Navy

Veteran’s Day – A Time To Give Thanks

November 10, 2021 by denisefrisino Leave a Comment

Veteran’s Day – A Time To Give Thanks

You might not recognize them walking the street, sitting beside them in at a church service, or quietly reading in a retirement home. A veteran’s response to duty is their own story, sometimes shared, other times very private. Yet, their sacrifices provided us our freedom.
Veteran’s Day is set aside to honor all who have served or are still serving in the Armed Forces, young and old, who have dedicated themselves to defend our country. Unlike Memorial Day, which honors those who fell in battle, Veteran’s Day has a broader meaning allowing for recognition of service men and women with parades, free meals in some restaurants, etc. and, above all, thanks.

I consider myself blessed to have had the opportunity over the last eight years to interview so many veterans, especially from WWII.
They came from all stations of life to serve, and their contributions should never be forgotten.

Marshall Soria was a family man, age 24, when in July of 1944 he entered the army, having become a US Citizen that previous September. In fact, when he arrived in Fumay France, in January of 1945, he was held back one day from the 6th Army, 110th Infantry Division, because he lacked proof of citizenship. Once all paperwork was in order, he joined his 3rd Battalion, 3rd Squad and took up his BAR Rifle to fight in the bitter cold Vosgas Mountains near the German border. Just issued one pair of boots, Marshall, like so many that fought that record setting winter in the Battle of the Bulge, suffered frostbite, but refused medical attention. He celebrated his 100th birthday in June of 2020.

Also participating in that long and deadly battle was Ken Huseman who at 19 was a member of the 8th Armored Division nicknamed the “Thundering Herd.” Their tactical call sign, “Tornado,” was later referred by a Newsweek journalist as the “Iron Snake” referring to their appearance in March of 1945 as they crossed the Rhine River. This group of young soldiers would go on to liberate a sub camp of Buchenwald, Halberstadt-Zwieberge.

Barney McCallum, grew up in Davenport Washington, part of the wheat belt of the Columbia Basin. His older brother was already in the service, so Barney couldn’t wait to join the US Navy. While engaged in the battle of Okinawa his ship took aboard Japanese prisoners, transporting them to Hawaii. In the two years he spent in the Navy, all but two months of that time were aboard ship docking at ports across the Pacific.

I would be remiss if, on this day of saluting those who served, I did not mention my father, Second Lieutenant Joseph C. Frisino, US Army Signal Corps. Dad was already in the service about to be discharged when WWII broke out. He liked to tell us he, “Did four years of overtime.”
After Pearl Harbor Dad’s unit was sent to Alaska to build the Alcan Highway in the freezing Alaskan winter. Next, he was sent via Northern Africa to the jungles of Burma. His first night in his tent he awoke to 25 uniquely colored frogs in his boots and hopping about. Constantly under Japanese sniper fire, he also had to be conscious of the dangerous jungle wildlife. In fact, he sent home a 15-foot python skin of the snake that attempted to slither into his tent when he was writing home to Mom.

Although all but Marshall have left us, we must continue to hold their stories close.

A salute to the next generation, especially Petty Office First Class Lew.

Thank you for your service.

Get involved this Veteran’s Day

Call a Veteran

Fly your flag

Donate to a Veteran’s Service

Attend a parade

To All Veteran’s – Thank you

Victory Mail

February 11, 2021 by denisefrisino Leave a Comment

Victory Mail

Keeping Loved Ones Connected During WWII

In this modern day of instant connectivity via email, text, twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, Facetime, etc. it is hard to envision what it would have been like to wait weeks, even months, to hear from your loved ones or to receive news from back home.

WWII had many challenges, keeping positive morale among the troops was paramount. Communication between loved ones and those fighting to protect us often provided them with the fortitude to persevere though the horrors of war. One can imagine that men and women overseas would anxiously stand in line to hear their names called out – that a letter had arrived for them – a bit of home on a small slip of paper.

“The Post Office, War and Navy departments realize fully that frequent and rapid communication with parents, associates and other loved ones strengthens fortitude, enlivens patriotism, makes loneliness endurable and inspires to even greater devotion the men and women who are carrying on our fight far from home and from friends.”
Postmaster General 1942 Annual Report

Risk of Waylaid Mail

However, receiving mail was not easy. Transferring vital information was risky. In some instances, messages – if delivered to the wrong hands – incited wars.
In November of 1940, Churchill’s British War Cabinet’s Planning Division, entrusted 6 officers aboard the SS Automedon, a passenger and cargo steamer, with a small green bag marked “Highly Confidential.” This bag was purposely punctured with holes and weighted. In the event the ship was under attack, the officers were to toss the sack into the water, confident it would quickly sink.

Unfortunately, when the German Auxiliary Cruiser, Atlantis, a merchant raider, spotted the Automedon off Sumatra on November 11th of that year, the German captain raised his colors and opened fire. All six British officers were killed on the first strike before they could fulfill their orders to destroy the top secret information. The 28 pages prepared by MI6, along with Naval Intelligence reports, Fleet orders, decoding tables and other sensitive information, was recovered by the Germans who promptly gave a copy of these reports to their Axis ally, the Japanese.

England was not aware the documents had fallen into the enemy hands until March 1, 1941, almost four months later, an astonishing amount of time during any war.
Some say the discovery of this intelligence, which claimed Britain could not afford to continue a large presence in the South Pacific, provided Admiral Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, the vital information needed to help make the decision to enter the Second World War with the United States and bomb Pearl Harbor.
In the ever changing tide of war there were many incidents when mail or transmissions were uncovered by the opposing side.

The Australian Coastwatchers positioned throughout New Guinea and the Solomon Islands during the WWII, were a band of brave men who constantly observed the waterways and skies for the enemy. They not only reported movement and helped rescue Allies, but also recovered a tin filled with pages listing the names of all the Japanese naval officers and where they were stationed. This important information was delivered to the US and Allies at a very crucial point in the war in the Pacific.

V Mail to the Rescue

For WWII US soldiers, rules were established for letter writing. When penning words to send home, servicemen could not divulge their whereabouts or movement. All letters were read and censored. Handwritten good tiding from the front often arrived with holes in the pages where the censor considered the information too descriptive if read by a spy. Also, the amount of mail filling cargo ships took up far too much space, precious space better used for ammunitions, food, or medical supplies, etc.
America quickly undertook the solution, one that Britain had been employing for years. Microphotography, microfilming, dated back to 1850 when used primarily by banks and businesses. Photographing the message then sending the film to be processed, printed, and delivered, dated back to the Franco-Prussian War when the primitive microfilm was transported by carrier pigeon.

V Mail was adopted and encouraged in May of 1942 when the US entered into a contract with Kodak. Instructed to use dark ink, you wrote on a purchased, V Mail sheet which would be photographed then the film shipped overseas. This method also prevented espionage tactics such as invisible ink to be utilized. Over 1 billion V Mail letters were processed between June of 1942 and November of 1945. This space saving venture meant that about 37 mailbags were reduced to one bag, as 1,600 letters could fit on a single 100-foot roll of 16mm film.

Sealed with a Kiss

The drawback, of course, was the one page of the V Mail did not allow for long exchanges. Also, and to some more importantly, you could not use lip stick on the V Mail to “seal it with a kiss.” That distinguishable mark of color on the envelope, an imprint of love and promise boosting moral and encouraging the men in fox holes, would gum up the printing press and was not allowed.

On this Valentines Day, when communicating in real time exchanges with friends and family, think of those who served and continue to do so. Consider sending a letter to a soldier overseas to thank them for their service.

Link to Doing Good Together’s Write Letters to a Soldier project page

https://www.doinggoodtogether.org/bhf/write-letters-to-a-soldier.

And remember how fortunate we are to be free to seal our letters with a kiss.

P.S.
The WWII letters my father, First Lieutenant Joseph Frisino, sent to my mother while in the Signal Corps, first from Alaska while building the Alcan Highway and then from the jungles of Burma when defending the Burma Road, are priceless.

D-Day Mistakes, Madness and Miracles –The First Wave

June 5, 2019 by denisefrisino Leave a Comment

The very few living survivors of the ‘First Wave’ at D-Day all concur on one thing—tragic mistakes were made that morning of June 6, 1944, costing thousands of Allied lives.

For starters, the landing parties headed ashore later in the day than planned. They missed the opportunity of the lowest tide and the deeper water would claim hundreds of young lives.

For many, this was their first battle, fresh from their training grounds these soldiers were to attack the battle hardened, dug in enemy. The Germans had prepared the beach with land mines, barbered wire, barricades and a strip of heavy wire that ran across the surf impacting the landing crafts.

Just before the troops were sent ashore, Allied planes flew low across the beach laying down a protective smoke screen. However, this screen worked in reverse for many of the landing parties creating confusion as they could not tell where they were heading. Eventually, when the winds lifted the film, the Germans sitting above on Omaha Beach in their pill boxes made light work of the wet, anxious soldiers below them.

‘Artillery Joe’ Mehelich

‘Artillery Joe’ Mehelich, Private First Class, was a young man among the brave soldiers that survived the ‘First Wave.’ Previously, Joe had arrived in Africa to fight with the 2nd Armored Division at age seventeen, months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. At one point, Joe was hit and forced to pour sand over his body to extinguish the leaping flames spreading up his arms and over his boots. While severely burned and unable to wear shoes, he got ‘right back in the tank’ and kept fighting on. In fact, ‘Artillery Joe’, the nickname given to him by his troop, would go on to fight in all five major battles.

After his company helped secure Sicily, ‘Artillery Joe’ was sent to England for the major assault of D Day. He and a fellow soldier from his company were placed in a DUKW, ‘Duck’, for the landing on Omaha Beach along with about 38 green ‘kids’. The two experienced warriors were there to provide calm for the novice soldiers unaccustomed to battle, to the deafening blast from the enemy’s heavy armor on the cliffs above attempting to sink their transport, and the unnerving number of injured and dying men washing ashore along the sand and surf.

The result was horrific. Frightened, praying, calling for their mothers, the youth rushed over the sides, some carrying their duffel bags, into the chilling deep water only to be pulled under the rough sea by the weight of their supplies needed to defend themselves.

Joe tried to stop them, but their fear and duty to America stripped them of reason.

Only Joe, his friend from his original company and one of the boys from the boat made it to shore. As the three determined which way to head in the dense haze, it began to lift, and they came under attack from a barrage of gunfire from the Germans waiting above in their pill boxes. Miraculously, all lived to fight another day.

**Iconic photos by Robert Capa.**
Above, Hu Riley, 22, of Mercer Island, WA struggles ashore on Omaha Beach

In the midst of D Day, a young John Joachims fearlessly drove his tank into battle at Normandy. He was eighteen. He would often retell of the horror spread around him on the beach, such a place of beauty transformed to a graveyard of overwhelming magnitude.

Joachim, 18, celebrates surviving the landing at Normandy Beach.

The special regiment, the 320th Anti-Aircraft Barrage Balloon Battalion, were trained to handle the large hydrogen filled barrage balloons that floated at about 200 feet, to protect the soldiers and tanks coming ashore. They were the first African American unit to land on D Day and the only balloon unit in France. Although Waverly B. Woodson Jr., an injured medic, was nominated for a Medal of Honor, he never received the medal.

The first twenty-four hours of ‘Operation Overlord’ claimed thousands of lives. Those lost souls were not only Americans, but also our Allies, the Canadians, the British, and the French. One report claims, between June 6th, 1944 to July 1st of that year the United States casualties totaled 22,119. Missing, possibly some of the young boys swept out to sea, tallied 5,665 American soldiers. A startling 2,811 were killed with 13,564 reported wounded. Of the 79 taken prisoner, their eventual fate is not listed. Many of the dead never fired their guns.

The drudgery of ‘Operation Overlord’ would last until August 25, 1944. Bob Harman, made it ashore in early August, as the troops were breaking out of Normandy on their way east. Far from being a secured safe zone, Bob remembers the first person he witnessed being shot by a sniper. The German sharpshooter had killed a Medic. Bob instantly understood the brutality of the enemy. The Germans wanted to eliminate anyone who could bring aide to an injured soldier or the dying. To this day, Bob honors the fallen Medic by displaying his blood-stained white arm band with the red cross in a beautiful glass case. Bob carried the Medic’s arm band through many clashes, including the Battle of the Bulge, as a reminder that survival in war is rudimentary: kill or be killed.

Bob Harmon, Professor Emeritus of History, Seattle University, lectures at Paul Allen’s Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum.

If you have not stood on the cliffs above the designated area called Omaha Beach, where the most difficult landing occurred, or walked the sands of Normandy, be sure to do so. The wind-swept surf carries a hint of the souls lost in this devastating conflict. You will be moved beyond imaging.