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ORAL HISTORY CHRONICLES STORIES OF WORLD WAR II
VETERANS -- During World War II "everyone pulled
together. We don't do that anymore. Appreciation
of country is something we seemed to have lost."
Battle of the Bulge
For more information about World War II veterans,
use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=WORLD+WAR+II&op=ph
Story here...
http://www.sunherald.com/306/story/487070.html
Story below:
-------------------------
Oral history chronicles stories of World War II
veterans
By REGINA L. BURNS
Associated Press Writer
JACKSON, Miss. -- Victor L. Robilio Jr. is on a mission to share with
today's readers the personal recollections - good and bad - of America's
thinning ranks of World War II veterans.
For the last 30 years, Robilio's interviewed more than 200 veterans for
the Memphis Public Library and Information Center's WYPL TV-18. He
recently self-published a 240-page book "The Way It Was" featuring first
person narratives, letters, journal entries and photos of 29 veterans,
many from the Mid-South area.
"I felt that I needed to do it now while my mind is still clear and while
(many) of the veterans are still alive. I took their oral history and put
it down and sent the chapters to the veterans to make sure they were
correct," said the 69-year-old Memphis entrepreneur, who has a home in
Oxford, Miss.
He said he also sent chapters to the family
members of deceased war veterans who are part of the book, his fourth. The
book covers the years 1941 through 1945.
Morris Casey, 87, of Walls, is included in the book. He recalls being in
the Battle of the Bulge in which 75,000 Americans were killed, wounded or
captured. In Germany in 1945 across from the Rhine River at the Remagen
Bridge, Casey described being saved one night by his helmet.
"I dug the (foxhole) and I reached and grabbed the helmet and put it on my
head. That's when the shell hit and shrapnel started flying and it took my
helmet off," said Casey, who was a 24-year-old technical sergeant with the
78th Infantry (Lightning Division) of the 3rd Battalion, 310th Infantry
Regiment.
Casey, now a retiree from a Memphis tire plant, had three pieces of
shrapnel in his head as well as in one of his hands, his back and right
leg. He was sent to Belgium for an operation, then to a hospital in
France. He recovered enough to return to duty.
"Most of the time when we were in the Bulge, we survived on rations and we
had to catch some cows (to avoid starving).
"We took the dams - the dams had to be taken because nothing could cross
the Ruhr River until those dams were taken. The Germans had control and
they could flood them anytime," said Casey, whose division, according to
Robilio's book, suffered 1,500 casualties while taking 300,000 prisoners
and capturing hundreds of German towns.
"We went through all kinds of hell. It's a different war (the Iraq war), I
know that. I can't comprehend what those boys are going through. They're
fighting something that they can't see. It's got to be a bad war," Casey
told The Associated Press.
Olive Branch resident Hank Brukardt's World War II experiences, also
chronicled in the book, give a glimpse of a young man's life as an Army
Air Corps navigator.
At age 21, Brukardt entered the military and served five tours of duty. He
was a second lieutenant and navigator aboard transport planes in the then-U.S.
Army Air Corps (now the U.S. Air Force).
"I went to a navigation school called Selman Field in Monroe, La., for
about seven months. You have to graduate from the navigation school.
"We had to learn a little bit of everything - we had to know the weather,
Morse code, math and we had to learn the stars. We had to always carry the
Almanac and all the books of latitude," Brukardt said.
As navigator, he would determine the aircraft's position, plot its course,
and provide other information needed by the pilot.
"In some planes I sat up in the nose. But on most planes, the navigator
and the radio operator sat behind the pilot and the co-pilot," he said.
He was in planes that flew into Casablanca, Italy, France, England and
German-occupied Norway. He made 10 missions over enemy territory and was
awarded Air Medals and Oak Leaf clusters for his bravery, according to the
book.
Brukardt's life changed when he returned home on leave. It was 1944, two
weeks before he left for another tour of duty that he was in Memphis and
met the woman he'd marry.
"I thought she (Dorothy) was the most beautiful thing I ever saw and I
better take her while I could because she may not be there when I got
back," Brukardt told The Associated Press.
"We married in Hernando and I left the next day and if it hadn't been for
the good Lord we wouldn't be together," Brukardt said about his marriage
of 64 years.
The retired draftsman/illustrator for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
Memphis District, said during the war "everyone pulled together. We don't
do that anymore. Appreciation of country is something we seemed to have
lost. This book tells what some folks have done to preserve the blessings
that we've had."
-------------------------
posted by Larry
Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org
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