Semper Four: An Oral History

 

  Today I published a collection of four interviews with Marine Corps veterans as an ebook, available for Kindle only. Audio of the interviews is available in my eBay store. A print version of the book will be available soon. This is the introduction and a portion of the first interview.

Introduction

 

This is neither a comprehensive picture of the Marines in World War II nor even a portrait of one particular battle. My father served in a tank battalion in the European Theater of Operations. In 1994 I self-published  a collection of stories told to me by veterans of his battalion. I turned to the still-young Internet to promote the book, and in 1997 I launched the World War II Oral History Web Site @ tankbooks.com.

Because it was rich in World War II “content,” my web site took on a life of its own. The son of a 1st Infantry Division veteran asked if I’d like to interview his father, who was in the first wave on Omaha Beach. Lyn Barenbrugge sent me some stories she’d helped her father-in-law, a veteran of the 10th Armored Division, put down on paper. Margie Hoffman contributed some stories about her childhood in England during the Blitz.

In 1992 I met Bob Levine, a former prisoner of war, who encouraged me to interview American ex-POWs. Then in 1994, with the 50th anniversary of D-Day approaching, I interviewed several local D-Day veterans. And in 1999, while on a trip to Germany to visit the town where a buddy of my father was killed, I met the German historian Walter Hassenpflug, who got me interested in the Kassel Mission, a tragic air battle.

Being just one person with a full time job on the side, I chose to focus on these four areas: my father’s tank battalion, former prisoners of war, D-Day veterans, and survivors of the Kassel Mission.

Every so often I would get an email saying, in effect, “Where are the Marines?” “What about the Pacific?”

Then I got lucky. In 1998 Kurt Pfaff, director of the Eldred, Pa., World War II Museum, invited me out to interview local veterans on Memorial Day. There I met my first two Marines – Jerome Auman, who served as an MP in Samoa and later witnessed one of World War II’s iconic moments, when, “by the grace of God and a few Marines, MacArthur returned to the Philippines”; and Bill Scheiterle, who was a lieutenant during the invasion of Peleliu.

In 2002, at a Memorial Day barbecue, I met Nick Paciullo, a neighbor. Nick was a veteran of the 4^th Marine Division and was wounded twice on Iwo Jima. And in 2007, I received an email from Diann Hamant asking how she could find somebody to interview her father, who’d spent a year on the island of Tinian and saw the Enola Gay before it took off on its mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I asked Diann where her father lived and she said Cincinnati. The 712^th Tank Battalion was having its annual reunion in Cincinnati that year, so I suggested that Diann bring her father by the hotel and I’d be happy to interview him. She did, and I had my fourth Marine.

There are far more comprehensive books about what it was like to be a Marine in World War II. But I will say one thing: Each of the four Marines in this book has a remarkable story to tell.

Nick Paciullo

4^th Marine Division

Iwo Jima

Hackensack, N.J., Sept. 4, 2002

 

Aaron Elson: Did you grow up in New Jersey?

Nick Paciullo: No, on Long Island. Queens.

Aaron Elson: Was your father an immigrant?

Nick Paciullo: Yes. He came to this country when he was nine years old. And my mother was born practically here.

Gladys Paciullo: On the way over?

Nick Paciullo: Yes.

Aaron Elson: Really? She was born on the ship?

Nick Paciullo: Yeah. Isn’t that something?

Aaron Elson: So she met your father over here, naturally.

Nick Paciullo: Yes, and what went between them, that I can’t tell you. I wasn’t born yet.

Aaron Elson: Did you have brothers and sisters?

Nick Paciullo: Yes. I had one brother and three sisters. Actually, 11, my mother had miscarriages in between. My sister Rose is a twin, but she died at childbirth.

Aaron Elson: You had a twin who died at childbirth?

Nick Paciullo: Yes. We didn’t know about it. We were all too young. We heard about this later on.

Aaron Elson: What did you feel when you heard about it?

Nick Paciullo: It felt funny. It was brought up like in a conversation. And we didn’t even realize it. But those days, I guess it wasn’t an outspoken thing, they kept everything to themselves. And I had a pretty good life with my father. I worked with him.

Aaron Elson: What did he do?

Nick Paciullo: He was an ice and coal man. He had his own business for many years, and I woke up the horse in the morning. While my father was having his breakfast I used to have breakfast with my horse and his name was Nickie, the same as mine. And then I used to get all the stuff ready, polish the reins and all that because everything had to be nice and clean. Then I came home and he went back to work. I went to school, and he did his route and came back and he had lunch ready for us.

Aaron Elson: Where did you go to school?

Nick Paciullo: PS 155 in South Ozone Park.

Aaron Elson: And high school?

Nick Paciullo: John Adams. I was there four years but I did not graduate. I joined the service instead of graduating. I was only 17 years old when I enlisted.

Aaron Elson: You were only 17?

Nick Paciullo: Nineteen forty-two.

Aaron Elson: Did you have to lie about your age?

Nick Paciullo: No. I fought with my mother because I wanted to join when I was 16. There was a man that lived like the next block but behind us, he was a sergeant in the Marine Corps. And, you know, talking to a Marine and I loved the Marines, and I wanted to join the Marines.

He says, “You join the Marines, and I will fix it up, after boot training you’ll spend the rest of the war at 90 Broadway.”

I says, “Are you kidding? I don’t want that. I want to go overseas and fight the Japanese.”

And that was the beginning of it. Then I went to boot training. I joined in ’42 but they didn’t take me in until January of ’43.

Aaron Elson: When did you turn 18?

Nick Paciullo: April the 13^th the following year, in 1943.

Aaron Elson: So you went to boot camp in January of ’43?

Nick Paciullo: Right. And graduated there and I was attached to the 3^rd Marine Division. One day in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, “Line up!”

We all lined up.

“Split in half. This side and this side, every other man.” This was the 3^rd Marine Division, and we started the 4^th Marine Division, and I grew up with the 4^th Marine Division.

Aaron Elson: So you were in from the very beginning of the 4^th Division?

Nick Paciullo: Yes, I’m the original.

Aaron Elson: And what was your rank?

Nick Paciullo: I was a private, Pfc, corporal, private, Pfc, corporal ... I was a little bad in the service. I was with two gentlemen – two Marines I should say – from Chicago, Pudlow and McDowell. They were two crazy guys and I joined them too. They were in my squad, and we had a lot of fun. We were always in trouble. But we got away with it.

Aaron Elson: Now you and Nat [Nat Rubin, a veteran of the Merchant Marine], were reminiscing about Swabbies and the Shore Patrol. Is that who you got into trouble with?

Nick Paciullo: Yeah, a little bit in San Diego.

Aaron Elson: Tell me what kind of trouble you would get into, if you can with your wife here.

Nick Paciullo: No, it wasn’t dirty or anything else like that. I’ll give you an incident, what happened one night. The three of us – in fact, there were about five or six of us, walking, and we see this big door open. A big office. We walked in. We’re talking the pencils, and I took a chair with rollers on it, and I put one of the guys on the chair and we were rolling him around in San Diego. All of a sudden I’m pushing and I can’t go nowhere. They had my duty belt. It was an MP Marine, oh God, where’d these guys get this stuff? And we had a court martial. And we got away with it, because we didn’t rob anything, all we took was pencils and that one chair, and we were having a good time.

The following week, we went from Camp Lejeune to California. And then just before we get to California, they were having the zoot suiters terrorizing in California.

Aaron Elson: Zoot suiters?

Nick Paciullo: Yes, the Mexicans, that’s what they were called.

Aaron Elson: Terrorizing?

Nick Paciullo: Yes. And when we got to California in what, Union Station, is that in California? “Everybody put on duty belts, rifles and bayonets.”

What the hell is going on?

At the time we didn’t know what was going on, and we were ready to clean out the streets. And then something must have happened, and instead of fighting the Mexicans they took us to Camp Pendleton.

Aaron Elson: There were riots?

Nick Paciullo: Rioting, and they were doing a lot of crazy things. Zoot suiters. And then Camp Pendleton, and we spent a couple of months there. And in ’43, we hit the Marshall Islands. The first time a fresh Marine division ever hit an island from the States to the enemy.

Aaron Elson: What were your thoughts crossing the ocean?

Nick Paciullo: I didn’t have much thought. I didn’t think of getting killed, shot or anything. We all talked and had a good time, we didn’t say “You’re gonna die” or anything like that.  ... (thumbing through a book on the 4^th Marine Division) ... this is my buddy.

Aaron Elson: Richard D. Anderson?

Nick Paciullo: Yeah. That story.

Aaron Elson: (reading) “... gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the 4^th Marine Division during action against enemy Japanese forces on Roi Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Mariana Islands, Feb. 1, 1944. Entering a shell crater occupied by three other Marines, Private First Class Anderson” – were you one of the Marines?

Nick Paciullo: Yes.

Aaron Elson: “...Private First Class Anderson was preparing to throw a grenade at an enemy position and it slipped from his hands and rolled toward the men at the bottom of the hole. With insufficient time to retrieve the armed weapon and throw it Private First Class Anderson fearlessly chose to sacrifice himself and save his companions by hurling his body upon the grenade and taking the full impact of the explosion. His personal valor and exceptional spirit of loyalty in the face of almost certain death were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.”

Nick Paciullo: By the way, our last reunion, a couple of buddies of mine, they live in Washington State, Anderson lived in Washington State, and he was buried at Kwajalein. And they took his body and brought it back to Washington State where his family is.

Aaron Elson: Was he in your platoon?

Nick Paciullo: My squad, yes. And he was the fourth guy that we used to go out with. Very nice guy. Pudlow was killed on Iwo, and McDowell lost his leg on Saipan. I almost lost my eye on Kwajalein, right after that.

 

---

 

Order "Semper Four: An Oral History" for Kindle

 

Order the audiobook "4 Marines"

 

 

An Oral History Audiobook Sampler

 

   Today I'm going to don my chapeau as an oral historian, and post a the audio from a sampler CD containing tracks from several of my oral history audiobooks. The audiobooks are available in my eBay store. You can also order audiobooks by calling the oral history hotline at (888) 711-TANK (8265).

   Click on the links below to listen to the sampler in mp3 form.

 

Track 1 Introduction (Aaron Elson)

 

Track 2 Karnig Thomasian, POW of the Japanese, from "For You the War Is Over"

 

Track 3 Sam Cropanese, 712th Tank Battalion, from "The Tanker Tapes"

 

Track 4  Ed Boccafogli, 82nd Airborne Division, from "The D-Day Tapes"

 

Track 5 Vern Schmidt, 90th Infantry Division, from "Kill or Be Killed"

 

Track 6 Bob Rossi, 712th Tank Battalion, from "Once Upon a Tank in the Bulge"

 

Track 7 Bob Cash, 492nd Bomb Group, ex-POW, from "March Madness"

 

Track 8 Russell Loop, 712th Tank Battalion, from "More Tanker Tapes"

 

Track 9 Jack Sheppard, from "Reflections of a Tank Company Commander"

 

Track 10 George Collar, 445th Bomb Group, from "The Kassel Cassettes"

 

Track 11 Jerome Auman, from "Four Marines"

 

(c) copyright 2013 Aaron Elson

 

 



Two funerals and a pile of cash

The first email came from Mike Simpson, the tireless force behind the 445th Bomb Group web site. It alerted me to the fact that John Harold "Robbie" Robinson had passed away at age 92. Robinson wrote one of the best memoirs I've read about World War II. I don't think that's just my opinion, because when, in 1999, I was able to find a copy of "A Reason to Live" on amazon.com, it was in its sixth printing, I think by Crown Publishers. I say "I think" because I loaned my copy to Ed Hays, a former tail gunner and POW who traveled to Berlin to meet the German fighter pilot who shot down his B-17. Ed passed away several years ago without ever having returned the book, but that's okay.

I read "A Reason to Live" shortly after learning about the Kassel Mission of Sept. 27, 1944. Robinson wasn't on the Kassel Mission, having completed his 25 missions well before that took place, but his book, drawn from letters to his then new bride (his "reason to live") and I think a diary he kept, was like a descent into madness, chronicling the minutiaie of each mission, the little incidents that played upon a flier's mind, the brushes with death that seemed to take place with regularity.

I had the great fortune to meet Robinson at the 1999 reunion of the 8th Air Force Historical Society in Savannah. I didn't have a long conversation with him, but if memory serves me correctly, I think I asked him if his book would ever be made into a movie. He said some people wanted the movie rights but he turned them down because the movie "Memphis Belle" was so far from reality. I was amazed by this remark because when I saw "Memphis Belle" I was struck by how realistic it seemed. As I learned more about the experiences of fliers in B-24s, I came to realize how correct he was.

Of course I googled Robinson after learning of his passing, and I discovered two interesting things. Robinson lived in Memphis, and in 1999, the same year I met him but likely a few months later, a Memphis police officer named John Harold Robinson Jr. was killed when he was run off the road by two suspects he was pursuing. An article about the incident said the two suspects are now serving life sentences. Sure enough, when I found Robinson's obituary -- one of those paid obits, the Commercial Appeal didn't even give him a staff written obituary -- it mentioned that his son, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty in 1999.

The other item I found by googling Robinson was a post on a forum titled "Earl's Story." It's too long to quote extensively so I'll include a link. It was written by the nephew of Earl Doggett, a member of Robinson's crew who was killed while assigned temporarily to another crew.

Earl's Story"

One other note: Robinson is survived by his "reason to live," his wife of 68 years, Virginia.

The second passing in recent days was that of Major Dick Winters, the leader of "Easy Company" made famous in Stephen Ambrose's "Band of Brothers" and the mini-series of the same name.

I almost met Winters once. It was a year or two after "Band of Brothers" was a huge hit on HBO (mind you, I've still only seen the first two episodes. It was at the Lititz Library in Lititz, Pa., where I'd been invited to take part in a World War 2 program and was told I could display my books (this was in the days before I began producing my oral history audiobooks). I gave a short talk and then was given a table where I sat, mostly by my lonesome. I saw a line from another table, the line passed my table, went out the front door and snaked around the side of the library. It was then that I learned that the featured guest was Major Dick Winters. People on the line were carrying VHS tapes for him to sign, books for him to sign, pictures, they'd have him sign the back of their hand just to come in contact with such a famous piece of history.

Fact is Winters was one of those modest heroes, who would have been happy spending the rest of his life on a farm in rural Pennsylvania if Ambrose and Stephen Spielberg hadn't turned him into an icon.

Which brings me to the pile of cash. How's that for a transition? Today I received an email from Paul Belleperche.

"Dear Mr. Elson," the email began. "Could you please contact me. I found an interview that you did with Jerome Auman on the internet and my father was mentioned in the interview (Frenchy Belleperche). I am trying to gather information about my father, he died in 1970 when I was 16. I had heard parts of that story as a kid, but to read it coming from a third party was very shocking. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration."

Here's a link to the story, which involves a cigar box containing $13,800, the production and marketing of "torpedo juice," a spell in the brig, and is on my original tankbooks.com web site:

Frenchy

Four Marines

  It began with a simple, straightforward question, one I've asked in a hundred different interviews.
  "What was your rank?"
  The answer started out fairly simple. "Private ..."  Then it escalated.
  "...Pfc. ... Corporal ... Private ... Pfc. ... Corporal!"
  Followed by a burst of laughter.
  What ensued was a poignant story, involving a small group of rowdy Marines having some fun in San Diego, a Congressional Medal of Honor, Iwo Jima and Kwajalein. The speaker was Nick Paciullo, whom I interviewed in 2002. I didn't realize just how poignant the story was until I edited the interview for my latest oral history audiobook, "Four Marines." It lacks the details an author might add: the weather, the sounds, the scenery, the dialogue, but to me the story is just like out of a movie.
  Nick Paciullo (real audio)
  On Memorial Day in 1998, I participated in a program at a new World War II museum in Eldred, Pa., and interviewed several veterans who attended. Two of those veterans, William M. Scheiterle and Jerome Auman, are included in "Four Marines."
  Paciullo, a veteran of Iwo Jima who also fought in Saipan and the Marianas and was wounded three times, was a neighbor of mine in New Jersey. I interviewed him shortly before the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, an event that triggered serious episodes of post traumatic stress in Paciullo.
  In 2005, Diann Hamant of Cincinnati contacted me through my web site, tankbooks.com, and asked how she could find someone to do an oral history interview with her father. A few months later I attended a reunion of the 712th Tank Battalion in Cincinnati, so I interviewed him myself. Bob Hamant spent a year on the island of Tinian, and witnessed the Enola Gay being prepared for its mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
  For more information about World War II Oral History Audiobooks, please visit www.audiomurphy.com