn’t have to buy anything but salt, sugar … that’s about it,” Bartucci says. He attended a one-room school with about a dozen students.

In 1955, Bartucci’s father immigrated to Chicago, bringing one son and his only daughter. The three lived with Bartucci’s uncle while they earned enough money to bring over the rest of the family. In December 1958, Bartucci arrived in America at the age of 11 with his mother and brother. He remembers the train to Chicago. “It was cold and we were afraid, not knowing where we were going, even though we were excited about seeing my sister, my brother and my father,” Bartucci says.

They lived on Polk and Pulaski, and Bartucci attended Presentation Catholic School. He worked an early morning paper route to earn money. When Bartucci was 12, the family bought a house in Norridge. He completed grammar school at St. Monica’s and attended Ridgewood High School, which had a large Italian population. Passionate about his Italian heritage from an early age, Bartucci persuaded his French teacher, who also spoke Italian, to teach the language to interested students. He gathered about 20 students into a voluntary study group, and, in so doing, improved his English as well as his Italian.

After graduating from Ridgewood in 1964, he worked part time at a grocery store. The youngest of his siblings, Bartucci wanted to be more independent, so he spoke with an Army recruiter about his interest in filmmaking. He joined in 1965. “I felt like I had to be my own person and experience life,” he says.

Bartucci completed basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and transferred to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, which was surrounded by a large Italian-American population. He was learning filmmaking at the Army’s School of Photography when an Italian professor who had taken him under his wing advised, “You have potential; don’t fool around.” Bartucci graduated in the top five of his class and was stationed in Long Island City, New York.

The Army had purchased Paramount Studio, and though the government gave orders regarding filmmaking, most of the employees were civilians. Movie production became a joint effort between military and civilian personnel. Bartucci lived in a three-story barrack across from the studio, once again in an Italian neighborhood. Despite graduating at the top of his class, he found himself in the studio basement, cleaning and maintaining cameras while dreaming about making movies. An Italian captain befriended him, and Bartucci confided, “I want to get out of here.” The officer returned the next day and told Bartucci about an opening at the atomic bomb testing site outside of Las Vegas. “Another Italian helping an Italian,” Bartucci says.

Bartucci trained in motion picture filming, not still photography, but he took classes in the latter “because I needed to get out of that basement,” he says. Bartucci served as an official photographer for the atomic bomb tests.

Before filming, Bartucci entered a portable containment area, undressed and donned protective gear. “Like going to the moon,” he says. Then he went into the hills and took photos of live, undetonated bombs just a few feet away from him. Seeing the cylinder for the first time, he thought, “It’s going to explode, I’m dead. Oh my God, how did I get myself into this?”

Bartucci took the photos, after which the commanding officer removed the film and handed the camera back to him. “Since it’s theirs, I just left everything, undressed, cleaned up, took a shower and then went on my way,” Bartucci says. “I don’t know what becomes of it.”

He was stationed there for three months before returning to Paramount Studio. After that, Bartucci traveled to Army bases for various jobs. He filmed military planes and tanks in action, allowing government officials in Washington to see them at work before signing a purchase contract. “In other words, we had to be their eyes,” he says.

Bartucci filmed as airplanes came through the clouds and whisked along the treetops as if they were going to drop bombs. Other times he filmed planes simulating an invasion. He also filmed a tank on a landing strip made to look like a beach in Normandy. “They just tell you that’s what you have to do,” Bartucci says. “They don’t tell you the purpose or who wants it.”

At Fort Benning, Georgia, a helicopter dropped Bartucci onto a hilltop with a tripod and camera gear to film incoming planes. Adrenalin pulsed through his body as he set up the tripod. “What if they don’t come back and pick me up?” he thought. He loaded the film, taking care not to expose it. Bartucci checked the camera several times, making sure everything was good. Suddenly he heard the roar of the planes. “Oh, what am I gonna do? I better get ready,” he thought. As he placed the camera on the tripod, it sunk into the muddy ground. “My heart was unbelievable,” he says. Bartucci quickly hoisted the camera onto his shoulder and filmed for about 15 minutes. He later learned he was given a standing ovation at the movie’s screening. “Everybody commented that they had never seen a pan as smooth as that,” he was told. “I think God was looking out for me.”

Bartucci also helped create military training films and documentaries. Among the actors he worked with were Eva Gabor and Johnny Crawford, an Army sergeant and Bartucci’s roommate. He filmed the promotional documentary “A Nation Builds Under Fire” with John Wayne.

He had some close calls during aerial photography. Filming from inside a helicopter that was bouncing its way through the air, his seat belt came undone, and he tilted toward the door. “They had to pull me in,” Bartucci says. “That was scary.” During an incident inside a small plane, Bartucci had just moved for a better view when the door flew open. “I said, ‘My God, it’s a good thing I just changed my seat!’” he says.

Specialist 5 Bartucci was discharged in 1968 and returned to Chicago. With his lifelong passion for the Italian community and culture, Bartucci built Piazza Italia on the 3400 block of North Harlem Avenue in 1979. The building now houses Pasta Fresh and BarTucci. Across the street are two gift shops: La Bomboniera (Italy’s Gifts) and La Galleria D’Arte Giuseppe Armani. Bartucci and his family are involved with all of these businesses. He is the founder of the Italian American Business Association of Harlem. He has four children and seven grandchildren.

Summing up his Army years, Bartucci says, “It was the best experience I have had in my life, and I feel it would be great for everybody to have that experience. It teaches you to respect yourself, respect others and take nothing for granted. It gives you a way of growing up.”

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Paul Basile

Army Sergeant Albert Onesti

Army Sergeant Albert Onesti stared death in the face time and again, emerged from World War II a better man for it.

Albert Onesti was born and raised in Chicago. He graduated from McKinley High School and was drafted into the Army one month later.

He completed basic training with the infantry and embarked for places unknown. The ship was crowded and the men were “packed like sardines.” Thirty days later, after maneuvering a zigzag course to thwart enemy submarines, Onesti arrived in Oran, Africa. He and the rest of the crew were weak from eating the same food: orange marmalade and bread.

Shortly afterward, Onesti arrived in Anzio, Italy. He was young and did not think he was going to war. “We ate delicious homemade bread,” he recalls. Onesti traveled deeper into Anzio and when he saw explosions in the distance, he thought, “Oh, they’re just trying to scare us.” At the frontline, his lieutenant said, “OK, you guys dig in, make your foxhole.”

Onesti and Mike Narducci, also from McKinley, dug in and darkness fell. Two hours later mortar shells ripped through the air. Onesti said, “We got so scared! We almost literally crawled into our helmets.” The shelling lasted about an hour and Onesti settled down to spend his 19th birthday in a foxhole on the frontline. He told his buddy, “Mike, it’s impossible for us to go home.”

For months, Onesti and Narducci shared their foxhole and took turns sleeping. One night Onesti awakened to hear, “Al, Al, I’m hit, I’m hit!” He thought he was dreaming and then heard, “Please, help me! help me! Onesti jumped out and found Narducci lying about 15 feet away. He dragged him back to the foxhole amid the shelling and Narducci screamed, “Please, don’t let me lose my leg.” Onesti, frightened, cried along with him as he patched him up and called the medic. The two of them carried the wounded soldier to the rear and Onesti returned to battle.

After Anzio and Rome, the next battle was the invasion of southern France. Onesti’s ship stopped at a safe distance and waited as the battleships bombarded the coast for an hour. Next came the airplanes, hundreds of them, group after group, dropping their bombs. Onesti said it was one of his highlights of the war. “The thrill was that those guys were on our team. It was amazing, four times greater than the Fourth of July.”

The soldiers disembarked and moved inland, encountering a farmer who said, “Oh, we didn’t expect you guys so soon.” They chased after the Germans and ran out of ammunition and food because their supply ship was bombed. Onesti thought, “If they should stop and fire at me, I’m dead.”

Onesti was overtaken by depression during his first month in France. He was upset that Narducci had been injured at Anzio and he had lost another buddy. He hardly ate and became so weak that he was barely able to carry his rifle and field gear.

During a three-day rest period, Onesti kept to himself, disappearing into a foxhole to wrestle with his demons. On the last night, he gave himself an “Abraham Lincoln” speech. He said aloud, “You are an American; you have to be proud of it. Our forefathers fought for our freedom, gave their lives … now it’s your turn. Give it all you got. Don’t be afraid to die, because you’re not going to make it.” Onesti called it a “reverse barometer.”

The next morning, as the soldiers headed back to the front, Onesti “was like Popeye.” He was filled with energy. He helped weak soldiers carry their rifles; at one time he had six slung over his shoulder.

He attained the rank of sergeant and led his squad to the front over and over. During a forest battle, Onesti and his men were engaged in heavy gunfire with the Germans and a soldier was hit. Onesti dragged him to safety and patched him up, all the while hearing gunfire. Suddenly, the forest was empty, just Onesti and his wounded man. He found a way out and with the injured soldier leaning on him, climbed a hill to safety where they stayed almost a day before soldiers from their outfit found them.

A telegram was sent to Onesti’s family stating that he was missing in action. Not until a week later did they learn that he was alive and well.

The captain was impressed with Onesti’s actions and offered to make him an officer. Onesti turned him down because he thought he would have to join the reserves after the war.

Along with his corporal, Onesti entered rural towns in France and flushed out the enemy. In one farmhouse, the residents silently pointed to the basement. Three German soldiers were hiding there and Onesti took them as prisoners.

Onesti’s feet were becoming increasingly sore as the war wore on. He limped and felt like he was walking on stones. The medic discovered he had trench feet and sent Onesti to a hospital in Naples. He was anxious to return to his men and kept asking when that would be. He learned that he was reclassified and could no longer go to the front. He ran down the hall yelling, “I’m gonna live; I’m gonna live.”

When Onesti returned to New York on New Year’s Eve, 1945, an all-girl band played patriotic songs in the harbor. He said, “I was in awe … I can’t explain the feeling I had.”

Onesti resides in a suburb of Chicago and is a retired tailor. He and his wife have three children and three grandchildren.

Onesti, recipient of three Battle Stars, reflected on the war and said, “War is no good, but I was very proud to be in the Army … to be an American.”

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Linda Grisolia

August 13, 2020

Navy reconnaissance photograph Ralph Triggiano

Realizing is dream of becoming a photographer by joining the Navy during World War II, Ralph Triggiano captured the enemy’s presence in the Pacific from 10,000 feet and the horrors of war from point-blank range.

Ralph Triggiano was born in Chicago and grew up in the neighborhood of Taylor and Peoria streets surrounded by his maternal grandparents, aunts and uncles. Triggiano’s father, Joseph, emigrated from Carbonara di Bari, and his mother, Emmanuela Lorita, was born in Basilicata.

Only five years old when his mother passed away, Triggiano moved in with his grandparents while his father worked on the railroad. “The aunts and uncles were really great,” says Triggiano. His father remarried, and he has a half brother and half sister.

Childhood memories include hanging out at Hull House and participating in many activities, including softball, dancing, ping pong and boxing. “It was a fabulous place,” he says. His grandmother made bread dough and carried the bundle on her head to Atlas Bakery to be baked for 20 cents. “I would pick up the bread at night,” Triggiano says. Monday was soup night, and Thursday was macaroni. “Every Sunday after mass, the whole family dropped in,” he says.

Triggiano graduated from Guardian Angel Grade School and St. Patrick Academy. He was eager to join the Merchant Marines at 17 years old, but his father would not sign his permission and said, “Wait, they’ll call you.” He was employed as a copy boy at the Times, hoping to get into the dark room, when he was drafted in 1943. Triggiano chose the Navy because of his interest in photography. “I was glad to go,” he says, “I hate war, but you got to defend your country.”

He completed basic training at Great Lakes Naval Training Center and transferred to Pensacola, Florida, for Photographic Aerial Training. Next, Triggiano completed classes at the Photo Science Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

In San Diego, he boarded the USS Suwannee, CVE27, an escort carrier. The ship was home to 830 men and 25 planes, each with its own crew. The Suwannee set off into the Pacific, traveling in a convoy. From Gilbert Islands, Marshall Islands, Mariana Islands, the Philippines and the Battle of Leyte Gulf, to Okinawa, Triggiano remained on the ship as a reconnaissance photographer. His two biggest jobs were mapping Guam and Cebu in the Philippines. The aerial renditions he made from his photos were given to intelligence officers. This information was crucial in fighting the war.

In the torpedo bomber, alone with the pilot, Triggiano set up his camera in the belly of the bomber and took photos as they flew back and forth in a set pattern. The targets were enemy air bases. He processed the photos, took the middle of each and feathered them together to get an accurate rendition of the area.

During other reconnaissance flights, along with the camera placed in the plane’s belly, Triggiano also shot photos from the open cockpit with an F20. The camera had a trigger that turned the lever and the film. “It was beautiful: turn it, trigger, turn it … 50 feet or 25 feet of film,” he says.

In Guam, Triggiano took the photos and packed them into a watertight kapok attached to a parachute, opened the cockpit canopy and dropped it down to a waiting motor boat. He needed to be close to the ground to get accurate shots. The pilot was flying at 10,000 feet in the Philippines, and when Triggiano said he needed to get down to 2,500 feet, the officer yelled at him. “I know why; he didn’t want to get shot at,” says Triggiano. “I don’t blame him.” Flying low over enemy territory, they were under attack on every reconnaissance mission. “But we got lucky, and none of them ever hit us,” he says. “Your adrenalin works up real well.”

Flying over Cebu, Triggiano photographed more than 100 planes on the base. He explained that some of the planes are legitimate and others are mock. “Intelligence has to know this,” Triggiano says. “I’m really proud of that one.”

On Oct. 25, 1944, the Suwannee was embroiled in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Her sister ship, the Santee, received the first hit from a deliberate suicide attack of the war. Seconds later, a Kamikaze bomber crashed into Suwannee’s flight deck, its bomb exploding on impact. Triggiano heard and saw the plane and instinctively ducked as it crashed. “So I looked up after the sound was over and jumped up on the deck; everything was burning.”

He watched as men climbed a ladder trying to escape the fire and witnessed many being thrown into the sea. “I was like a rabbit at the beginning, I kept running up and down the catwalk, because of the fire,” Triggiano says. “Then I said whoa to myself and just jumped down on the deck and started photographing.” One of his buddies was always with him and hearing the explosion ran with another sailor for the ladder to the deck below. “They got mashed like meat. If he’d have stayed with me he would have … ” Triggiano chokes. “You know, that’s the way things are.”

The gash in the deck was repaired in 90 minutes. The next day, Oct. 26, the second Kamikaze attack stopped the Suwannee from operating. The plane hit one of the two elevators on the ship, which were crucial to the repair and rotation of the bombers. “Once they hit that forward elevator, we were dead,” Triggiano says. He was in the photo lab and, hearing the tremendous explosion, ran topside and witnessed the havoc. “You become numb; it’s hard to imagine,” Triggiano says. He saw his friend, only 19 years old, naked and dead. “It was horrible,” he says. Hundreds of men were killed instantly, and others suffered terrible injuries during these two attacks.

The Suwannee returned to Bremerton, Washington, for repairs and then headed to Okinawa. “That was miserable, very bad,” Triggiano says. “Every night at 4:30, the Japs sent their planes out to attack. We were lucky,” he says. “We never got hit.”

Triggiano had leave in Nagasaki only two weeks after the bomb was dropped. “They took us through these fields of nothing, just concrete posts,” he says. “Total devastation!” He has photos of the ruins. “The thing that really I was against was the atom bomb. I was shocked that we did that,” says Triggiano. “It could have been done differently, I think. Who knows?”

Triggiano was discharged in 1946 as petty officer 2nd class. He returned to Chicago and married Alice Bartolomei in 1949. They have three children, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Triggiano is retired from the trucking industry.

He looks back 75 years ago. “The amazing part is you saw so many American ships that you felt like you could walk from one ship to another … it was amazing, the might of the United States. It was truly awesome. I would look over there and my God, I was just struck by the enormity of our power.”

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Linda Grisolia

Naval surgeon Dr. Paul Rubino

A surgeon serving in Vietnam, Dr. Paul Rubino still vividly recalls a four-day stretch during which he and his team toiled to save the lives of a couple dozen severely wounded Marines.

Paul Rubino was born in Bitritto, a small town near Bari, Italy. When he was 12 years old, he and his mother, Domenica, immigrated to Chicago where his father, Vincenzo, had been working as a candy maker. The family settled into a third-floor apartment on Grand Avenue and May Street, above Taccogna Foods, now known as Bari Finer Foods.

The close-knit neighborhood was largely Italian, many from Bari. Everyone looked out for one another and helped each other. “When you live in a strange world, strangers become friends,” says Rubino.

Rubino entered Santa Maria Addolorata grade school in the sixth grade. “We were 25 of us, all Italians, all immigrants. We were taught how to speak English for one semester,” Rubino recalls. “Then we went into the regular class. The nuns were very devoted to making sure we learned English.”

Education was very important to Rubino’s mother, who only had a fourth grade education in Italy. His parents found a way to send him to St. Ignatius High School. “For a woman who hardly knew this country, how she made the decision to send me to St. Ignatius, I don’t know,” Rubino wonders. “These Italians, they talk to each other and they find out the best place to go.”

Many of his classmates planned on attending college to improve themselves and Rubino followed suit. “If they’re going to go to college,” he thought, “well I’m going go to college, too.”

He graduated from Loyola Medical School, interned, and spent a four-year residency in general surgery at Cook County Hospital and West Side Veteran’s Hospital. He was drafted into the Army while in the final year of his residency and obtained a deferment to complete the term.

The deferment gave Rubino the opportunity to join the Navy in July 1968. He was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Base for one year, where he treated soldiers recovering from combat injuries in Vietnam. Rubino was a full-fledged surgeon by that time and received no basic military training. His captain said, “Anybody that has more stripes than you do, you salute them. If they have less stripes than you, he’s gonna salute you first, so you just return the salute.” “That’s the honest truth,” Rubino chuckles. “That was my whole training.” He explains, “Doctors are not soldiers. We get big names like lieutenant or lieutenant commander, but that’s just an honor.”

Before deploying to Vietnam in October 1969, Rubino spent one week at Camp Pendleton in California where he attended lectures on tropical diseases and learned to triage large numbers of critically wounded men. He also observed a mock war with Marines fighting each other.

Rubino was with the 1st Medical Battalion as part of the 1st Marine Division stationed at a camp a few miles outside of DaNang. Six doctors shared a hooch, a type of hut that served as their living quarters, with local women called “mama sans” who cleaned for them. The camp housed a priest and contained a chapel, 12 hooches, a separate building for the cafeteria where the doctors ate three meals a day and a hospital that was a converted Quonset hut.

The 30-bed hospital included six operating rooms with ample supplies and medical equipment. About 25 doctors representing various specialties staffed the camp. “A patient got treated very well under the circumstances,” says Rubino.

Nestled at the base of a mountain, the camp was protected from mortar fire and never got hit. As it was a guerilla war, the order was “search and destroy” and “shoot anything that moves,” a strategy determined by politicians in Washington. He heard rockets his first night there. “I was a little scared,” Rubino says, “but after a while you learn to live with it. There’s one sound as rockets come in; there’s another sound going out.”

Pagers in each hooch notified the doctors of incoming wounded, and helicopters flew in routinely with casualties. The doctor on call quickly evaluated the patient and paged the appropriate doctor depending on the condition of the patient and the type of treatment needed. Rubino’s area of expertise was abdominal injuries. The soldiers were treated with antibiotics and pain meds as doctors worked to stabilize them.

One night in December, the pagers blared that massive casualties were coming. “I’m a doctor; that’s what they sent me there for,” explains Rubino. “You are there to save human lives.” A truck carrying a couple dozen Marines had hit a landmine, catapulting 20 feet into the air and exploded into flames upon crashing to the ground. All the doctors rushed to the emergency room as helicopters arrived with the severely injured soldiers. Their triage training kicked in as they swiftly evaluated each man. “Every doctor looked to see what was going on,” Rubino recalls. “I’ll take this patient, you take that one.” Far too many went directly to the morgue.

Spines were crushed and arms and legs were shattered by the explosion. Many of the Marines lost limbs. Abdominal wounds exposed shredded organs. Soldiers struggled to breath with caved-in chests. The scene was gruesome as the doctors sprang into action, taking the worst patients first. All six operating rooms were in use at the same time. Others patients waited on carts for their turn. The doctors toiled non-stop for four days to stabilize the soldiers. “You don’t think about sleeping,” says Rubino. “You’re there to take care of the next patient.”

Once the soldiers were out of immediate danger, they were transferred to hospital ships in DaNang Harbor.

Twice a week, Rubino volunteered at a local civilian hospital in DaNang, where he performed surgery with the assistance of Vietnamese doctors and also taught medical students from Saigon. The hospitals were very primitive, with beds often being shared by two patients.

Rubino’s wife, Ann, was pregnant with their fourth child when he was in Vietnam and they wrote daily. The doctors sometimes watched movies in the evening and had pig roasts once a month. They often wondered out loud why they were in Vietnam. These young people being maimed and killed, and for what? “You start blaming the politicians for creating the war,” Rubino recalls.

Lt. Commander Rubino spent six months in Vietnam, returned to the United States in April 1970 and was stationed at Great Lakes until his two-year term was finished. Upon discharge, he joined the Family Medical Group in Joliet, working as a surgeon until retiring in 2003.

He and his wife have five children and six grandchildren. Rubino keeps in touch with many of the doctors he served with. His photo and memorabilia are on display in the Italian American Veterans Museum at Casa Italia in Stone Park.

“Helping the Marines was great for me,” Rubino says. “Yet, looking back, I honestly feel we really did not belong there. It was too bad Truman didn’t listen to Ho Chi Minh when he asked for help.”

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Linda Grisolia

August 6, 2020

Army MP John Del Medico

In one foray into a French village during World War II, John Del Medico and a fellow MP single-handledly took more than 120 Nazis prisoner and freed 800 Russian soldiers from a Nazi prison camp.

John Del Medico was born and raised in Chicago. He was employed at a steel mill when he was drafted into the Army in November 1942.

Del Medico completed basic training at Camp Grant in Illinois and was assigned to the 26th Yankee Division, as a military policeman. He deployed overseas and disembarked in England.

While in England, Del Medico and his fellow soldiers constantly trained and conducted day and night time maneuvers. Fully prepared, the men were ready for combat. One day, the orders came in. The commanding officer said, “This is it.”

Del Medico headed to Normandy and participated in the second landing. Enemy gunfire from pillboxes facing the channel met the landing ships and many men were lost. Del Medico said, “It was rough.” Men were shot down before his eyes. He said, “I felt scared, everybody was scared. … I saw bodies blown apart.”

Of the three types of military policeman — front line, division and rear — Del Medico was assigned to the front line. He and his partner escorted convoys of troops to the front and also handled German prisoners of war.

After Normandy, Del Medico advanced through France and continued into Germany, encountering resistance and fighting all the way. He carried a rifle and a side arm. A jeep that he sometimes rode in was equipped with a machine gun. He moved with the infantry, sleeping in foxholes along the way. As Del Medico and his partner approached a town, they looked first for the hanging white flags, usually bed sheets, of surrender. If there were no flags, they proceeded with caution.

One day, while patrolling the front line in Germany, he entered a village that didn’t display any white flags. He looked at his partner and said, “I don’t like this.” They had been told that everything was OK and secured in the area. Suddenly, three German soldiers ran across the street toward a house and Del Medico and his partner shot at them. Del Medico grabbed one, held a gun to his head and asked, “Are you alone?” The soldier understood English and answered, “No.” A major exited the house to surrender and Del Medico asked, “Is there anyone else?” The major answered, “Yea.” Del Medico said, “OK, tell them to get out, they’ll want to surrender, too.”

Civilians of the village watched as white flags appeared and the German soldiers came out of the building, one by one, and threw their firearms in a pile on the ground. Del Medico then asked the garrison commander, “Who else do you have?” He answered, “We have a Russian prison camp.”

That day, in that village in Germany, about one month after landing in Normandy, Del Medico and his partner captured 126 German soldiers and six officers, including the garrison commander. They freed 800 Russian prisoners that had been held outside of town. The Russian soldiers were happy and relieved to leave the prison gates and their commanding officer led them away. Del Medico turned the captured officers over to his commander and escorted the German soldiers to the next military police station, where they were then taken to a prison camp. Del Medico had no problem with them and said, “They were glad to get caught.”

Looking back, Del Medico said, “I was scared, but I didn’t show it in my face, in my heart I was scared.” It was only him and his partner and they did not have time to think about the danger. He said, “We both were lucky that we were alive.”

Del Medico continued on through Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium, escorting the troops to the front line. The citizens of each town were good about letting Del Medico know if there were any German soldiers. He said, “The civilians were always happy and glad to see Americans come in because they knew the war would end for them.”

As he advanced through Europe, Del Medico continued to capture German soldiers. At times, other American soldiers detained the enemy and turned them over to Del Medico and his partner to be escorted to the military police station.

After capturing German soldiers, the first thing Del Medico did was tell the men to take off their shirts. The SS men, Hitler’s right-hand men, had tattoos underneath their arms. They were the “bad ones.” They were sneaky and had to be watched closely. Del Medico said, “The other soldiers didn’t want to fight any more than we did. Hitler’s men were different.”

At the Battle of the Bulge, Del Medico fought the weather as well as the enemy. He remembered the extreme cold and the snow. Del Medico kept warm by tying newspapers and gunnysacks around his feet and legs. He said, “I’d find any newspapers I could.”

Many lives were lost during that wintry battle. Del Medico told of taking a fallen soldier’s rifle, sticking it in the snow, topping it with his helmet and propping the soldier against it. A special outfit would then come and pick up the fatalities. The soldiers all worked together.

Del Medico was discharged when the war ended and his awards include three Battle Stars and the Silver Star.

He is proud to have served his country. Del Medico says, “I didn’t know if I would come home alive or what … I was just praying to make it home. I guess God was with me.”

Del Medico returned home to his wife and worked as a mechanic. He is active in the Italian American War Veterans, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. Displayed among his military awards is a framed essay titled “My Hero,” written by his granddaughter, Nicole, while in third grade. Perhaps, this is his greatest honor of all.

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