What Did You Do in the War, Daddy

What did you do in the war, Daddy?

By Mark Schwed

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Sunday, October 15, 2006

The Son

George Robert Fontanesi, 56, of Kutztown, Pa., carries the name of the man who fathered him. Yet what does he really know about him?

He is familiar with the rough outlines of his father's life: How he was born in tiny Rices Landing, Pa., to Italian immigrants, how they took him back to the old country when he was only 2, how he fled Italy as a young man because he didn't want to fight for a fascist like Mussolini, how — at 17 — he traveled to Switzerland, France, then caught a boat across the Atlantic to return to America in 1938.

The son is aware that his father served valiantly in World War II because of the medals: the Bronze Star for "heroic or meritorious service," the Silver Star for "gallantry in action," a nomination for the Distinguished Service Cross for "extreme gallantry and risk of life." There was even talk of a Medal of Honor — the highest military decoration awarded by the United States. But his father, like many of his generation, doesn't talk much about the blood and guts of war.

There are so many questions.

Who is this man? Where has he been? What has he seen? What has he done?

"We wanted to know," the son says.

So he came up with a plan. Surprise Dad with a Father's Day gift — a trip to Italy — and bring along the grandsons, George Michael, 25, and Tommy Joe, 18.

"They would have a first-hand experience with their grandfather," says the son. "And I could listen in."

Sorry, no women allowed. This trip is just for the boys. George, George, George and Tommy.

They would see the sights, visit Grandpa's childhood home, wink and hoot at the pretty Italian girls, share some good times and good food, drink a little, too. That would help loosen Grandpa's lips.

And they would visit the places where he fought and nearly died.

Maybe he would open up then.

The Father

George Raymond Fontanesi remembers the day in 1941 when he got his draft notice, signed by President Roosevelt.

"I was the proudest guy," he says, his Italian accent softened by nearly 70 years in America. He carried it in his pocket wherever he went, and showed it off to everyone he met. Only later did he realize that thousands of young men got the same letter. "Needless to say, I was disappointed."

At basic training, they asked for volunteers for the Air Corps. Who wants to be a paratrooper? Fontanesi raised his hand.

It was a financial decision. The Army was paying $21 a month. The Air Corps offered another $50. Subtract $6 for laundry and it still left him with a small fortune. "I thought I was on top of the world with that kind of money. But I found out it goes fast — at the poker table."

At the time, airborne was in its infancy, the only volunteer branch of the U.S. Army. Training was rigorous. He had joined the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the Army's first combat paratrooper unit. He was an elite "shocktrooper" who would jump behind enemy lines and hit the ground ready for battle — the first to fight.

The War

His country expects him to march farther and faster, to fight harder, to be more self-reliant and to soldier better than any other soldier. ... I shall never fail my fellow comrades.

— The Parachutist's Creed

He shipped to England aboard the Queen Mary and trained with the commandos of the British 1st Brigade. On Nov. 8, 1942, the paratroopers boarded their C-47s and flew 1,600 miles — the longest airborne mission in history — to assault airports at Algeria and Tunisia.

"Young as we were, we thought it was a big joke until some of the boys started getting hit pretty bad and got killed. We realized there were all kinds of risks involved."

On Sept. 14, 1943, the 509th launched a parachute assault at Avellino, Italy, and ran smack into the 6th German Armored Panzer Division. They were hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned.

The mission was to hold the line for a few days until the 5th Army broke through. But by the second week, after laying land mines, conducting sabotage operations and harassing the Germans, ammunition and food were exhausted. With no relief in sight, he and his men were hiding out in the mountains.

This is when he earned his Silver Star. Against his commander's wishes, he borrowed civilian clothes from a farmer, stashed his dog tags in his pocket, walked past German lines to town and started "making deals" with the Italian citizens for supplies. "Every day, this man's wife used to bring us a pot of pasta with broth," cheese, bread and other food, he says.

The lieutenant was furious with him for disobeying orders. "I told him, 'Look, I got a bad habit. I like to eat.' "

Finally, a group of American soldiers — an all-Japanese unit — broke through the town and relieved them.

There was much more fighting — in the high ground above Venafro, Italy, during an amphibious assault at Anzio — but the toughest and bloodiest was for Monte Cassino.

The Allies were trying to break through the Gustav Line and seize Rome. The Germans occupied the valleys and surrounding peaks and ridges. From January to May 1944, Monte Cassino was assaulted four times — costing 54,000 Allied and 20,000 German soldiers their lives.

I shall respect the abilities of my enemies. I will fight fairly and with all my might. Surrender is not in my creed.

The morning of Feb. 29, 1944, began with a ferocious German artillery barrage, followed by an infantry assault. With the Germans screaming and firing, Fontanesi noticed that the forward.30-caliber machine gun had been knocked out. He crawled on his belly, firing his Thompson submachine gun as he went, to get to the big gun and found three of his men wounded and one dead.

He took over the gun and returned fire as Germans pelted the line with grenades.

Under fire, he managed to pull the wounded men — one by one — back to the rear. On his third trip, "all hell broke loose with artillery coming from all sides." He crawled back to the machine gun, was hit by shrapnel, but continued firing.

"By that time, the Germans had started retreating. A couple of them jumped right over our hole. Our artillery caught them in an open field. It was a disaster for them."

Then, he rounded up his men from Company B — many of them green replacements, some in shock — and brought them back to safety at the secondary line. "They were pretty scared."

Later that afternoon, he returned to the battlefield. "The sight and smell of what I experienced was sickening," he wrote in a report of the day's events. "Many shell-torn bodies of my men and that of the enemy lay all over the entire area. The stench was awful. If I forget lots of things during my lifetime, this is one sight that I will never forget."

Of the 86 men, only 17 were present after the battle. The rest were lost, captured, wounded or killed. "They shellacked us pretty good."

Going Home

During the course of all his fighting, he had taken shrapnel and bullet fragments in the knee, left arm, fingers and back. The war was over for him. The 509th was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the first parachute unit so honored.

"The company commander put me in for a Distinguished Service Medal and Purple Heart," he says. There was even talk of a Medal of Honor. "When I left, they told me all the papers and the medals would follow me to the States." He received one of his two Purple Hearts in 2001 and was told that the Distinguished Service Cross had been awarded and would be in the mail. It never came. "As of today, I'm still fighting with them. In fact, I give up."

He went to Naples, then home. On the 509th's next combat mission, the man who took his place, Anthony Dorsa, and 18 others in his stick of paratroopers would jump into the water and drown in southern France. Their bodies were never found.

Back home, Fontanesi would marry his girlfriend, Evelyn, father a boy, George, and two daughters, Nancy and Francesca, work for a trucking firm in Pennsylvania, then become boss of the terminal. After 26 years, he retired.

He and Evelyn, 80, who spend half the year at their tidy mobile home in Boynton, and the other half in Pennsylvania, will celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary on Jan. 16.

His uniform, with Italian dirt still caked on the boots, is on display at the Airborne & SpecialOperationsMuseum in Fayetteville, N.C.

He still has bullet fragments in his fingers.

Back to the war zone

Fontanesi returned to Italy more than a dozen times after the war, and he even helped collect mementos for the WWII museum in Anzio. Once, he brought his son, George. But he was 11 — too young to know what to ask or remember what he saw.

Two weeks after his son told him of the Father's Day gift, three generations of the Fontanesi family were in Italy — for the first and, most likely, last time.

There was much bonding and laughter. They saw where Grandpa lived as a boy. But the most heart-wrenching moment came near the end of the nine-day trip, at the Anzio-Nettuno cemetery, where many of Fontanesi's friends are buried.

There are days when 87-year-old George Fontanesi cannot recall what he had for breakfast. But he remembers every minute on the beach at Anzio.

He can still see his buddy Charlie Farmer getting killed. "A sniper got him in the back of his head three steps from the hole," he says.

And now he is standing over Charlie's grave, his arm draped over the cross. Tears are streaming down his cheeks. He is talking to Charlie. Out of respect, his son and two grandsons are at a distance.

"We gave him his time alone," says his son.

The moment is seared in all their minds. The boys stopped taking pictures while their grandfather was talking to Charlie. Their father looked into his sons' eyes and had a revelation.

"I can see my father at their age," he says. "It had a frightening effect on me — how I'd feel if my kids were there and the sacrifices they made. All of a sudden it wasn't just something in the history books. Both of my sons said they'd remember it forever."

When George left Charlie's grave, his son had something to say.

"I told Pop, 'You're an older person. You're probably not going to live forever. But I can guarantee you your grandchildren will remember your sacrifices. And they'll tell their children. That's probably the best I can do for ya.' "

George Raymond Fontanesi could not bear to speak to more than one of his friends buried at Anzio. So he talked only to Charlie. George remembers the time they were drunk in London and Charlie fell into a bomb crater, breaking his back. Charlie could have gone home the next day, but he didn't want to leave his buddies. The decision cost him his life. On the day Charlie was shot in the head, George had wanted to see his body. But there were too many corpses, stacked like cordwood. All he could see was the dog tag tied around his toe.

What did George tell Charlie at the grave site?

"I told him I was surrounded by my son and grandkids. That we had a wonderful life. I said, 'I wish you could have been there with me.' "

The Grandsons

Boys love to play war. From their earliest years, they learn to pick up sticks and pretend they are guns. Bang bang. You're dead.

George and Tommy had heard the stories about their grandfather, seen the medals and watched the black-and-white documentaries on the History Channel about WWII. But, none of it resonated.

"It never sunk in with me," grandson George says.

Until this trip.

In Cassino, the old man told his grandsons about how brave the Polish soldiers were when they stormed the Germans in the monastery. The Fontanesi boys stood on the once blood-soaked ground where their grandfather and others scaled a mountain while under heavy fire.

"Everyone who serves is a hero in my eyes," says George, the grandson. "But I didn't realize that he did some pretty gnarly things."

The boys would slip Grandpa some beers to get him to open up, and their father even coached them on what to ask, but there was a limit. Grandpa would talk about his buddies, the tactics, the good times. Tommy Joe, a WWII buff, wanted specifics. What kind of gun did you carry? An M1, then later a Thompson.

"But when we asked him about getting shot, how he won the medals, he kind of drew the line," George says. "When he tells the stories, it's always happy. He never really got into the death and the killing."

I shall prove my ability as a fighting man against the enemy on the field of battle, not by quarreling with my comrades in arms or by bragging about my deeds ...

Grandpa remembers the questions. "They asked if I was scared, if I fought hand-to-hand, they asked if I killed anybody. I told them I didn't remember."

But he does. And he will never forget.

The scene at the cemetery, with "Pop" crying while talking to Charlie, had a big impact on everyone.

"It was eerie. It was dead calm. There were no birds chirping. It definitely felt like a sacred place," says grandson George. "After a while he introduced us to Charlie: 'Here are my grandsons.' That right there, I could hardly keep myself together."

Late at night, in their hotel room, George and Tommy would talk about what they had seen, about their grandfather's life. This vacation, this lesson in history, was turning out to be much more than anyone had expected.

"It brought me closer to my brother, closer to my father, and real close to my grandfather," George says. "It made me appreciate how much he means to me, and how much he did — not just for us, but for the rest of the country."

Before the trip, George Raymond Fontanesi had been worried that what he and others did for America during WWII would be forgotten.

His son reassured him that another generation would know the stories, and pass them on. The grandkids would take care of that.

"I tried to tell my sons that there are great men that accomplish a lot of things — your Abraham Lincolns, the presidents — but there are more and more men like their grandfather who lived an average life, but who made sacrifices well beyond their life. They're not going to be remembered individually in history books. So I expect them to carry on the memories of my father and the things he accomplished."

Home Again

I belong to the finest fighting unit in the Army. By my appearance, actions and battlefield deeds alone, I speak for my fighting ability. I will strive to uphold the honor and prestige of my outfit, making my country proud of me and the unit to which I belong.

George Raymond Fontanesi is a lucky man. He has found the woman of his dreams. He has a loving family. He has had a good long life.

At his home in Boynton Beach, he pulls out his war pictures. There he is with his buddies. There he is making his first parachute jump. He never said "Geronimo" while leaping out of a plane. "I was too scared."

Stacked on the dining room table, with the medals, the after-action reports of battles fought long ago, the mementos from his service with the 509th, are the pictures from his trip with his son and grandsons.

They are among his most precious possessions.

"Every place we went, I introduced them. I told everybody that my son and my grandchildren took me over there to see where I fought. I mean, I was proud," he says.

He falls silent for a moment. And then his mind returns to that day at the cemetery in Anzio with his friend Charlie.

"You look at all those crosses," he says. "These guys were 20, 21. They never had a chance. I am so fortunate. I raised a good family. I had a good life. I went back to Charlie Farmer and I thanked him. I never expected to live this long."