I was from the Bronx, and it was getting kind of lonely after the war started, since most of my friends had already left for the service. I was ready to go, but I was still in high school. So I got drafted into the Army right out of high school, and I had basic at Fort McClellan in Alabama, which was quite a change for a boy from the big city. After basic training, our commanding officer lined us up and said, “Well, you guys did pretty good, and from here you’ll be going off to hell’s kitchen.” And that’s just about what happened. We piled onto a troop train, and one morning we woke up in Fort Bliss, Texas. We see guys in boots and breeches, and horses, so we said, “What the hell is going on?”
I found myself in the First Cavalry Division, Seventh Regiment. That was Custer’s old command—his last, as it happened. They started right away teaching us to ride horses, since we were a cavalry outfit. They took us out to corrals, and we were trained how to ride horses. I really enjoyed it, but the first time I got on a horse I was wondering if I was going to stay on or get knocked off—one or the other. Being a city boy from the Bronx, it took me a while to learn how to ride a horse, but I liked it.
I ended up as a medical corpsman, an aid man. The way this happened was that one day they lined us up and said, “Any volunteers?” And then they said, “You, you, and you.” And that’s how I ended up as a medic. It wasn’t bad, but in combat it got kind of rough at times, because you have to go out there and get the wounded. We did carry side arms, but when you are out there under fire you’re ducking, and you aren’t thinking about using a side arm. You’re just trying to get the wounded guy out as fast as possible.
We finally got shipped out to Australia and landed in Brisbane. We got there in June or July of 1943, which was winter there in Australia, and it was cold! We were in a camp outside of town and got jungle training there. Australia was a very nice country, and I enjoyed it there. We’d get leave and go to town, and that’s where we first tasted Australian beer. And holy cow, the goddamned beer was warm! But once I got to drinking it, I liked it. I think you got drunk faster on that warm beer. There were a couple of dances we went to, and the Australians were very personable. I think the Australians liked us. We had no problems. And in combat, those Australians were tough. We stayed there for a while, and then they shipped us to New Guinea.
We landed at Oro Bay in New Guinea. This wasn’t a combat landing, the beach already had been secured. There we did more jungle training, night training in the jungle, and we were there for about another month. Then we went into our first combat in the Admiralty Islands, just north of New Guinea. We went down the cargo nets and into the landing craft. They were bobbing and weaving, and I was kind of scared getting over into those goddamned landing craft. You wonder if you are going to make it or not. I know that there were a few broken legs, where guys slipped and fell off those cargo nets. But you have a job to do, and you have to get down with the rest of the guys. You don’t want to chicken out, but you’re still scared. You just try not to show it.
So that was our first combat landing, and you think, “This is the real thing, buddy!” Actually, that first landing was fairly safe, they weren’t shooting back much there, not like later. Our objective was the Momote airfield. Some other troops ahead of us took the airfield, so we moved inland, but we started to get a couple of guys knocked off. Then you know that this is the real thing, and that’s when you start worrying and sweating it out, and you’re scared. We were advancing on a muddy road, and every so often you would see wounded guys getting carried back from action ahead of us. Those troops had their own aid men, so I wasn’t involved yet in picking up wounded. We were going up the road in a double column, and every so often the column stopped when there’d be mortar fire or something. At this point you don’t really know if you’re going to chicken out; you don’t know that until you actually get called to go after a wounded guy. So we started to get hit, and they were calling for an aid man, and just for a moment you hesitate, geez, do you want to go out there and risk getting hit yourself? But you go, and you just kind of dodge up to where the guy is, and you’re scared as hell. I was just hoping I wasn’t going to get clobbered too. You try to talk to the guy and tell him he’s okay and it’s not too bad, just relax, maybe give the guy a cigarette. If he was in pain you’d shoot him with a morphine Syrette, which was like a quarter grain of morphine, or something like that. If he was bleeding you’d try and tie him off. You’d open that big package of gauze compresses and patch him up. Sometimes you’d go out alone, and sometimes the stretcher-bearers would follow. If they didn’t follow you but you needed them, you’d holler for stretcher-bearers, and soon a couple of guys would come running out with the stretchers.
There was another spot in the Admiralties called Manus Island that we landed on. It was another island in that group, but it was just a thick jungle. The objective there was an airstrip at Lorengau. After we took it, you should have seen what they did to it. They made it a playground! The Seabees turned it into a big base. It was amazing what those guys did.
After the Admiralties we rested a little while, and then we hit the Philippines. Our first landing in the Philippines was on Leyte, at Tacloban. It got kind of rugged for a while there. Then we got on LSTS and landed at Lingayen Gulf, where we saw a few of those kamikazes. Some of our ships got hit. After we landed, the Filipinos really welcomed us; they liked us. They were all yelling, “Mabuhay,” which means hello. Then we headed down toward Manila. I watched Manila burn, and we liberated the city. Then we ended up fighting in the mountains.
Near the town of Enfante we had our first experience with a banzai attack. It was at night, and you’re already scared as hell. It was just before dawn when we heard a lot of howling and screaming out in front of our positions, and suddenly there was a bugle blown and here they came. We threw everything but the kitchen sink at them. They broke through a little, but it wasn’t too disastrous, though it was really scary. I was back at the CP about that time, just a little behind the frontline foxholes. We were hoping they wouldn’t break through completely. The Japs were crazy that way, and it seemed like they didn’t care for their lives.
We left the Philippines at the end of July, and then we were getting ourselves ready to invade Japan. I didn’t expect that I’d live through it if we made that landing. So I was certainly glad they dropped those atomic bombs. That’s a hell of a thing to say, but that’s the way I feel.
I made it through without a scratch, but I was pretty sick a couple of times. I was in the hospital once with the crud, you know, jungle rot. I got it and I couldn’t move! Then I got malaria and went to the hospital. It turned out that when I came down with it and headed to the hospital, the outfit took quite a beating that night. I was lucky and never had a recurrence of malaria. One time we went out on a thirty-day patrol, about a dozen of us, with just a radio, looking for Japs. On the way back, as we were finishing that patrol, we saw a barge about a 100 yards away from us, and there were Army guys guarding it. There was a big canvas cover on it, but part of that cover was flapping in the wind. We took a closer look and said, “Goddammit, that whole barge is loaded with beer!” So we kind of drifted over toward those guys and said, “Hey, how about some of the beer?” We had picked up some souvenirs, some Jap hats and a couple of rifles and stuff like that, and we traded them for about a half-dozen cases of beer. That night when we got back to camp, we had a real good time!
With a buddy of mine, who ended up being my best man, we were in a combat situation where at one point we were pinned down, grenades being thrown and all that, when suddenly the guy gets hit by a grenade fragment. His wife got a telegram after that, and she was all excited that he got wounded. But it was just a little scratch on his ass, and she thought he was dying! We were all laughing about that at the time. But he got a purple heart for that.
I received a silver star for two incidents that happened on the same day. We were in combat in the Philippines, and we were out on patrol. We were going through the jungle, and these guys were out front about twenty-five or thirty yards, the point men, and all of a sudden the Japs opened up. There was Jap machine-gun fire, crossfire, and our men got hit, and they were calling, “Medic!” I hesitated for just a second—you’re afraid to go out there yourself—but I crawled out there. You have to go out after the guys that are hit, and you’re right in the line of fire. Naturally you’re scared as hell, but you have to go out there. I crawled out to those guys, and I patched them up as best I could, and the Japs were shooting at us. I had to drag them back one at a time to where the stretcher-bearers were, and they got them back to the rear. Then it got quiet for a little while, but there was more firing nearby, and there was a call for a medic. There wasn’t a medic around where those guys got hit, so they called on me, and I volunteered to go over there. I went after them, and there were three guys hit up there. So it was the same thing, I had to crawl out there, patch them up, and drag them back to get them out of the line of fire. It was kind of hard when they are shot up. You’re trying to give them plasma and anything else they need, and this wasn’t easy because there were a couple of Jap snipers taking potshots at us. And again I got them to where the litter-bearers could get them to the rear. This took a little while, because I had to patch them up and then try to drag them back to the litter-bearers, and then the Japs were shooting at them, too. The litter-bearers didn’t get hit; they were kind of lucky, and I guess I was kind of lucky, too. You say a prayer here and there. I heard later those guys lived. I didn’t get the medal until I got home, and then they finally sent it to me.
We landed in Japan on the day the surrender was signed in Tokyo Bay. That day they wanted us dressed in khaki uniforms, which we were. But still we had our weapons, just in case. They said something about expecting problems from an outfit called the Black Dragon Society, so just in case, we went in fully loaded. We landed and marched through their streets, and they were subdued. As you were marching by, you’d look at the houses and you’d see people kind of taking sneaky looks through curtains, watching us. It was a good feeling we didn’t have to battle them. When we landed, my only feeling about the Japanese was that we defeated the bastards. But after being there about a month it wasn’t that bad. The Japanese people were subdued and nice and friendly. There was one little incident where one of the Japanese got a little wild, and one of our guys had to shoot him, but just in the arm or leg. They took him to the hospital, and he was okay. He got a little crazy; that’s about it. We were in a Jap naval barracks there that we took over for a while. Then it became very boring there. And then we heard we were going to go home on points. I was there until October 1945. I went home on the USS Hershey.
In general, I enjoyed Army life, but once we were ready to get out, it was like, let’s get the hell out of here, let’s go. But it was an adventure. One of the high points of the war for me was that I made it through. If I had to do it again, I would.