World War II biography of Salvatore Favazza

This is a website by Karen Favazza Spencer about her father. Interesting material about the role of the Navy on D-Day, plus her dad's experience in the Phillipines.



Some of this history is from my childhood memories, some is from Dad’s official WWII naval records. Much is from his best friend’s memoirs. Joe Graham was in midshipmen’s school with Dad at Notre Dame, in Dartmouth, England training for Operation Overlord in 1944, on Omaha Beach for D-Day and beyond, and traveled together to the same tent on Samar in the Philippines in 1945. Some of the Samar pieces are from Lowell Burton’s letters to his wife Kathleen.





http://web.me.com/seabreezes1/Karen_Spencer/WWII.html

Daughters of Vietnam Veterans

Check out this site on facebook which focuses on the Vietnam vet, PTSD, and daughters - there is sort of a sisterhood of daughters searching for understanding of the legacy of their war traumatized fathers.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=2414016192&ref=ts

A Casualty of War

Ron White, member of the 376th Airborne Field artillery sent this remembrance of his uncle who died in World War II in Germany in 1945.

Click on text and photo to enlarge.

Story of Lieutenant Rocco Macchia, 82nd Airborne, submitted by his son

I am posting this story of an 82nd Airborne veteran, submitted by his son, who is searching for any paratroopers or their children who may have known his father.


From Robert Macchia:


I am putting my fathers story together, but some details may not be perfect since he passed away in Jan. of 1988. I will tell the story as I remember from what he told me about his war stories when I was a little boy, many years back, as I am now 62.

My father was born Sept. 17, 1919 in Brooklyn, NY. He was part of a big family consisting of 7 brothers and 2 sisters. Their father was a shoemaker and they barely made ends meet. They slept in bunk beds in a small apartment. When my father was 18 he lost his father who was only 43 so all of them worked, went to school and chipped in to support the family.

When the US declared war on Japan on Dec. 7, 1941 he was 22 and was drafted into the Army as well as all of his brothers, one of them joined the navy and lied about his age so he could serve his country. My father was promoted to corporal and then became Mess Sgt. He was responsible for preparing three meals a day for over 400 soldiers in Ft. Benning, GA where he lived with my mother for about a year. About a year later on March 13, 1944 my sister Virginia was born. He never got to see her until he came home in 1945.

He wanted to make his mark in the service so after basic training he decided to join the Officers Training School and become a paratrooper. He then was transported to Ft. Bragg, NC.

He graduated as 2nd Lieut. He made 13 jumps between his training and into enemy territory and fought in The Battle of the Bulge, Normandy, and D-Day. On his 13th jump he fractured his ankle, but his military records show nothing about his injury or treatment, he had told me he missed one offensive due to this injury. All of his men were fond of him and would not disperse during an offensive on the battlefield and a Colonel came to my father and told him to get his men to disperse, they would not. The Colonel then pulled his gun on my father and told him to make them disperse or else. Just after that incident he was given the horrible duty of graves registration officer, picking up dead bodies of his comrades after battle. A duty he never forgot.

He marched through France in a wet uniform for weeks on end and developed dysentery, a severe flu-like ailment.

When he came out of the Army, he wanted to start a new life as a carpenter, which was one of his trades he had learned as a boy. He visited Real Estate offices in the Ridgewood areas of Queens and Brooklyn, NY with my mother and infant sister in his arms. He was refused any housing because of his name “Rocco L. Macchia.” This prejudice against a soldier was unnerving to him and my mother. They finally settled into an apartment after endless searching. He worked as a carpenter in a lumber mill but the pay was meager and they had difficulty surviving.

In 1950 my mother saw an ad in a newspaper for real estate agents. She told my father to go for the interview and he was hired. He became a very successful real estate agent and moved on to his own business a few years later with three partners in 1955. In 1963 he moved into his own Real Estate Business and became well known and very successful. In 1966 I joined the business but as the late 1970’s approached business was terrible so I left. My father died in January 1988 after serving his country and community well. A family member took over the business, but I was not involved. I had been hired as a Realty Specialist with the Federal Government. The family business is now closed after over 45 years.

If anyone out there in this vast world knew my father through their father I would like to hear from them. My email address is:
bobemakk@optonline.net

Thank you, Robert L. Macchia, West Babylon, NY

The True Cost of World War II to My Family

This obituary published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 19, 2005 does not mention PTSD in connection with my father, but reading between the lines demonstrates the struggles he had adapting to life after the war.

Arthur B. "Dutch" Schultz, 82, an 82d Airborne Division paratrooper portrayed in the 1962 epic about D-Day, The Longest Day, and whose battle experiences were documented in several major World War II history books, died of pulmonary disease Sunday at home in Helendale, Calif.
The former Frankford and Bucks County resident was raised in Detroit, where he graduated in 1940 from St. Philip Neri High School. After two years in New Mexico with the Civilian Conservation Corps, Mr. Schultz itched for action: He enlisted in the Army in 1942 and volunteered to be a paratrooper.
He earned the Bronze Star in 1944 for heroics in the Normandy campaign and two Purple Hearts for combat in France and the Battle of the Bulge.
After being discharged in 1945, Mr. Schultz married Madeline Russo. The couple raised two daughters in Frankford; the marriage ended in divorce in 1957.
Historian Cornelius Ryan interviewed Mr. Schultz for the book The Longest Day, which was published in 1959. Subsequently, Mr. Schultz's battle experiences were in two more of Ryan's books, A Bridge Too Far and The Last Battle; three books by historian Stephen E. Ambrose: Citizen Soldiers, The Victors and D-Day; and works by other authors.
Mr. Schultz did research for Ambrose and director Steven Spielberg for the 1998 movie Saving Private Ryan.
He reenlisted in the Army in 1947 and was a Counterintelligence Corps agent in Austria until being discharged in 1950. He returned to Frankford and worked as a detective in a Center City department store for two years. He rejoined the Army in 1952 and worked in counterintelligence at the Frankford Arsenal until being discharged for a third time in 1957.
Mr. Schultz began battling alcoholism shortly after World War II and was treated during the late 1950s at the former St. Luke's Children's Medical Center in North Philadelphia.
He and a partner founded a Center City private-detective agency in 1960. Mr. Schultz left the business in 1962 to work for a year as an investigator for a special prosecutor in a grand-jury probe of City Hall.
Again plagued by drinking problems, Mr. Schultz met and married Ardelle Poletti in 1963, who was a fellow patient in an alcohol rehabilitation center in Wawa, Pa. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous in 1964 and was sober for the rest of his life, said his daughter, Carol Vento.
During the rocky marriage to his second wife, Mr. Schultz moved to San Diego, where he had family. He earned a bachelor's degree from California Western University in 1967. He returned to the Philadelphia area in 1967 and earned a master's degree in psychology from Temple University in 1970.
Mr. Schultz was director of the former Bucks County-based rehabilitation program Today Inc. from 1970 to 1973. His wife committed suicide in 1974.
Mr. Schultz moved back to California in 1973 and married Gail Eastburn two years later.
In addition to his wife, daughter and first wife, Mr. Schultz is survived by a granddaughter; two sisters; and a brother. Another daughter, Rosemary, died in 1973.

“The past is never dead. It's not even past”. – William Faulkner

Today, I received a publication from my French friend, Jean-Michel, commemorating the 65th anniversary of D-Day. Although the iconic Frank Capa images of Allied troops landing on the beaches will always symbolize the chaos and terror of that day to me, this magazine contained photographs I had never seen. One of the pictures shows young soldiers huddled over a downed buddy, pressing on his back, his leg, his hand, with what are surely looks of disbelief and horror on their faces. When I looked at the photo, my eye moved to the beach on which these men seemed to be trying to hold their fallen friend together. The beach was covered with stones.

When I visited the Omaha Beach several years ago, I recall my disbelief at the endless stretch of deserted sandy beach and the disconnect at what I knew had occurred there, where I stood. I was humbled by the question of how did they possibly get up the beach since there was absolutely nothing to protect them. As if he were reading my thoughts, my friend Jean Michel had quietly said to me; “at that time, the beaches were covered with pebbles, so when they landed they were able, sometimes, to dig in and find some cover.” Somehow, the thought of rocks on the beach allowed me to feel that something helped them across the beach, even if wasn’t really true.

So, 65 years ago today my father was aboard a ship that would depart from England and head towards the beaches of Normandy. He landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day +1 to the residual of what the fighting of the previous day, D-Day, had left behind. When Saving Private Ryan was released I had asked him to go to see the movie with me and he resisted. When I pushed a little more to get him to accompany me, he looked away and said “I’ve already seen it once, I don’t need too see it again”.

From the beginning of time men have gone to war, leaving country and family behind. And yet, of so many wars, this one still seems so immediate and so much a part of my psyche, even though it was fought before I was born. We are born, grow up, live our lives, and even now, grow old, within the shadow of this war that ended before our own lives began.

I commemorate and honor the troops who landed at Normandy, Omaha, Utah, Juno, Gold, Sword and all of the men and women who fought and served in this war, so distant and so present. I can only wish that they could know that their achievements and sacrifices are as celebrated and important today as they were 65 years ago. Thank you, Dad.

Barack Obama, His Grandfather and World War II

On the eve of the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, this Washington Post article summarizes the President's World War II heritage, primarily outlining the wartime experiences of his maternal grandfather who was Obama's father figure during his childhood and adolesence. Two of his great-uncles also served in World War II.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/01/AR2009060100163_5.html

PTSD And World War II

I am reading The Best War Ever (1994) by Michael CC Adams about the myth regarding World War II. He points out that a societal myth has been created, especially about the American servicemen, that they all came back happy and well adjusted. Our point - exactly. The lack of understanding of PTSD left an entire generation of children feeling confused about the gap between the reality in their households and the societal myth. I only hope we don't continue to ignore the returning soldiers. Even though we now recognize and diagnose the effects of war, the support needed for the combatant and their families is sorely lacking.