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.”

Don Eichelberger

Eichelberger, Don

Sharpsville, PA

U.S. Army, World War II

What’s a hero? Don Eichelberger says it’s anyone who just does his job when he’s ordered to do it, and doesn’t crawl down into a hole. But men like Eichelberger always apply that to the guy next to him, never to himself.

During 600 days of combat with the Americal Division in the Pacific, crawling into a hole was rarely an option for Eichelberger, unless it was one occupied by enemy soldiers. Starting on the island of Bougainville, he fought as part of a twelve-man reconnaissance squad responsible for going out in search of enemy units.

During November, 1944, his patrol discovered an enemy encampment early in the morning. They called in an infantry unit, and an entire unit of 23 enemy soldiers were killed without a single American casualty. Everyone who participated in the raid was honored with a Bronze Star. According to the citation, “The courage and jungle craft displayed by all members of the patrol is especially meritorious. The careful preparation, skillful execution, and deadly accuracy of fire constitute a masterpiece of jungle fighting.”

After Bougainville, Eichelberger’s recon squad went out on patrols through the torturous jungles of the Philippine islands of Leyte, Cebu, and Negros, sometimes for as long as twenty days. With feet continuously wet from slogging through the jungle, Eichelberger had to be hospitalized for treatment of ulcers on his ankles. He also contracted malaria.

After Negros was considered clear of enemy soldiers, Eichelberger’s unit started amphibious training for what would have been the most devastating and terrifying beach assault ever: the invasion of Japan itself. He is thankful that the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki made that unnecessary.

Eichelberger spent three months in the occupation of Japan, then returned home.

“My welcoming was walking into the house and being embraced by my parents. I didn’t have any bells ringing or parades and what have you.”

What he did have were some tokens of what heroes sometimes get: not only two Bronze Stars, but also a Good Conduct medal, Combat Infantryman Badge, Army Commendation Medal, Armed Forces Achievement Medal, Philippine Liberation Medal (from the Philippine government), Army of Occupation Medal, Presidential Unit Citation, Armed Forces Reserve Medal, Asiatic Pacific Medal with three campaign stars.

So was Don Eichelberger a hero? If you ask him, he’ll tell you no.

But re-read his own definition of a hero, and make up your own mind.

Daverio, John

John Daverio

Sharon, PA

Enchanted with history

John Daverio has been fascinated with history since he was a kid. He can tell you how many words there are in the Treaty of Versailles, how many Russians were killed during World War II, how many tons of bombs were dropped on Japan after the two atomic bombs, and why the sun never set on the British Empire.

His interest in history was rooted in his own family and in his neighborhood.

“When I was in third grade in what is now the Musser School,” John said, “the teacher one day said, ‘We all have our own language. Here we have English, in Germany they have German, and so on. They all have just one language.’ I got up and I said, ‘In Switzerland they have three languages – Italian, German, and French.’ She said, ‘Now John, where did you ever hear that? I said, ‘From my father and mother.’”

John’s father, Joe Daverio, learned construction with marble, granite, and concrete in his home town of Como, Italy. He worked in Switzerland and Germany before coming to the United States. His brother Sam worked in Switzerland and France.

“My mother’s three sisters settled in France. They wanted to come here, but the husbands said the United States was too violent. So they stayed there and lived through two world wars.”

When Joe Daverio came here in 1905, he worked with the Vasconi brothers, who came from the same part of Italy and worked in the same trade. Then around 1911, he decided to start his own business.

“He did very well, because the country was young and growing, and there was lots of construction. He was a member of the union for 37 years before he passed away in 1942.”

John was born in 1917, seven years after his sister Caroline and seven years before his brother Joe. John got a practical education in geopolitics from his neighborhood in Sharon, which included families from diverse ethnic backgrounds. There were German, Hungarian, Schwabian, Irish, Slovak, and Russian families. Each of them reflected the nations they came from, and mirrored the relationships among them.

After high school, John attended business school in Sharon for a year.

John working on the Crippled Children’s Center in Hermitage, PA, October 1957

“Then some construction work started up. So my dad said it might be better for me to get my apprenticeship card. When I started I was the youngest bricklayer there. Before I retired I got my 50-year gold membership card with the Bricklayers, Masons, and Plasterers Union of Sharon. My brother Joe and Uncle Sam also got gold cards.”

Working hard didn’t dull John’s interest in learning. Nor did his military service during World War II. Late in 1944 he arrived at Tinian Island, the B-29 base from which the United States launched countless aerial assaults on Japan – including the only two nuclear attacks in history. The B-29s flew countless bombing sorties against Japan before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Few Americans know much about those earlier missions.

“This has never been publicized too much,” John said. “We used 80% napalm. Every bomb load carried almost eight tons of fire and two five hundred pound TNT bombs to spread the fire. We bombed at least 160 cities.”

The Air Force used the B-29s to mine the waters around Japan which effectively shut down shipping between the coast of Asia and Japan.

“We had what they called Torpex bombs. They were magnetic and acoustic mines. We dropped them from Korea all the way down between Japan and the mainland of Asia. The Japanese were not getting any more gas and oil. We knew that the war could not last much longer than the month of July.”

But the Japanese refused to surrender, so on August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped the atomic bombs.

“But the war did not end with those bombs,” John stressed. “We didn’t hear from the Japanese on the 10th, on the 11th, on the 12th. On the 13th we got orders to load up every B-29 in the Mariana Islands – 850 of them. And each one of those carried maximum weight, eight tons of TNT bombs. On the 14th, after that bombing, they finally surrendered.”

Margaret Sparano Daverio

When John and his brother Joe came back from the war, they resumed their father’s bricklaying business. John remained unmarried until he was 36.

“I had known Margaret Sparano at a distance when we were teenagers because my parents knew her parents. She was very brilliant and attractive. After I came home from the army I wanted to ask her for a date, but I heard she was going with a doctor in Akron. I said oh, well, that leaves a bricklayer out. Then some relation said, ‘No, I don’t think she’s going with anyone.’ So I asked her out and she said okay.”

John and Margaret dated for two years before they got married on November 24, 1953.

“I just liked everything about her,” he said. “She was just my type. She wanted to be a school teacher but her parents didn’t have money to send her to college. But she was well-read and educated herself. She played the piano. She had the same piano teacher as my sister Caroline.”

Johnny four days old

Margaret was a buyer for four departments at Sharon Store. She stayed with the store when it became May’s and then Kauffman’s.

The marriage of John and Margaret turned out to be exceptionally fortunate, a rare combination that provided the genetics and environment to produce a truly exceptional son. Born in 1954, their only child John Joseph Daverio, or Johnny Joe as they called him, started speaking when he was seven months old. He began teaching himself German at the age of six, shortly before he started reading Shakespeare.

John, age 11, playing on the Sharon Senior High stage, January 1966

Johnny took up the violin when he was seven, and gave his first performance with the Youngstown Symphony when he was 13 years old. He advanced rapidly beyond the abilities of local teachers. Mr. Rosenberg, his teacher at YSU, sent a tape to Carnegie Hall when they were conducting a talent search for the National Youth Symphony. John was a finalist and was awarded a four-year scholarship at Tanglewood with the Bernstein New Artists. He played in a televised broadcast at Carnegie Hall when he was 14. He was offered university scholarships to many great universities, including a National Merit Scholarship and a National Council of Teachers Award in English. He accepted one to Boston University, graduating Summa Cum Laude.

John Joseph Daverio after receiving his PhD on May 15, 1983

While he could have pursued a performance career, John chose to be a teacher. He spent his entire career at Boston University, eventually becoming head of the Musicology Department. He became world renowned for his scholarly publications as well as his performance excellence. He lectured at various universities in the United States and Europe, and could speak Italian, French, German, and Greek, and was learning Russian. He gave pre-concert lectures for the Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. Two of his colleagues were Russian violinists. They were making preparations for him to perform in Leningrad.

John was known not just for his intelligence and talent, but also for his personality and his love of children. According to a Boston Globe article, “His first stop at his friends’ homes was always the floor, where he would instantly begin playing with whatever game or toy was at hand.”

John with his mother in Boston, 1990

His students praised him for the quality of his preparation, knowledge, and sense of humor. Students came from far away to learn from him. One blind student came from Greece specifically to study music history from him.

John often returned to Sharon to visit his parents. His last visit was in March, 2003.

“He was here visiting his mother in the hospital. He left here early in the morning of March 16. He called at 3:30 that afternoon and said he got to Boston and everything was okay, and said he would be seeing us in three weeks because he was going to give a lecture at Pitt. But that never happened.”

Security cameras at the Boston University Fine Arts building recorded John Joseph leaving the building about 9:30 that evening. Then he simply vanished. A month later his body was found in the Charles River. The cause of death was determined to be drowning, but the case was never solved.

Both John and Margaret had to battle depression. “I lost almost 40 pounds, and Margaret lost a lot of weight, too.”

Margaret passed away in February, 2006. He misses not only her, but also his brother Joe and sister Caroline. Joe had worked with him throughout his career. Caroline was a teacher in the Sharon Schools, Penn State Shenango, and Edinboro University.

Despite these losses, John has gradually recovered his ability to laugh and to share his knowledge of history with others. He has lectured about World War II at Kennedy Catholic High School, and has been invited to speak there again this September.

“I was very pleased with the kids there,” John said. “They were very attentive and asked some very good questions.”

And he continues to read and to learn. He can tell you that the treaty of Versailles contained 80,000 words, that 28 million Russians were killed during World War II, and that our B-29s dropped nearly 7,000 tons of bombs on Japan on August 14, 1945 – five days after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. He might also tell you that the sun never set on the British Empire because God didn’t trust them in the dark. So in spite of losing what no one should ever lose, he has kept his mind and his sense of humor.

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 >

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.

Sgt. Ray Bartolo

Ray Bartolo

Greenville, Pa

US Army – World War II

One way to measure military service is by counting the number of years a person actually serves. Another way is to consider how long that service continues to profoundly affect one’s life.

For Ray Bartolo, the first way adds up to three years. The second way stretches out to the rest of his life.

Ray enlisted in the army in the beginning of 1943, not long after graduating from Grove City High School. After basic training in Camp Swift near Austin, Texas, he went on maneuvers in Louisiana, then trained in Ft. Leonard Wood.

Finally, amphibious training on Clemente Island near San Diego led everyone in his unit, the 365^th Field Artillery Battalion of the 97^th Infantry Division, to expect to be sent to the South Pacific – even more so when their equipment was sent to Ft. Lewis, Washington.

But things don’t always go as expected in the military. The Battle of the Bulge broke out in Europe, so the 97^th Infantry was sent to Europe.

Ray was a wireman in the communications section of the artillery battalion.

“The wire section lays telephone wire between the front lines and the headquarters back to the gun emplacements,” Ray said. “Our battalion had 105mm and 155mm howitzers, usually about a mile or two behind the front lines. So the guys manning the guns didn’t know what they were shooting at. A forward observer would see where the shells landed, and tell them over the phone lines whether to raise the guns or lower them, or go to the right or to the left, depending on the targets they wanted to hit.”

While Ray survived the battle, his brother Eddie didn’t.

“He was two years younger than I was,” Ray said. “I went by the cemetery where he was buried, but I didn’t know until late in 1946, after the war, that he was buried in that cemetery. It was near Acton, Belgium.”

After the Battle of the Bulge, Ray’s battalion was sent to southern Germany, where there was still a pocket of resistance near the Czechoslovakian border. That was where Ray encountered a situation which he would never forget.

“Coming back on a wire mission we came upon this huge facility,” Ray said. “We didn’t know what it was. American troops from the 90^th Division were trying to break into it. The gates were charged with high voltage electricity, and we had to wait until it was turned off before we could actually break the gates in.”

It turned out to be Flossenburg Concentration Camp. What they found inside was one of the worst nightmares in human history.

“There were a whole bunch of people in there who looked like walking zombies,” Ray said. “There was a Polish doctor there. He was a Jew, and he could speak a little English, and he took us through the camp, and he showed us thecrematory. He took us into one of the barracks that the prisoners were still in. They didn’t even know that we had liberated the camp.”

What the liberators learned was even more disturbing. The camp had about 7,000 beds – actually, wooden shelves – but there had been 14,000 prisoners there. Half of the prisoners worked for 12 hours a day in an aircraft factory and a quarry while the other half were in the beds. Then they switched.

“The Germans had taken the main contingent of prisoners out and put them on death march to another camp, leaving the ones who couldn’t go, mostly women and older men, and locked the camp up and took off,” Ray said.

Of course, the Americans were totally unprepared for such an experience.

“We were 20 years old and had never even heard the term concentration camp,” Ray said.

The liberation of Flossenburg on April 23, 1945 wasn’t the end of the war for the 97^th Division. As they liberated more towns, there were lots of celebrations, but those didn’t always go the way they should have.

“We had liberated Pilsen in Czechoslovakia, sort of right on the border,” Ray said. “We were in Patton’s Third Army. Just as we were ready to parade into town, a jeep comes down with a guy waving his arm. We saw him talking with our commanding officer. The next thing we knew, we saw this battalion of tanks come rumbling in and park alongside of us. This battalion had just come over from the states, had never been in battle before, and Patton thought this would be an opportunity for him to show off, because Patton was sort of a glory hunter anyway. So we stood there like a bunch of dummies while they went into the camp, and shooting guns and so on, which they had no reason to do because it was already liberated. Our battery and outfit never had a love for Patton after that.”

Even that wasn’t the end of the war for Ray’s division.

“A few days later, I was on a switchboard, because I was in the communications section. I heard through the BBC that we were one of four divisions picked to go to the Pacific theater because the war with Japan was still going on.”

The division was shipped to the Philippines to prepare for the invasion of Japan, but Japan surrendered before that was necessary.

“They decided that we were going to Japan anyway,” Ray said. “We went into Japan somewhere around the second week of September.”

While he was there, Ray was one of fifteen soldiers selected for a special mission. American Counterintelligence Corps officers were after fifteen high German officials who had fled to Japan on U-boats. They were wanted back in Germany for the war trials.

“On a certain morning 15 jeeps with the CIC guys and us all hit at the same time, at six in the morning, and got the 15 people that they were after. We brought them back to the hotel and kept them under guard for 24 hours a day until the CIC got ready to transport them to Germany.”

While Ray was in Japan, he contracted asthma.

“MacArthur had given strict orders to our air force that when they bombed Tokyo during the war that they had to stay away from the hospital,” Ray said. “They knew that eventually they would have to invade Japan, and if they ever got a foothold in Tokyo that they would need that hospital. Everything around it was bombed, but the hospital was left intact. I was sent to this hospital, and from there I was sent back to the states.”

Ray arrived in the Presidio of San Francisco on Christmas Day.

“We were escorted into the hospital, and on every bunk there were all kinds of gifts wrapped up in Christmas paper. Later in the afternoon we were given a call to order and we had to stand by our bunks. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby came in. They talked to each one of us, and gave us an envelope. There was a twenty dollar bill in every one of those envelopes. They talked to us for an hour or so in appreciation for what we had done. From there I was sent to the army hospital in Staten, Virginia, and I was discharged from there.”

Ray got home in the early part of 1946.

“When I left for the service, my dad’s hair was as black as coal,” Ray said. “This was just three years later, but his hair was white as snow. – mainly from losing my brother Eddie.”

Eventually, Eddie had his own homecoming. The Belgian government wanted to reclaim the cemetery where he was buried.

“They gave us four alternatives,” Ray said. “They could either have him sent to Flanders Field, in France, or Arlington, in Washington DC, or the military cemetery nearest to us, which at that time I think was around Harrisburg. Or he could be brought home. My parents decided if they’re going to have to move him, they’d bring him home.”

When the VFW in Grove City found out about it, they wanted to start a veteran’s section in the Grove City cemetery. Eddie was the first soldier brought back from the war to be buried there.

The family continued to grieve for Eddie.

“From 1946, until my daughter was two years old, my mother never had a Christmas tree in the house because my brother was wounded on Christmas day, and he died on New Year’s Day.”

Ray’s grief was rooted not in the loss of Eddie, but in his own experiences.

“After I got home I had continually nightmares of what I saw in Flossenburg,” Ray said. “When we went into the barracks and saw the conditions of the people in those cubicles, it imprinted on my mind. After that, anything that had to do with the army or war movies would bring back these. My folks thought I was going nuts for a long time, because I would have these periodically, and they didn’t know what was going on. They would ask me about them, and I just didn’t ever want to tell them about what I saw because it was hard to try to tell anybody. There was so many war stories, and of course my brother had been killed, they were still going through that grieving.”

The nightmares continued until 1995, the 50^th anniversary of the liberation of the camp. Ray saw an article in a VFW magazine telling that a woman whose grandfather had been in Flossenburg wanted to know more about it. Ray responded to the woman, sending her photos and information. That brought him around to facing his nightmares, thus beginning a healing process that was accelerated when he was invited to talk to a group of concentration camp survivors in Pittsburgh.

“There were quite a few of them in the Squirrel Hill area. About eight of them were prisoners in Flossenburg.”

After that, Ray began to talk to about the Holocaust to anyone who would listen – service clubs such as Lions and Kiwanis, and especially students.

“Sometimes when you get maybe 200 or more in an auditorium, you know how rowdy it is,” he said. “But when I start talking about it you can hear a pin drop. That’s how much interest they show in it. They always ask about whether we hate the Germans. I tell them that’s the trouble, we have too much hate and destruction in the world today. We don’t have any love and compassion. I tell them that they are our future generation. They’re going to be our CEOs in industry, our elected officials. I talk with them so they will know the horrors of war, to want peace. I always tell them that I hope to hell that none of them ever have to go through the horrors of a war. And that’s the way I end up my talk.”

One of his most important talks was before an audience of only two – an interviewer and a video camera man at his home in Greenville, PA. It was part of a project to record the remembrances of people who had personally experienced the Holocaust. The tape is now a permanent part of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

After the interview, Ray received a thank you letter that sums up his contribution:

“In sharing your personal testimony as a liberator of the Holocaust, you have granted future generations the opportunity to experience a personal connection with history. Your interview will be carefully preserved as an important part of the most comprehensive library of testimonies ever collected. Far into the future, people will be able to see a face, hear a voice, and observe a life so that they may listen and learn, and always remember. Thank you for your invaluable contribution, your strength, and your generosity of spirit.”

The letter was signed by the chairman of the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation, Stephen Spielberg, Academy Award winning director of Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

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

Earl Abbott

Hermitage, PA

US Navy – World War II

“Don’t write about me. Write about the ship.”

That’s what World War II veteran Earl Abbott said when he was asked about his military service.

The ship was the USS Henrico, named after the oldest county in Virginia, was 492-ft long Attack Transport that carried 5,500 tons of cargo, including as many as 28 landing craft, 1500 troops, and assault equipment. There certainly is a lot to write about the service of this truly remarkable ship, from her commissioning in 1943 to her retirement in 1968. However, it’s not possible to write about the ship without telling the stories of men such as Earl Abbott who served as her breath and her heartbeat. Abbott was aboard her only a few of those years, but they were among the most critical.

Abbott was drafted out of high school in March, 1943, to serve in the Navy. After his initial training, he served his whole time aboard the Henrico. He was with her when she participated in the D-Day Normandy invasion and in combat landings in the Pacific.

Barely six months after she was commissioned, she launched twenty-four of the first landing craft to hit Omaha Beach on D-Day during the greatest naval invasion in history.

Earl was Coxswain (driver) of one of those landing craft, loaded with a platoon of soldiers. Many of the craft couldn’t make it all the way to the beach, but Abbott was more fortunate.

“We hit the beach right up on top,” he said. “It was low tide.”

His troops stepped out onto sand, but their fate wasn’t much different from those who had to wade or swim ashore.

“We didn’t know we were going on a suicide mission,” Earl said. “I think the First Division infantry soldiers, who went to hell and back [during the invasions of North Africa and Italy] already knew it.”

So did those who planned the invasion.

“The Coxswains were given a .45 automatic pistol during the invasions. It wasn’t to protect us from the enemy. It was to make sure all the soldiers left the boats at the beach. We never had to use them. That’s the kind of soldiers they were, ready to die if they had to.”

With her troops ashore, the Henrico received casualties from the beach, returning them to southern England later that day. For the next two weeks, she shuttled troops back and forth between England and France.

The USS Henrico

Then she set sail for the Mediterranean. After arriving in Italy, she participated in amphibious rehearsals before landing troops during the invasion of southern France. She supported operations in the Mediterranean for the next three months, then she sailed back to the United States to prepare for combat in the Pacific.

By the end of March, 1945, she was engaged in the landings on Kerama Retto, islands needed as a base of operations to support the invasion of nearby Okinawa. Then, on April 2, the USS Henrico was hit by a Japanese suicide plane carrying two 500-lb. bombs. Forty-nine officers and men died as the entire bridge was blown off the ship.

“I got relieved just before it happened. The guy that relieved me didn’t even know what happened,” Abbott said.

With the ship in flames, and without power to drive the fire fighting equipment, the entire crew put forth a heroic effort to save it.

“We had no water; we couldn’t put the fire out. So we did the best we could. We tried to pump water with hand bilges from the ocean to put the fire out. We got all of the fire extinguishers out of the boats that we could get, and then a destroyer came and helped us with their water. If they hadn’t come, we would have gotten blown up. We were loaded with ammunition, too. And then when the destroyer couldn’t help us anymore, we couldn’t abandon ship because we had no power. We couldn’t lower the boats. So we were drifting all night, and our only chance was for everybody to pitch in, and we put the fire out.”

The Henrico managed to return to Kerama Retto, then sailed to San Francisco under her own power. She arrived there on May 13 and was restored to full service by September. She sailed again with replacement troops to the Philippine Islands. Finally, after having carried troops into the teeth of the enemy, she performed the infinitely more pleasant task of bringing thousands of troops home from the Pacific when the war was over.

Earl Abbott’s military service ended when he was honorably discharged on February 10, 1946. The Henrico’s career, however, continued for another 22 years. She took part in the atomic bomb testing at Bikini Island in 1946 and supported American troops in Tsingtao, China, during 1948-49. During the Korean War, she landed troops at Inchon and provided continuous support of combat operations. She evacuated Nationalist Chinese troops in the Straits of Taiwan in 1954, and supported operations in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. She sailed her final combat missions during the Vietnam War, landing troops at Da Nang and Chu Lai.

Between all these outstanding accomplishments, the USS Henrico kept U.S. and allied armed forces combat ready by participating in countless training exercises. After her distinguished career, she was decommissioned and placed in reserve on February 14, 1968. She was disposed of in October, 1979.

The USS Henrico was awarded three battle stars for service in World War II, nine for the Korean War, and four for Vietnam – a total of sixteen. Every crew member who manned her during war and peace should be as proud of her as Earl Abbott is – and even prouder of themselves.

Written by Joe Zentis

Lewis Francis Brest

Mercer, PA

U.S. Army, Civil War

When Lewis Francis Brest was buried in Citizen’s Cemetery in Mercer December, 1915, few words were chiseled into his tombstone: “Prvt. Lewis F. Brest 57th Pa. Infantry.” There was no reference to his being awarded a Medal of Honor during the Civil War. Brest received his Medal for what became the signature action for which it was awarded during the Civil War. On April 6, 1865, near Petersburg, Virginia, Private Brest captured the enemy regiment’s battle flag.

During the Civil War, the battle flag was far more than a decoration. On the battlefield, it was extremely important. Without it, scattered soldiers would have no idea where to go; with it, they all could see the rallying point for their regiment. Because of its importance, it was carried and defended by the best and the bravest soldiers in the regiment. To capture it usually took the kind of fortitude one associates with a Medal of Honor.

Unfortunately, in the early days after it was created, the Medal wasn’t as esteemed as it is today because many were awarded for frivolous reasons. For example, 864 members of one regiment received the Medal when 300 of them reenlisted before they had even seen one day of combat.

Lewis Brest should have been proud of his Medal of Honor because he deserved it. However, he was probably prouder of his long service with the 57th Pennsylvania Regiment. Merely surviving was something to be proud of. At Antietam the regiment lost 98 killed and wounded, and three missing. In an assault on Marye’s Heights in the battle of Fredericksburg, they lost 87 out of the 192 soldiers engaged in the fight. At Gettysburg the undermanned unit lost another 34.

Brest remained active throughout the war except for the summer of 1963. Confined to the regimental hospital by a bout with typhoid fever, he missed the regiment’s action at Gettysburg. In the spring of 1864, he was wounded in the neck, but was back in action before very long.

When he received the Medal of Honor, he was probably happier about the thirty-day leave it earned him rather than about the Medal itself. He is honored today, however, because of the Mercer County Historical Society’s Western Pennsylvania Civil War Reenactors Society. Through their efforts, the United States government awarded Private Brest a new memorial headstone, engraved in gold with “Lewis F. Brest, ‘Medal of Honor’ Pvt Co ‘D’ 57 PA Inf. May 15, 1842 – Dec 2, 1915.”

Irwin Stovroff

Stovroff, Irwin

Hermitage, PA

U.S. Army Air Force – World War II

Early in World War II, heavy bomber crews could earn their way back home by flying 25 combat missions. In May, 1943, the crew of the Memphis Belle, a B-17 Flying Fortress, became one of the first one to do that. A 1990 movie shows her fluttering back to England after being hit on its final mission.

A year after the Memphis Belle’s last combat mission, Irwin Stovroff was bombardier in a B-24 Liberator on its way back to England from its 35th mission.

“We started off to fly 25 missions,” Irwin said, “then it was increased to 30, and finally 35 because our losses were so high.”

Stalagluft 1

Irwin’s crew wasn’t as lucky as the Memphis Belle’s. His plane went down in France after being hit by flak. Irwin was taken prisoner, loaded into a boxcar, and shipped to Stalag Luft 1 in northeastern Germany.

He survived there only because an American colonel was courageous enough to defy Der Fuhrer.

“Hitler sent out orders for all Jews to be killed,” Irwin said. “Fortunately I had a very demanding, strong, marvelous guy by the name of Colonel Hubert Zemke. He threatened the commandant that he would be a war criminal if we were taken out of the camp. We were segregated, but I was there until we were liberated by the Russians in May, 1945.”

Fast forward again, this time to 1975.

“After I retired, I discovered there was a need to help ex-POWs,” Irwin said.

From an office in the Palm Beach Florida VA Medical Center, he and another ex-POW processed more than 400 claims for ex-POWs. “We got them the benefits they deserved,” he said.

Irwin and Cash

By 2006, the POW work was slowing down, but Irwin perceived another need that had to be filled. There were no government funds for providing service dogs to blind or disabled veterans. So Irwin started Vets Helping Heroes to fill that need.

“I went to ex-POWs and raised $100,000 within three months,” he said.

That was only the beginning. Since then, Irwin and his organization have raised over $3 million. They have placed more than 70 fully trained dogs with veterans who are blind, disabled, or suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

Working with a number of other organizations, Irwin feels that he is living a dream come true.

“I am approaching 90 years old, and I am a very, very happy man.”

The next time you doubt that misfortune can be turned into good fortune, remember Irwin Stovroff’s odyssey from POW to happy man.

Video interview of Irwin

Irwin gave the commencement address at Florida Atlantic University, which bestowed on him an Honorary Doctorate degree.