Leonard Maro Smith

Smith, Leonard

Smith, Leonard Maro

US Marine Corps, World War II Pacific

The most enduring image of World War II is the raising of the flag on the top of Mt. Suribachi. Leonard Smith, a young Marine who had fought through the invasion of Iwo Jima, was on the mountain when that flag was raised.

That wasn’t his first battle. He arrived in the Pacific area as a rifleman with the 4th Marine Division, the first division to go directly into combat from the United States. That was the battle on the twin islands of Roi-Namur in the Kwajalein Atoll of the Marshall Islands, from 1 February to 14 February 1944. From there, they continued on to fight on Saipan from 15 June to 9 July, then on Tinian from 25 July to 1 August. The battle of Iwo Jima lasted from 19 February t0 16 March, 1945.

Leonard was the first veteran interred in the Avenue of 444 Flags during the ossuary dedication on Veterans Day, November 11, 2012.

Leonard Pleban

Pleban, Dr. Leonard

Hermitage, PA

U.S. Army – World War II

When Leonard Pleban went into the army in October, 1942, he was assigned to the medical detachment of the 908th Field Artillery.

“I couldn’t even stand the sight of blood,” he said. “I puked a few times, and passed out a few times when I saw some of the surgeries, but after that it was nothing.”

During a training course at a hospital, a chiropodist told him about chiropody, which is the old term for podiatry. He didn’t realize at the time that he had discovered his future career.

The 908th Artillery was sent to France shortly after D-Day as part of the 83rd Infantry Division. The unit fought through five major campaigns, including the Battle of the Bulge. Leonard was one of the very few in his unit to emerge without a scratch.

“My captains wanted me to go to medical school,” he said. “I didn’t want to, because I didn’t want to sign any death certificates.”

Then he remembered chiropody, and realized that chiropodists (podiatrists) don’t have to do that.

So the army gave him his vocation. It also gave him an avocation. After the war, Staff Sergeant Pleban was assigned to help set up a nightclub to entertain troops while they waited to be demobilized. He served as MC and half a comedy team in the style of Abbott and Costello.

When he came back from the service, he took pre-med courses at Youngstown State, then enrolled in the Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine in Cleveland.

After completing his schooling, Dr. Pleban found that starting a practice wasn’t easy. He found space for an office in downtown Sharon, above the Sharon Restaurant. With 36 steps up and no elevator, it wasn’t ideal for a foot doctor. It wasn’t even an office, just a large room. Getting set up put him deeply in debt.

Then he had an office and equipment, but no patients. His clientele built up slowly until one key element fell into place. He volunteered to work with the Sharon High School athletic program. He did that pro bono for 50 years.

“ The school got a doctor without cost,” he said, “and I got the kids, their parents, and their grandparents as patients.” He took advantage of invitations to host sports banquets and other events. His sense of humor, initially honed in his military nightclub, made him a roaring success as the Valley’s MC.

“He’s known as the Johnny Carson of the Shenango Valley,” says his wife Florence.

Louis Epstein

Epstein, Louis

Sharon, PA

U.S. Army, World War II

For sheer variety – and for the military importance of his mission – few World War II veterans can match the experiences of Louis Epstein of Sharon. While in the army, he attended college, trained with the army engineers to build and blow up bridges, and ended up fighting the Japanese not with explosives, but with radio receivers and a typewriter. He spent much of the last two years of the war behind enemy lines – without ever leaving the United States.

He was 18 years old when he joined the army right after graduating from Sharon High School in 1943. The very day he passed his physical, the army sent him not to a basic training camp, but to Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh.

“It was a kind of college program to train you to go into specialties in the army,” Epstein said. “It was short-lived. I went for one or two terms. We studied engineering, physics, chemistry, that sort of thing.”

While there, Epstein had a fascinating experience.

“We were living in an old foundry on 4th street – there were about 200 of us. We were in double-decker bunks, army style, and we were having one of these bull sessions one night. Somebody raised the question as to whether you can convert matter into energy or vice verse. One of the boys yelled out, “Let’s write to Einstein.” So I was elected to write a letter to him. So I wrote a letter to Albert Einstein, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, never really expecting to get an answer.”

A couple of weeks later he received a letter, obviously typed by Einstein himself: “Dear Mr. Epstein, Yes, it is possible to convert matter to energy under the following conditions – e=mc2. Cordially, Albert Einstein.”

“The whole thing was an amazing experience,” Epstein said. “Imagine how we felt in 1945 when the bombs went off, and then this all sort of came into place.”

When the college program was terminated, the students were shipped to an induction station in Harrisburg.

“They put us in the real army with uniforms and the whole bit and began to assign us to various branches. I was shipped to the Corps of Engineers at Fort Belvoir, VA.”

The training there included building and blowing up bridges, laying and clearing mine fields – and a battery of tests to determine the best placement of the recruits.

“One tested your ability to recognize rhythm sequences, which is basically related to musical ability. I had done a lot of music, played clarinet and piano, and I rated almost a perfect score. That indicated to the army that I should get into telegraphy and Morse Code kind of work. So they sent me to a Corps of Engineers telegraphy school and I became a high-speed radio telegrapher.”

From there Epstein was assigned to Fort Lewis, Washington, where he transferred to the 115th Signal Radio Intelligence Company. Their mission was to intercept Japanese army traffic in the Far East.

With a double set of Hammarlund Super Pro receivers hooked up to 120-ft. rhombic antennas, Epstein would listen to both sides of a radio-telegraphed conversation between two Japanese army officers and type it onto a roll of paper.

“We couldn’t stop as long as they were still sending. Guys would come by and pull the papers out of our typewriters and immediately start teletyping the information to Washington.”

The messages were in two parts – what Epstein called chit-chat, and the actual encoded communication.

We were taught the lingo of basic Japanese chit-chat – how are you, are you ready to start copying, I’ll talk to you tomorrow at 9 o’clock, all that stuff even though it was in Japanese and telegraphy.”

The encoded part was sent in groupings of four numbers. Epstein had no idea what that part meant – but others in the army intelligence operation were able to interpret it quickly.

“It was sent in an almost infantile kind of code – nothing like the Germans, which was complicated to break. It was a code based on things that you looked up in an encyclopedia. If you had the encyclopedia you could break the code. For some reason the Japanese did not realize that an American naval officer before the war had run off with a set of these encyclopedias. So as soon as we got the stuff down on paper, it was decoded rapidly and easily and translated, and we used to joke that we had the results of those messages before the Japanese did on the other side.”

The radio intelligence organization did more than intercept specific enemy messages.

“We had experts in our same building who analyzed the volume of traffic coming from the different points, and based on that, helped to reach conclusions about where something might happen.”

They could also precisely locate the source of Japanese radio transmissions.

“We had a station in the Aleutians just like ours in Fort Lewis, and the third was down in Petaluma, California. If someone heard a little beep somewhere out in the Pacific, we immediately triangulated it and we knew exactly where it was.”

Epstein is justifiably proud of his military service.

“I’m nothing but amazed at how well this signal outfit did, and what it accomplished. It wasn’t heavy duty combat or all that, but it was an extremely interesting piece of work that was mentally challenging, and I think we made a lot of contribution to the war effort.”

Lt. James Blose

James Blose

Sharpsville, PA

Army Air Corps, World War II

Born on August 30, 1918, Jimmy Blose was driven by a restless spirit. He wrote later, “I may have been a much better man had I stayed in Sharpsville, but I know that I never could have been content living there. Something was missing there; I don’t know just what it was.”

Before he reached his 24th birthday, that restless spirit drove Jimmy to a place half the world away, where he vanished for nearly 65 years…. Read more >

Michael Kolesar

Kolesar, Michael

Farrell/Greenville, PA

U.S. Army – World War II

“However my country wants me to serve, that’s how I’ll serve.”

That was the response of Farrell native and current Greenville resident Michael Kolesar to every assignment he received in World War II – including ones for which he had neither experience nor inclination.

After joining the army on March 20, 1942, at the age of 26, he was assigned to the training section of the 2nd Convalescent Hospital at Camp Langdon, in New Hampshire. There he became detachment clerk and helped with the training. Because of his excellent job performance, he was selected for assignment with General Eisenhower’s First Army Headquarters in Shrivenham, England, where a Medical Field Service School was being established. But as sometimes happens in the army, his initial assignment didn’t make much sense.

“I was a medic, and I found out I was limited service because I had a punctured ear drum,” Kolesar said. “But I was assigned to the weapons section. I had never fired a gun in my life.”

Rather than complain, Kolesar learned about the weapons by reading manuals. His initiative, as well as his attitude and clerical experience, earned him a job as the section’s clerk, then a spot in Officer Candidate School.

When he was commissioned a second lieutenant on April 14, 1943, Kolesar trained doctors and nurses right there at the Medical Field Service School in courses such as field sanitation and chemical warfare.

After the D-Day invasions, Kolesar was sent to France.

“When I crossed the channel, there was a new group of soldiers,” Kolesar said. “At least I had lived a little bit, for me it wouldn’t be so bad. But hey were only kids, just out of high school.”

In France, Lt. Kolesar helped establish a Medical Field Service School at the Chateau Le Marais, a beautiful estate complete with a moat, satin-finished walls, and beautiful floors.

After the war Kolesar used the GI Bill to attend Thiel College. He finished in three years and got a job teaching Social Studies, American Government, and Problems of Democracy in the Greenville schools.

“I say with great pride that I was a professional teacher. I got my Master’s Degree in 1951, and earned the equivalence of two other Master’s Degrees, so I had enough for a doctor’s degree.”

Throughout his teaching career, he displayed the same dynamic attitude he had as a soldier and military officer – a willingness to serve others in whatever way he could.

Nick Libeg

Brookfield

U.S. Army – World War II

Pre-military experience can open non-combat opportunities for infantry soldiers. Nick Libeg had taken typing and shorthand before being drafted in 1940, so he was made a clerk typist in the 45th Division at Camp Barkeley, Texas. One of his major jobs was to do the paperwork for courts martial. He had plenty to do. When the 45th Division went on maneuvers in Louisiana, Mardi Gras drew hundreds of men AWOL. The captain in charge of the courts martial was so pleased with Nick’s work that he recommended him for Officers Candidate School.

Commissioned at Fort Benning’s OCS, Nick served as a basic training officer at Camp Rucker, Alabama. His experience at running Libby’s Tavern in Masury gave him another opportunity, though not one that made his life easier. The jobs of mess officer and officers’ club manager were added to his other duties.

But it wasn’t Nick’s objective to avoid danger. He wanted to be a pilot, so he transferred to the Army Air Corps. Maybe the lack of appropriate pre-military experience kept this chance from being so successful.

“I loved flying,” he said, “but I crashed two planes. After the second accident, my trainer asked whose side I was on in the war.”

So he became a bombardier and navigator in a B-24 flying out of England. Enemy fire made the work dangerous, but their most frightening incident occurred because of a problem within their own plane. Their twelve 500-lb impact-triggered bombs were held in place by solenoid-activated clips at their nose and tail. The bottom two of a stack of three failed, but the clip on the front of the top bomb released, tipping it nose down onto the one below. One wrong move would have detonated it. With air temperature at 20 below zero, Nick crawled along an 18 inch wide walkway over the open bomb bay doors and released the bombs with a screw driver.

“We were pretty close to heaven at that time,” Nick said.

Their reward for completing the required 30 missions was another not-so-great opportunity: assignment to the South Pacific. Fortunately, the war in the Pacific ended before they got there.

Nick was able to go back to managing Libby’s Tavern, raise a family, and pursue a successful career in real estate. He served in many community organizations, including the Farrell Lions Club, the Wolves Club, the American Legion, VFW Post 8860, the Optimist Club in Brookfield, and the Shenango Valley Board of Realtors.

For a longer narrative of Nick’s life, go to his life story at America’s Cemetery.

Paul Mayne

U.S. Navy

World War II, Korean War, Vietnam

“Join the Navy and see the world!”

That, of course, is the perennial Navy recruiting slogan. But that’s not what motivated Paul Mayne to join the Navy in 1955. He had quit high school, and the military draft was making it difficult for him to get a job.

“Companies didn’t want to hire you until your service obligation was done,” he said.

So at age 17, he enlisted in the Navy. After his initial training, he was assigned as a Machinist’s Mate working in the engine room on the destroyer escort USS Rich. With the “Cold War” chilling the world, the Rich served with a squadron in the fleet guarding the eastern coast near Washington against intrusion by Russian submarines. They alternated between 14 days at sea, 12 days in port.

Then it seemed as if Paul was going to actually get to “see the world.” In 1956, the USS Rich set sail for a trip around the world. However, it only got as far as the Mediterranean Sea before being waylaid by the Suez Canal crisis. It remained with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean for three months, then returned to the U.S.

In 1957, Paul was transferred to the USS Holder, a destroyer escort in the same squadron as the Rich. In 1958, the Holder sailed through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea into the Persian Gulf. That’s when President Eisenhower landed troops in Lebanon. The Holder remained in the Persian Gulf for 62 days. That’s a long time for a destroyer to remain at sea.

“We had no place to get fresh provisions or anything,” Paul said. “At the end of that time we were about out of food. We were eating mainly dried goods – beans, peas, rice and so on. We got some beef from an army base in Ethiopia. It was fresh meat, all in quarters, but we had no way of preserving it on the ship. Our reefers could keep food frozen, but they couldn’t freeze it. What we couldn’t eat before it spoiled, we used for fishing. We finally got fresh provisions when we got back to the Mediterranean.”

Paul remained on the Holder until he got out of the Navy in 1959. He came home and got a job at National Malleable and Steel Castings, but was laid off after just a month. The day after that happened, he reenlisted in the Navy.

He was sent to submarine school, but couldn’t pass the physical because of ear problems. Assigned to another destroyer, the USS Charles R. Ware, he sailed again through the “Med” and the Red Sea into the Persian Gulf. Again, it wasn’t too pleasant, but not because of hunger. The ship was not air conditioned.

“It got pretty hot in the engine room,” he said. “We stood four hour watches, and slept on the deck.”

The Ware returned to Newport, Rhode Island, for a major upgrade. Since he wasn’t needed there, he was assigned to the Boston Naval Shipyard to help put the new USS Farragut into commission.

“It was one of the Navy’s first guided missile ships,” Paul said. “It was commissioned in December, 1960.”

In 1961, Paul got to see a bit more of the world when the Farragut went on a North Atlantic cruise.

“We went to England, Germany, Sweden, and Norway,” he said. “We spent Christmas in Portsmouth, England.”

The Farragut then served two months with the Sixth Fleet in the Med before heading back to Mayport Naval Station near Jacksonville, Florida. Towards the end of 1962, she sailed again to the Mediterranean.

“We pulled into Naples, Italy, where we were supposed to have a tender period. That’s when you pull in alongside the repair ship and they repair whatever you need on the destroyer. But we had to get underway in only two days. Nobody knew why. After about five or six days, President Kennedy gave his speech about the Cuban Missile Crisis. After things settled down, we went back into port for a repair period.”

Paul served shore duty at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard keeping care of mothballed ships, then went back to sea on the USS Kepler.

“I reported aboard on a Friday night,” Paul said. “We got underway Monday morning to go to the Mediterranean.”

There they had at least one adventure.

“A Russian submarine was setting out there near the U.S. Navy submarine repair ship at Rota, Spain. They sent the Kepler and two other destroyers. We sat on that Russian submarine until it came up. It finally came up identified himself, stayed up about an hour, then dove again. Then we lost contact with it and never did regain it.”

Paul served on that ship about two years. Then, he was assigned to Vietnam.

“But first we went through SERE training at the Camp Pendleton Marine base. That’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. The Marines didn’t have any buses. Anyplace you went you marched or ran. The training included a simulated POW camp. They made a believer out of you there by showing you what Charlie could do.”

In Vietnam, Paul served on YRBM-16 (Yard Repair, Berthing, and Messing), a barge that was part of the “brownwater navy” in the Mekong Delta. Their mission was to support PBRs (Patrol Boat, Riverine), fast fiberglass boats that patrolled the Delta waterways to interdict enemy traffic and to insert combat teams where they were needed. The YRBM provided them with ammunition, fuel, and repairs. Their four-man crews slept and ate on the barge. Normally two PBR sections, with ten boats each, were assigned to the barge.

On Thanksgiving night, 1967, the Viet Cong planted a mine underneath the barge.

“We had been dropping grenades over the side every 30 minutes to defend against underwater teams,” Paul said. The mine was planted 2 days after we stopped doing that.”

The mine, with an estimated three or four pounds of C-4, caused considerable damage. It blew a 15’ x 20’ hole and set over 200,000 gallons of diesel fuel on fire.

“The fire went down the river about five miles,” Paul said.

The one fire pump on board was back where the fire was raging, so the crew had no way to fight the fire. The crewmembers were evacuated down the river to an LST, where helicopters evacuated the wounded. The crew took firefighting equipment back up to the barge. Even with help from the LST’s fire fighting crew, they couldn’t put the fire out until the next day.

The barge, which had no motive power of its own, was towed to Dong Tam where it was beached so temporary repairs could be made. It was then towed to a dry dock in Japan for permanent repairs.

Since most of the barge’s crew has come to Vietnam together ten or eleven months earlier, their tours were nearly up. The crew was split up, with members being sent to various locations where they were needed.

Paul was ready to come home the day before the Tet offensive hit in the end of January 1968.

“I went to the helicopter pad, but couldn’t get a ride, so I went back to Saigon. After Tet broke out, I couldn’t get out for three or four days.”

Paul then went to air conditioning and refrigeration training, and as a drill instructor in recruit training school for two years. After he reenlisted again, he came back east to put the USS Luce back into service. After it was reconditioned, he sailed with it to Guantanamo Bay where it stayed for three months.

“On the way back to the states in September, 1971, we hit Hurricane Ginger,” Paul said. “ The chief boatswain’s mate and I nearly got washed over. I was holding onto life line with my whole body hanging over the side. The next wave pushed me back up on deck. The chief stew-burner (cook) saw what happened and went in to get some mess cooks to help. They took me and the boatswain’s mate in and got us to sick bay. A corpsman sewed up all my cuts except one too near the eye.”

After the ship got into port the next morning, Paul was sent to a hospital where he was in recovery until January, 1972. He was on limited duty for 8 or 9 months before going back to regular duty on the USS Kiska, a brand new ammunition ship where he served for three years.

“We were over there in 1975 when Saigon fell. We supplied some of the ships coming out with food and water and sent them on to Subic Bay or Guam.”

Paul finished his career assigned to a small resupply and repair base in Singapore, manned by just 10 Navy personnel and six civilians.

“There were no barracks there,” he said. “We had to live with the general population, and weren’t allowed to wear uniforms.

From there, when work was slow, he was sent on temporary duty several times to Subic Bay repair facility in the Philippines. Finally he came back to San Diego, where he served in an intermediate maintenance facility.

He retired from there. He had indeed seen the world – not all of it, but certainly a lot of it.

Richard Bailey

Grove City, PA

Army Air Force

World War II

Early in 1943, Dick Bailey enlisted in the Army Air Force.

“A whole carload of us went up to Erie to join,” he said, “but I was the only one that went in. The rest of them all backed out.”

He never got home again until he was released from the service slightly more than four years later.

Dick was assigned to the 344th Service Squadron, 13th Air Force. They had a rough trip to the South Pacific.

“After going through Panama Canal, we dropped off supplies at Bora Bora. Going out the next morning we hit a reef, knocked a hole in the bottom of the ship, and bent the screw and the shaft. We vibrated the whole way to Noumea, New Caledonia.”

The 344th Service Squadron followed the U.S. military advances to maintain and repair combat aircraft.

“Every time they drove the Japs off an island, we’d move up. We had a prop shop, metal shop, welding shop, and paint shop. One time they brought a B-24 in on its belly because the wheels wouldn’t go down. We put a new walkway in it and bomb bay doors and had it flying again in two weeks.”

Less than ideal conditions sometimes seriously increased their workload.

“On Leyte, there were two airstrips. One was right along the ocean. They had to close it down because of the crosswinds. Guys were crashing all the time. So they built another strip up on top of a mountain. If they came in too short, they ran into the side of the mountain. If they went too long, they’d land down over the other side of the mountain.”

Although they were hit with Japanese attacks from time to time, Dick’s worst injury was the result of a motorcycle accident.

“A big truck and trailer had just refueled a B-24. It pulled right out in front of me and I hit him broadside. I got a fractured pelvis and a concussion.”

Before the war was over, all four of his brothers also served in the military. Dick’s brother John had entered the army about a year before him; he served in North Africa and Europe. His brothers Fonnie and Frederick also served in Europe. Fonnie was wounded and became a prisoner of war. James joined the Navy in 1945. He later served as a paratrooper in the Korean War and as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, where he died in action.

Link to brother James Bailey

Robert Beck

Sharon. PA

U.S. Air Corps, World War II

Even the best training can leave out a few vital pieces of information.

“During pilot training with the P-51 fighter in Florida,” wrote Lt. Robert Beck, “we were given very little information on how best to parachute from this airplane. I was to find out the hard way later in Burma.”

After his plane was hit, he released the canopy and pushed himself up while holding the parachute’s ripcord.

“The wind slammed me back against the armor plate of the seat and my right arm was forced back pulling the ripcord and opening the chute in the cockpit!! My immediate words were, ‘ah sh–!’”

He was violently yanked out of the cockpit. The chute caught on the tail; then his weight ripped it loose. He found himself with a gaping hole in his chute falling rapidly toward his flaming plane on the ground. Ammunition was exploding, sending tracers flying in every direction.

In spite of the hole in his chute, he pulled the shroud lines to avoid flaming wreckage. He hit the ground very hard.

Injured, worried about the Japanese, he crawled through several gullies looking for a way to escape. He was aware that he was slipping into shock.

“I found a clump of weeds, crawled in, and forced myself to lie still and think of nice things at home in Pittsburgh, Pa.,” he wrote.

Four hours later he heard P-51s flying over, but he couldn’t attract their attention. A short time after that, another pilot landed and took him back to the base.

That was not Lt. Beck’s last great adventure. He continued to fly missions, including the longest single-engine fighter mission in World War II. Forty P51s took off from what is now Bangladesh to attack an airfield near Bangkok, Thailand, more than 700 miles away. Taken totally by surprise, the Japanese put up no resistance. Thirty-nine of the planes returned home more than six and a half hours after they had taken off, having inflicted severe damage on the targeted airbase.

Lt. Beck returned home in June, 1945, and was discharged from the service in October. For his service, he was awarded an Air Medal, a Purple Heart, and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He married June Shafer in 1948; they had three children. After working 38 years with Bell of PA, he started Sharon Commercial Printing. He passed away in January, 2006.

Sam Stanovich

Stanovich, Sam

Farrell, PA

U.S. Army – World War II

Sam Stanovich loved baseball. One of his favorite players was Joe DiMaggio. But DiMaggio was never Sam’s hero.

“My heroes are all the kids who died in the wars,” he said.

Sam and all four of his brothers served in war zones. Fortunately, none of them were heroes as Sam defines the word.

Drafted in 1942, Sam didn’t like military life.

“They never made a soldier out of me,” he said, “but I did what I had to do.”

Actually, he did a quite a bit more than he had to do. He volunteered for a mission that earned him a Bronze Star and a Russian medal, and got his name in a couple of books about World War II.

Sam was drafted in 1942, two years after graduating from the new Farrell High School. He went to basic training and radio school at Fort Hood, Texas. Then he took some tests for the Army Specialized Training Program, which sent selected soldiers to study at universities, supposedly for 18 months. They were to become officers designated to help restore civilian governments in Europe after the war.

Unfortunately, the program was terminated after about six months when the army started preparing for the invasion of Europe.

“They sent us to beef up the divisions that were in the process of going overseas,” Sam said.

Sam’s unit, the Reconnaissance Troop of the 104th Infantry Division, landed in Cherbourg, France, on September 7, 1944, exactly three months after the Normandy invasion. The Allies needed the port of Antwerp to transport supplies from England to a big supply depot in Belgium. The 104th Infantry Division was joined with the First Canadian Army to capture it.

That supply depot was a principal German objective during the last great German offensive of the war, the Battle of the Bulge, in December, 1944.

“We were just north of the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans threw everything they had into that. When they made their first attack, some of their paratroopers landed around us.”

The combined Allied armies, including the 104th Infantry Division, pushed the Germans back into Germany. There Sam personally witnessed the horrors of the Nazi regime. In early April, Sam’s unit arrived in Nordhausen, an auxiliary facility of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

“Out of the 6,000 prisoners left there, 5,000 were dead. Our commander, General Allen, made us go in. Underneath the stairways bodies were stacked like cordwood. In the double-decker bunks there were dead people lying right beside the living. Later people started saying the Holocaust never happened. In another 20 years, all the guys who witnessed it will be gone, and they’ll be another drive to push this lie that it never happened.”

By the end of April, the Allied armies were nearing Berlin from the West, while the Russians were reaching the Elbe River from the East. The mission to accomplish the first contact between the two armies is described in , Timberwolf Tracks, the History of the 104th Infantry Division:

The first Americans to make contact with the Russians in April, 1945. Sam is third from the left.

On the evening of April 23 Lieutenant Harlan W. Shank, Sergeant Jack Adler, Corporal Bob Gilfillan, and Corporal Sam Stanovich of the 104th Reconnaissance Troop, plus a liberated Russian officer, crossed the Mulde, headed for Torgau on the Elbe.

Sam had volunteered for the mission.

“Two of my best buddies were going, and they needed another guy with radio experience in case we made a contact and we had to do some radio work. I had been to radio school, so I volunteered.”

It was a mission filled with uncertainty. All alone, without any support, the five had to cross territory occupied by many German troops, about 30 miles from Berlin. Although they were surrounded by the enemy, they took the bold step of mounting an American flag on their jeep.

“That saved the day. The Germans were afraid to death of being captured by the Russians. The Germans had killed a lot of civilians in Russia, so they knew they would get more humane treatment with the Americans. Our army is probably the most humane army in the history of the world.”

Along the way, the four Americans encountered a German colonel who was in command of 1,200 troops.

“The four of us surrounded them and they surrendered,” Sam jokes. “Actually, the colonel was ready to surrender, but said he couldn’t without orders from higher command. He said to stop again on our way back through.”

Corporal Bob Gilfillan is quoted in Timberwolf Tracks about meeting up with the Russians: “Greeting the general was quite an honor, for I got the feeling that I myself was tying a bond that signified the end.”

On their way back to the American front, the patrol met up again with the 1,200 German troops.

“The Colonel wasn’t there,” Sam said, “but there was another officer. They had their guns all piled up, and our lieutenant told them exactly where to go to surrender.”

The end Gilfillan anticipated came just 10 days later. Germany surrendered officially on May 8, 1945.

Unfortunately, the war with Japan continued. Many American soldiers, including Sam, were sent to California to train for an invasion of Japan. Many were expecting a 90 percent casualty rate in that attack, but the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought about Japan’s surrender before their training even began.

Maybe the army didn’t make a soldier out of Sam, but he came out of it a good man. He delivered mail in Farrell 30 years. His passion was coaching Little League baseball. In 1965, his team made it all the way to the state finals.

“When he was coaching little league,” his sister Martha said, “he was really great with those children. When he was a mailman he was the same. And he has always been a very considerate brother.”