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My Dad was a Soldier [1]

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Date: 2023-11-09  

My Dad, who died this August, was a veteran of the second World War. He lived over 99 years, while his time as a soldier occupied maybe 3 years of his life, a silver of his time alive. He accomplished much more than carrying a rifle in the mountains of northern Italy. He was an architect, and his job took him to Sudan and Nigeria. Besides the work he did in the office, he drew up plans for three houses — two for himself and one for my sister — remodeled one himself and was the general contractor for the second. (And yes, he had as much trouble getting subcontractors to keep to a schedule and appear when expected as any homeowner.) He married twice, raised two families, and his children and step-children and his grandchildren loved him. His hobby was woodworking, and his creations are treasured by his family. He was a Boy Scout troop master, and was admitted to the Order of the Arrow. He served as the care-giver to his second wife, eight years his younger, until slipping off a step-ladder at age 97 put him in the hospital, an event that began his slow but inevitable decline.

When I think of him now, the strongest image I have is an admittedly unexceptional one from my childhood. It was a Sunday morning when I was 7 or 8, and I was watching from across the old wooden table we used to have: he is monitoring the progress of the batter cooking in the waffle iron with a contented smile on his face. He loved his waffles with jam or berry preserves.

So why am I focussing on that one sliver of his life, his time in the Service, as opposed to any of the many other achievements of his life? One reason is when I read about the current war in Ukraine, I think about his time in the Service. Over the years he would relate anecdotes or allude to events from that time. Another reason is that this was the time of his life when he brushed against history; by “history”, of course I mean that epic war. A third is that when I was a kid almost every adult man was a veteran, having served in World War II, or in Korea, or in Vietnam. My maternal grandfather was a veteran of World War I, having been gassed in one of the battles of the American Expeditionary Force. So as a boy I had assumed I would end up in the Service; instead, I turned 18 between the time Ford ended the draft and Reagan re-established it, and was never called up. And a last reason why I want to focus on those few years is that retelling this part of his life shows a characteristic side of him.

One unending fact about war is that there is always the sanitized, polished version of what happened, and there are the lived-in details that never make it into the official version. Some of these are facts those who have been in combat do not want to remember, some are things the historians deem unimportant. The line separating these two sets started to blur with WWII, when writers no longer stopped with what the generals and politicians told us and started to interview and record what those who were in the middle of the action saw and remembered. Thanks to the Internet, and Go-Pro cameras, we know even more details about the war in Ukraine, both from the point of hopeless Russian mobiks bearing the weight of their misfortune with vodka and drugs as well as the determined Ukrainian soldiers living in the mud and amongst the skeletal trees of bombed-out wind breaks. Yet then and now, there are things that never make it into the record.

My father was a private in the 86th brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, considered by some an elite unit — I can’t confirm or deny that, I think of it as simply the unit he was in. The division entered the war late, landing in two stages in Italy, January of 1945. Their moment of fame was seizing a section of the Apennines that other Allied units had twice before unsuccessfully tried to capture. Accomplishing this helped to punch a hole in the Gothic Line, breaking the German resistance on this front and helping to end the war. This action is known either as the Battle of Mount Belvedere or the Battle of Riva Ridge, fought from 18 February to 25 February. Since Wikipedia, despite having a reputation of having a white, male, middle-class American bias, not only lacks an article on this battle, it lacks any indication that this battle was even fought, let me briefly provide a summary of the official version of this battle.

The challenge of this battle was that Highway 64 ran through a pass in the Apennines leading to the Po valley, was dominated by Mount Belvedere. This highway was the shortest route between the western side of Italy and Bologna, and had strategic value. However, as the Allies had discovered twice before, Mount Belvedere could not be held unless a series of mountains on the opposite side of highway 64 — which came to be known as Riva Ridge — were also captured. These mountains had an unblocked view of the southern slopes of Mount Belvedere, allowing the Germans to accurately target assaulting Allied troops with artillery. Riva Ridge had a series of steep slopes, almost cliffs, along the southern side, which made this series of mountains supposedly unassailable.

The job of the 86th Brigade, being mountain troops, was to climb those slopes, practically cliffs, and secure Riva Ridge so that the other 2 brigades of the 10th Mountain could successfully achieve their objective.

Of course, we know the outcome, since the US won and Germany lost the war. The 86th made it up to the top of Riva Ridge, dug in, and held off German counterattacks while the rest of the Division — along with the Brazilian Expeditionary Force advancing on their right flank — captured Mount Belvedere and its adjacent mountains in fierce and bloody fighting. Once those objectives were secure, on 3 March the 10th Mountain advanced into the southern foothills of the Po valley to capture Castel D’Aiano, to the southwest of Bologna. It was near Castel D’Aiano that the late senator Bob Dole was seriously wounded; it was also near Castel D’Aiano that John Magrath demonstrated gallantry at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty, for which he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously. Then on 14 April the division andvanced again, fighting through the determined but wavering German units to reach the Po River nine days later. By that point the German army was collapsing; elements of the 10th Mountain reached Lake Garda on the 28th, where they overcame the last instance of organized German resistance. Mussolini’s mansion was on the western shore of that lake. On 1 May the town of Riva at the north end of Lake Garda was in Allied hands, and within a week the Germans unconditionally surrendered, and the war in Europe was over.

There are many details about these days that do not make it into the official record. One is the specialized mountain equipment the 10th Mountain had been training with never made it to Europe; I’ve read accounts that the boots, skis and alpine-rated sleeping bags were last seen in a warehouse in Boston. Conditions in the Apennines were too cold to sleep with only two blankets, so the men were issued four. The 86th did manage to conduct some patrols on skis — my Dad insists that he took part in one — but the men had to borrow the equipment from local Italian sports clubs. Another is that in the assault up Riva Ridge, if the Germans knew that troops were climbing up the southern slopes, casualties would have been heavy: I’ve seen the figures of 70% and 90% cited. To reduce the odds of this slaughter, the regiment started their climb after sunset at 7:30p, reaching the summits shortly after midnight; as a result, the German soldiers, confident that the southern slopes could not be climbed, slept while the Americans secured the summits. Still another detail was that the men were under orders to advance into battle with their rifles unloaded, to prevent an accidental shot alert the Germans that the Americans were attacking. I’d like to add one last detail of this battle, one not so gruesome: a group of engineers that climbed up Riva Ridge with the brigade quickly constructed a 1,500-foot aerial tramway. It served through the battle bringing ammunition to the top of the mountains and evacuating the wounded to the rear much faster than the 12 hours it took to climb the cliffs between them and the rear.

One detail my Dad might add to that night climb up Riva Ridge: while his company made their way up the steep slopes some fool behind him lost his helmet, and he thought the noise it made as it banged over the scree was going to wake the entire German army.

Yes, my Dad related a number of anecdotes about his time in the Army that will likely never make the history books, some good but some not so good. One he told me when I was a kid was watching flying fish as they sailed across the Atlantic on the Argentina. Another he told when I was young was when the Division had been moved from its base at Camp Hale in the Rockies to Texas, for a reason only the Army knew: he was digging a foxhole, and when he reached for his shovel he almost grabbed a sidewinder sunning itself in the sand. I remember around the same time I was fascinated by the city of Venice, and asked him if he’d been there. He was disappointed that I was not impressed that he’d had the chance to go sight-seeing in Milan, and told me only one thing about Venice: that city had the largest rats he’d seen in his life.

As I grew older, he shared stories that only adults would understand. One was about a night he and some buddies visited a tavern set up in the basement of a ruined school. There was a woman his buddies tried to get him to dance with, but he didn’t want to dance with her because she was packing a handgun. Another was about how two men, rumored to be homosexuals, committed suicide while the Division was still stationed at Camp Hale. A third was about their first night in Italy, when they billeted in a schoolhouse whose windows were all blown out. When the men were called to dinner, and the cooks started dishing out the food to the lines of hungry soldiers, they were overrun by a mob of starving orphans. The men could not be served until the MPs had pushed the children away. (IIRC, after the men were served, the cooks then dished out food to the orphans.) And then there was the story, which he told me from his sick bed during his first hospital stay at the beginning of his decline, about an Italian farmer who complained to his captain that a soldier from his company had stolen some of the farmer’s chickens. The captain ordered one of his men who spoke Italian to investigate; he reported that the thief was not in their company, which was the answer given to the wronged farmer; later it was learned that the thief was the very soldier ordered to investigate the theft.

These are some of the stories about the war my Dad shared with me. But there was one that he never had.

I always knew he had been awarded the Bronze Star for his actions in the war. At the end of the war, it was decided to award every man who had been in combat the Bronze Star; however, my Dad’s Bronze Star had two battle stars, a fact he would mention those few times he introduced himself to other veterans. He had obviously done something to merit the special status of this medal, but he never said to me or anyone I know what it had been. After he died, while going through his personal papers I came across the following citation (some personal details omitted):

For heroic achievement in action on 19 January 1945, near Mt. Belvedere, Italy. When a combat patrol of mountain infantrymen was suddenly pinned down by an enemy ambush, Private First Class B, a scout nearest to the hostile fire, relayed vital information at the risk of drawing deadly fire from two enemy machine pistols not over twenty-five years to his front. When the patrol leader was wounded in a forward position, riflemen in the rear directed fire desperately low over the men in front in an attempt to neutralize the enemy fire. With little regard for his own safety, Private First Class B crawled under the hail of fire to aid the wounded sergeant. Upon reaching him, he administered first aid and improvised a stretcher and proceeded to carry the patient to safety. Continuing onward in spite of deadening fire, Private First Class B succeeded in pulling the wounded patrol leader to safety. Such outstanding heroism in the face of unusual hazards and hardships is deserving of much commendation and praise.

My Dad was a man who said little but thought much, and always took care of others. There was the evening I had a plumbing problem with my house, and I had to call him for help; he came right away without a word. It was only after we had gotten the problem under control that he informed me that it was his wedding anniversary —which I had forgotten — and my stepmother was annoyed that I had called for help that night. (She got over it.)

I wish I had spent more time with you, Dad.

[END]
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