Tributes Index - Avenue of Flags

Bill Brandenstein

West Middlesex, PA

US Navy, Vietnam Era

Militarily, the word “heroic” describes people who perform well in the face of enemy fire – sometimes for just a single day, or even a single minute.

But what about members of the armed forces who perform outstanding service for 20 years without ever being in combat? There should be another word to describe them that would garner as much respect as the word “heroic.” But there isn’t.

Consider 21-year navy veteran Bill Brandenstein, who never served in a combat zone. Without service like his, the United States armed forces would never be able to win a battle, much less a war. There wouldn’t be any heroes.

Brandenstein joined the Navy after graduating from high school in 1970. Trained as an electrician in San Diego, he was assigned to Vietnam. But his orders were changed, so he spent the next year and a half in the Philippines preparing, repairing, and servicing ships.

“I got to see a lot of the ships coming back in from Vietnam and heading over to Vietnam. The destroyer Higbee came in there after an enemy round blew the gun turret off all the way back to the aft superstructure down to the water line. The Newport News had a blowback in one of her gun turrets. They were still pulling bodies off of her.”

In June, 1973, Brandenstein returned to San Diego, then went on a WestPac (western Pacific) cruise on the USS Cleveland. In December, 1974, he left the Navy and spent nine months as a civilian.

After rejoining, Brandenstein was trained in fire control – the systems that operate the weapons on board ships. He then went on a WestPac cruise with the USS Prairie, a destroyer tender.

In early 1980, he was again in the Philippines, on a WestPac cruise that was ready to head home. He requested a transfer to a ship that was en route to Iran because of the hostage crisis, but it was disapproved by his Commanding Officer. “He said you need to come home and be with your family – you’ve already served your time.”

Following training at Naval Station Great Lakes on close-in weapons systems, Brandenstein went on another WestPac cruise on the aircraft carrier Coral Sea. He was aboard while it sailed through a hurricane in 1983.

“One of my three systems just happened to be on top of the ship’s island. So we’re looking at eight levels above the main deck. And the flight deck itself is like 60 feet off the water. I’m sitting up there looking out, and I’m watching green water up over top of my system. Not white water, green water.”

Next, Brandenstein was transferred to the training station in San Diego.

“They had no instruction guides to tell people how to check the close-in weapons systems, and they liked the way I did it on the Coral Sea, so they got me orders to come down there and work with them. I built the whole program up for them. As a result I got sailor of the year nomination.”

During 1986 and 1987, he served as a recruiter right here in Sharon, then finished out his career at Naval Station Great Lakes.

“One day the chief detailer showed me a paper with my name on it to go to Desert Storm. He says you aren’t going now because you got your papers through Congress approved to go to the state reserve [that is, retire from active duty]. So three times in my career I was headed into danger areas and each time somebody changed it.”

Brandenstein’s retirement was by no means the end of his service to his country and his fellow veterans. In a sense it was just a beginning. By chance, he happened to be present for the opening ceremonies when the Vietnam Memorial Moving Wall came to Hermitage in 1992.

“I never knew – and still don’t know to this day – who took my place going over to Vietnam, whether or not they ever made it back. Somebody went to Desert Storm instead of me. They could have been in the building that got blown up with the Scuds. So I have a little bit of survivor’s guilt from time to time – it bugs me.”

The experience moved Brandenstein to become active in the Mercer County Vietnam Era Veterans Organization, then in the Veteran’s of Foreign Wars. He was commander of the West Middlesex post from 1995 to 2002. He also served as commander of the Mercer County Council of the VFW. He was instrumental in setting up the Mercer County Veterans Advisory Council and became its first commander.

For the past five years, Bill has been running the Veterans Transport network through the Disabled Veterans Association. The network transports veterans free of charge from Hermitage to the VA hospitals in Butler, Pittsburgh, and Erie.

Stephen Bednar

Stephan Bednar

Greenville, PA

U.S. Army, Vietnam

Many young men during the Vietnam War would have been delighted to fail the induction physical. Not Stephen Bednar. He tried to enlist, but failed the physical. He waited a little while, then tried again. This time he passed.

“He was very patriotic,” said his brother Martin Aubel.

He was also committed to helping other people.

“He wanted to pursue a career in the medical field,” Aubel said. “He jumped at the chance to serve in the army as a medic.”

In Vietnam, he served with A Troop, 4th Squadron, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, from May 8, 1971 until he died on June 15, 1971. Reports from fellow soldiers revealed that he was very good medic.

“A guy who was in his squadron is writing a book,” Aubel said. “He said that Steve was an excellent medic, and a great conversationalist. Everybody liked him. When they needed a medic to go along on a mission, they always took Steve. He was out on a mission several days before he died. I believe they took some fire and there were some casualties.”

Steve, however, was not killed by the enemy. He died in the base camp from viral pneumonia.

Ironically, Steve’s father had also died from illness while serving in the armed forces. In 1951, when Steve was just a year old, he passes away from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Memories of the fallen are often laced with thoughts about what might have been. This anonymous entry appears with Steve’s profile at virtualwall.org:

“Steve was so funny! Always laughing, making us laugh. The last thing he said to me was ‘We’ll go out when I come home.’ I was so smitten! Me, an underclassman! But he never came home. We never dated. I think he never quit laughing, though. He was one of the rare few who can make the whole world seem wonderful, no matter what. It’s a sadder place without him.”

Martin Aubel remembers that Steve was not able to fulfill one of his wishes. “He sent all of his money home, Martin said, “so our mother could put it in the bank. His dream was to buy a Harley when he got home.”

Steve was the 37th Mercer County man to die during the Vietnam conflict.

On the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Panel 03W Line 107

David E. Baun

Jackson Center, PA

US Army, Vietnam

During the Vietnam War, body counts were reported almost daily, with Viet Cong casualties many times greater than American. For those whose loved ones were killed in the action, that was no consolation.

During June, 1966, the 4th Cavalry, supported by the 2nd Battalion 28th Infantry, conducted search and destroy operations in Binh Long Province, along the border with Cambodia, directly north of Saigon. The mission was to eliminate the 271st, 272nd, and 273rd Regiments of the 9th Viet Cong Division to secure Highway 13 and protect the city of An Loc.

On June 30, B Troop of the 1st Squadron 4th Cavalry Regiment was ambushed and severely damaged by the 271st VC Regiment. When the C troop and the 2nd Battalion 28th Infantry came in support, it turned into a three-day battle. By the time it was over, 270 Viet Cong soldiers were dead, compared with “only” 37 Americans.

The only thing that mattered to Mercer County was that one of those 37 was the radio operator for the Executive Officer of Company C, 2/18 Infantry, 1st Infantry Division. His name was Sp4 David E. Baun. He had been in Vietnam since May 20, 1966.

According to reports, Sp4 Baun distributed ammunition to the men of his unit with complete disregard for his own safety. He was killed while supervising the rescue of the wounded and the recovery of their equipment.

He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star with “V” device for valor, and the Purple Heart.

David was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Wade E. Baun, Jackson Center RD2. He also left behind his wife, the former Pauline Werner, Easton, PA, whom he married April 23 a week before going to Vietnam.

On the Vietnam Veterans Memorial – Panel 08E Line 110

Video of battle with 2nd Battalion 28th Infantry in Binh Long province in 1971, which gives an idea of what Sp4 Baun experienced on the day he died.

Joseph W. Baker

Baker, Richard

Joseph W. Baker

West Middlesex, PA

U.S. Navy Corpsman, Vietnam

For Marines in Vietnam, as in most war zones, “Doc” was a Navy medical corpsman, because the Marine Corps had no medics of its own. “Doc” accompanied the Marines into the teeth of the battle, because when a Marine went down, “Doc” had to be right there to help him. With his focus on attending to others rather than on defending himself, the medical corpsman was particularly vulnerable.

Hospitalman Joseph A. Baker was serving with 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division in the province of Quang Tri, just south of the border between North and South Vietnam. His letters home contain vivid pictures of both the courage, vulnerability, and dedication of the Navy corpsmen. “”My platoon saw action today. I wasn’t with them but I had to help with casualties back here at camp. We had two dead and about twelve wounded. I’m not worried anymore about if I will know what to do. When they started bringing them in I just went to work without even thinking.”

Of course, he did often accompany his unit into the field: “We were hit on patrol yesterday and we lost one man and had two other wounded in action.”

Joe had his own close calls: “A corpsman from the 1st platoon was hit and I had to go to his wounded. He had three of them about 75 meters across an open rice paddy and I had to go get them. Our sentry opened up to give me cover and I started across running low. Then I began hearing rounds go over my head and saw them kicking up sand at me feet. I put it in high gear and really began moving. I had to check myself when I got there to make sure I wasn’t hit. A grenade launcher came over after me, then I got scared seeing what I had crossed through.”

In the gallows humor of combat soldiers, such escapes did not go unnoticed: “Most of the corpsmen out here have Purple Hearts already and they are kidding me because I don’t. They can’t understand it.I’ve been in more fire fights and sat through more mortar attacks than they have.”

Unfortunately, Joe’s good fortune ended on March 7, 1968, when he was killed by small arms fire.

Joseph was the fifteenth serviceman from Mercer County, PA, killed in action in Vietnam.

John Pariza

Pariza, John

West Middlesex, PA

Korean War – U.S. army

John Pariza was born in East Liverpool of Romanian parents, who took him for a visit to Romania before World War II. Because of Hitler’s aggression, the family was stuck there throughout World War II.

“When I was ten old,” Pariza said, “I saw Germans drag Romanian Jews out of their homes and shoot them in the head.”

After his family came back to Youngstown in 1946, kids in school made fun of him because of his broken English. At age 16, he beat up a couple of his antagonists and spent three days in a detention home. When he was 17, he quit school and joined the army.

That was just before the North Korean army invaded South Korea, quickly pushing the South Koreans back into a 100 by 50 mile rectangle at the southern end of the Korean peninsula – the infamous Pusan Perimeter.

Within hours of arriving there, Pariza was on patrol in a rice patty.

“We got ambushed,” he said. “Two of the guys that I just got there with got killed right off the bat.”

The newly-arrived U.S. and United Nations troops fought their way up the peninsula to China. Pariza suffered frostbite and two wounds. He was even a prisoner of war – for about 45 minutes during the early part of November 1950. Elements of the Chinese army had come south to reinforce the North Koreans. While on patrol, his 12-man squad unit was captured by a whole company of Chinese.

“They assigned eight Chinese to take us north,” he said.

Fortunately, nearby Turk and Greek units of the United Nations contingent had seen what happened. They attacked the Chinese with knives. Not one shot was fired.

Because of that rescue, Pariza was not one of the 2,900 Americans who died in Korean prison camps, nor one of the 8,100 who are still listed as missing.

“The Korean War is the forgotten war,” Pariza said. “I told my wife, if it’s the last thing I do, I want to put up a Korean War memorial.”

It took him a year and a half to achieve that dream. You can visit it in front of the Oak Tree Country Club, next to the Ohio line on Route 318 – now known as the Korean War Veterans Memorial Highway, also through John Pariza’s initiative.

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.

Dr. Benjamin Wood

Sharon, PA

U.S. Army – World War II

Dr. Benjamin Wood came from a family of physicians, and continued the tradition by producing his own family of physicians – with a twist. All five of his sons became physicians; he and four of them served as physicians in the United States Armed Forces.

For the senior Dr. Wood, it wasn’t a matter of choice. He had earned his medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh, then went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for training in pediatrics in 1938. There he met a young lady from South Dakota named LaVaun “Vonnie” Gray. They got married and moved to Cleveland for an internal medicine residency at the Cleveland Clinic.

In the summer of 1941, Dr. Wood got called into the U.S. Army for assignment to North Africa.

“My mother fell apart on the detailer’s desk,” said their son David. “She said I’m all alone in Cleveland and pregnant. You can’t take my husband away from me. The guy shuffled through some papers on his desk and said there was an opening for someone to run a lab in Fort Thomas, Kentucky.”

So Dr. Wood served there until his first son was born. Then he was sent to North Africa. But before he left, Vonnie was pregnant again. This time, however, the pregnancy didn’t stop him from being sent overseas.

In North Africa, Captain Wood served in a mobile army hospital that followed the troops who were chasing Rommel through the desert. After North Africa was secured, he moved with his hospital on up into Sicily.

“Dad had one of those short military jackets,” David said. “It had four hash marks on the sleeve. We asked him what they were for. He said each of them represents six months service overseas. He had wanted to come home earlier, but they told him if he did, he would have to go back and serve even longer. Finally after two years he came home.”

But he wasn’t released from the army at that time. He was sent to San Antonio for tropical medicine training. Fortunately, the war in the Pacific ended before he was deployed there.

He returned to practice pediatrics in Sharon until his death in 1976. All five of his sons – Benjamin, Michael, John, Arthur, and David – are doctors. All but Arthur served in the United States armed forces.

He was survived not only by his wife and sons, but also by fifteen grandchildren and nine grandchildren.

Herbert Werner

Greenville, PA

U.S. Army – World War II

Those who deny the Holocaust should talk with the children of Herbert S. Werner. As children, they saw many photographs their father sent home that showed the concentration camps liberated by the 12th Armored Division.

Assigned to the headquarters of the 12th Armored Division as its chief financial officer, Lt. Col. Werner was in a position to observe the Division’s accomplishments, including its legendary combat operations, the capture of Werner von Braun, and the liberation of twelve concentrations in the area of Dachau.

He came to that position through a military career that started when he enlisted in the army in 1917. His first overseas deployment was with the Allied Expeditionary Force in France during World War I. Between the two world wars, he served as a captain in the Finance Corps of the army reserves.

As things were heating up in Europe during 1939, Captain Werner was called to active duty to serve as chief financial officer at the Raritan Arsenal in Metuchen, New Jersey. As the war progressed, the army sent him its Finance Officer Training School at Duke University before assigning him to the 12th Armored Division.

That division entered the European Theater of Operations through Le Havre, France, on November 11, 1944. After fighting its way across France and through the Maginot Line, the 12th Armored Division became the “Mystery Division” of General Patton’s Third Army. To accomplish the invasion of Germany, General Patton assembled thirteen divisions, making it one of the largest American armies in history. The identities of twelve of them were known, while the thirteenth was kept secret to enhance the element of surprise. The identity of that division became known when it crossed the Rhine River on March 24, 1945.

By the time the 12th Armored Division was departing Europe, Lt. Col. Werner was the oldest finance officer in Europe.

Lt. Col. Werner’s daughter, Shirley, also served in Europe, as a switchboard operator in Paris. Once, when her father was in Paris working on a project for the 12th Armored Division, they were able to spend some time together.

“When they went through Le Havre to come home,” said his son Don, “he had to climb the rope ladder up the side of the ship. All the guys knew he was an old guy, by their standards. When he got to the top, they gave him a big round of applause.”

“I never fully appreciated what Dad’s unit really went through during World War II,” wrote another son, Richard. “Now I also appreciate why Dad always loved his 12th Armored Division ring!”

Joseph Thompson

Mercer, PA

U.S. Air Force – World War II

During World War II, simply getting to a duty station could be a long ordeal. After being trained as a clerk typist, Joe Thompson sailed with the 54th Air Service Group to North Africa. They camped out for a month before sailing through the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal, and the Indian Ocean to Bombay, India. Then they rode via narrow gauge railroad clear across India to an airfield near Dacca, which was about 50 miles from the eastern border of India with Burma.

“The railroad cars were about half the size of ours,” Joe said. “They were open air, with seats along either side.”

The mission of the 54th Air Service Group was to maintain and repair B-24 bombers that had been converted into tankers to fly fuel into U.S. military units in China.

“There were about 2000 Americans stationed at the base,” Joe said. “They would bring fuel by trucks from Calcutta and load it onto the planes. We had just one runway. About half a dozen planes would take off and land every day.”

Calcutta was about 250 miles southwest of the base.

During the two years Joe was there, they had about three mishaps when planes, fully loaded with fuel, failed to make it off the ground by the end of the runway.

Corporal Thompson, who was the son of a Methodist minister, was selected to be the chaplain’s assistant.

“I did the chaplain’s bookwork, wrote letters and so on,” he said. “If we had deaths in the unit, it was my job to write a letter of condolence to the next of kin. We built a chapel out of bamboo, with a thatched roof. One day a large windstorm came along and blew the whole thing down.”

They even had music in their services provided by a little pump organ.

The main enemy of the troops there was a little “bug” called the entamoega histolytica, which causes amoebic dysentery. Shortly before he left for home, Joe was hospitalized for about a month by the disease.

After two years there, Joe was granted emergency leave to come back home because his father was dying.

“I was flown across India to Karachi,” he said. “As I was boarding the ship, I was notified that my father had passed away.”

Since the war was over, Joe continued on home, arriving in Volant late in December, 1945.

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.”

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