As a child, I recall relatives talking about my maternal grandfather’s brother Luigi being killed in the First World War. I never heard any details, but there was mention of his parents in Italy receiving money from the U.S. government for his death. His photo (below) in a Doughboy’s uniform with a “Smokey the Bear” hat was in our family album, so he was more than just a name.
A couple of years ago, I read that service records for veterans were available from the National Archives in Maryland. I applied and received great uncle Luigi’s entire file – from his draft registration to his death by a German trench motor just two months before the Armistice. The bureaucratic details were impressive, but morbid. His sergeant “recorded” his last words “Now, I’m going to rest in paradise.” (I doubt that Luigi would have uttered his dying words in English, or even in such poetic terms.) He was buried in France and disinterred twice, his remains ultimately shipped to his parents in Italy – my great grandmother signed the receipt.
To my surprise, Uncle Luigi was entitled to a Purple Heart and a French Campaign Medal, which the government provided me at no charge. I now honor Uncle Luigi’s sacrifice to our nation in a framed photo with the medals he never got to wear.
Luigi was one of hundreds of thousands of Italian Americans drafted to serve our country in 20th Century wars. He had only arrived at Ellis Island in June 1912, as a 17-year old, just shy of his 18th birthday – draft age. Five years later he was drafted during the first U.S. conscription since the Civil War. The irony for many immigrants was that they emigrated, in part, to avoid conscription in the Old Country. Luigi arrived during the Italo-Turkish War, probably thinking how lucky he was in avoiding the Italian Army.
Many of us took our turn in the U.S. military or had fathers and relatives who served. It was estimated that Italian Americans made up some 10% of our armed forces in World War II. Thirteen of them were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. They stand beside others of our community who have been awarded this medal, from Civil War cavalry Colonel Luigi Palma di Cesnola to Sgt. Salvatore Giunta in Afghanistan, and every war in between – 28 medals in all. (We are indebted to the late John Dabbene of the Sons of Italy, who first assembled this list, available on Wikipedia)
Two of our Second World War heroes stand out as unique: Marine Sgt. John Basilone and fighter pilot Major Don Gentile. Basilone received the Medal of Honor for heroism on Guadalcanal. He was sent home to promote war bonds and could have sat out the war in glory. Instead, he chose to rejoin his comrades and was killed on Iwo Jima. His story was captured in Steven Spielberg’s HBO 2010 miniseries The Pacific – worth the viewing!
Don (Dominic Salvatore) Gentile wasn’t awarded a Medal of Honor, even though he bagged 30 German planes (25 in aerial combat, 5 on the ground while dodging flak). He survived the war, but died in a civilian air crash in 1951. My colleague Rosario Iaconis wrote an excellent piece on him for The Italic Way, issue XVI, 1992 (available in our online Research Library). Gentile fought the Germans even before the U.S. entered the war, first enlisting in Britain’s RAF – “never so few…” as Winston Churchill described the brave airmen, including Gentile, who protected England during the Blitz. General Eisenhower called him “a one-man air force,” yet Hollywood never produced a movie about him. It came close with the 1941 hit A Yank in the RAF, starring Tyrone Power as pilot Tim Baker. Did Gentile inspire this film? Who knows? Fortunately, Gentile’s 1944 memoir (right) has been updated and is available online.
Thanks to actress/producer Angelina Jolie, there is a film on another Italian American hero of WW II – Louis Zamperini. That film is Unbroken, and it further documents our community’s patriotism and sacrifice.
On this Memorial Day, let us remember our part. -JLM
This just in, literally today (May 31, 2021): A Yahoo News article on Tony Vaccaro, a soldier in WWII who also was an accomplished photographer. HBO did a documentary about him, and his work, in 2016. Today was the first time I had ever heard of him.
From Business Insider:
A soldier who photographed World War II in Europe describes 6 of his photos that reveal the ‘insanity of war’
Katie Sanders
Sun, May 30, 2021
When Tony Vaccaro hit Omaha Beach days after D-Day, he carried a camera along with his rifle.
Vaccaro documented the war on his own as he fought across France and into Germany as an infantryman.
“I see death,” Vaccaro recalled in an interview at his studio. “Death that should not happen.”
Michelantonio “Tony” Vaccaro wanted to serve his country with a camera during World War II, so he tried to join the US Army Signal Corps. But under Uncle Sam’s rules, the 20-year-old draftee was too young for that branch.
So Vaccaro, the orphaned son of Italian immigrants, became a private first class in the 83rd Infantry Division. By June 1944, days after the first wave of 156,000 Allied troops descended on the beaches of Normandy, Vaccaro landed on Omaha Beach, where he saw row after row of dead soldiers in the sand.
Vaccaro was armed with an M1 rifle. He also brought along his personal camera: A relatively compact Argus C3 he’d purchased secondhand for $47.50 and had become fond of using as a high-school student in New York.
In addition to fighting on the front lines during the Battle of Normandy and the ensuing Allied advance, Vaccaro photographed what he was seeing. At night, he’d develop rolls of film, mixing chemicals in helmets borrowed from fellow soldiers. He’d hang the wet negatives on tree branches to dry and then carry them with him.
When he had enough to fill a package, he’d generally mail them home to his sisters in the US for safekeeping and to ensure the images would survive even if he did not.
From 1944 to 1945, he moved through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany.
Along the way, he took photographs that few others – even the press and Signal Corps photographers – were in a position to take: a fellow soldier’s last step before shrapnel tore through him, a jubilant kiss between a GI and a young French girl in a newly liberated town, and many stomach-churning portraits of ransacked corpses that still haunt him.
During 272 days at war, he captured thousands of photos. After the Allied victory, he felt sickened and debilitated by the devastation he saw. He wasn’t ready to return to the US. And he never wanted to photograph armed conflict again.
He bought a Jeep and traveled with his camera, eventually photographing brighter moments, like the reconstruction of Europe and the beauty in the lives of famous artists and everyday people.
Vaccaro went on to make a name as a fashion and culture photographer. He traveled the world shooting for magazines like Look and Life and taking portraits of bigwigs including John F. Kennedy, Pablo Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Georgia O’Keeffe, and many more.
A half-century would pass before Vaccaro began publishing the bulk of his surviving wartime photos. The surviving images have been shared widely, including in the 2016 HBO documentary Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC. Tony Vaccaro, in which Vaccaro revisits the history that he had to break Army rules to chronicle.
Vaccaro, now 98, survived a bout with COVID-19 last spring that put him in the hospital.
He continues roaming his neighborhood photographing everyday people and selling prints through Monroe Gallery of Photography. From his Queens, New York, studio more than seven decades after World War II, he closes his eyes and thinks of the brutality he documented as an infantryman.
“I see death,” Vaccaro told Insider. “Death that should not happen.”
There is a database of forgotten Italian-born heroes of WW1 (who served in the U.S. Military). Please check https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/back-over-there-database.html.
With so many Italians fighting and dying for the U.S., why would they pass the 1921 immigration law just to halt Italian immigration? Historic institutional and legislative racism against Italians?
Great find! Didn’t know it existed. I found my great uncle Luigi Merola listed. As to the restrictions on Italian immigration, I suppose there was no longer a need for cannon fodder.