Interview with Sebastian LaBella by Greg Lanza for the Voices From the Second World War Oral History Project, Center for Oral History, University of Connecticut, June 19, 2001.

Lanza: Ready to start?

LaBella: Yes, I am.

GL: The first question is when and where were you born?

SD: I was born in Middletown, Connecticut, June 11, 1923.

GL: What can you tell me about your childhood?

SD: My childhood. I wouldn't trade my childhood for the world. We grew up like most immigrant's children in the tenements and it was like one big family. And you played all day as kids because there were plenty of kids to play with. And you improvised which was a learning experience in itself. And you learned how to deal with problems like getting hurt. You dealt with it which prepared you for school. And you always were taught that if you want something you have to earn it. Nothing comes easy, everything is tough. Life is tough. So we had a good beginning in life, I'd say, which helped out going through school. Because back then you, you didn't go to the next class unless you passed your subjects. Not like today [where] if you attend the class you pass it. Unfortunately, you're being cheated out of an education. We played along the Connecticut River, which was great. We used to go hiking out into the hills in the south end of town. We used to camp in the hills. So I had a great, great childhood. Later on we had to work to help support the family in the summers. We worked in the tobacco fields ten hours a day for a dollar and a quarter a day. $6.25 a week for fifty hours. But considering a married man earned anywhere from eighteen to twenty-five dollars a week, that wasn't bad. It was better than some of the children who had to sell newspapers on the corner or shine shoes. So, then, of course, when we went back to school in the fall we went caddying at the golf course. You got a dollar for eighteen holes and you had to give a dime back to the caddy master for letting you out. So you did it for ninety cents. But, it was a buck that went into the family pot. And this is how I grew up. Not just me, but all the kids, knowing that you had to help yourself, and this is what you had to look forward to. Now, I was fortunate that I went through high school, graduated high school. Not many did back then. They could look forward to leaving high school and going to work to help support the family. I know young men who literally worked their way through high school. They worked and went to high school both. And we had a very good education. History was important. We had history every year starting in grammar school. And that's how I developed my interest in history. And I can remember when we landed in England, one of my friends, Charlie Carino, who was older than me, I was one of the younger soldiers, and he said, "You are about to get the greatest education in your life. Keep your mouth shut, unless you are going to ask questions and keep your eyes and ears and your brain open," because he said, "You'll never forget what you are going to learn now." And this is pretty much how we grew up.

GL: Where did your parents come from?

SD: They came from Sicily. From the province of Syracuse. And, of course, Syracuse everyone hates to admit it, but Syracuse was a center of learning long before northern Italy. The University of Siracusa is much older than our country which also has a University of Syracuse. My grandfather was educated in the old country [and] could both read and write in Latin as well as Italian. And he was secretary to the prince of the area. He was also a shoemaker. My father and his brother came to America in 1910. He was eleven and his brother was twelve. And they went into Kindergarten, because that's what they did, and before the year was up they went to sixth grade. When World War I came my father joined the Navy and got into a blueprint reading class because he could read blueprints and he knew math from the old country because math is stressed in the old country. He was able to become a bridge builder. He built bridges all along the Merritt Parkway. All through New York state and Massachusetts and Rhode Island. And his older brother became a surgeon. Again I was fortunate that our parents were interested in education and they allowed us to go to school.

GL: That was unusual for your neighborhood?

SD: Well, there were two streets more or less, Green Street and Ferry Street. On Green Street three of the kids I know graduated high school. On my street 80% of them graduated high school, or were allowed to go to high school and graduate. On Green Street they weren't, so it wasn't that usual to get a high school education. But this was the Great Depression. And I came out of high school knowing I had to go to work. I went to work in a silver company in Middletown and made a decent week's pay. It was the first time I handled money. We had to turn most of it in to your parents, that's how it was back then. And then I went to work for my father building bridges and I hated it. I couldn't stand being out there in the heat in the summer, so I quit. And I brought the car to the mechanic one day and the mechanic, the owner, said to me, "You're going to be going into the service pretty soon, you'd better learn a trade or you'll end up carrying a gun in the infantry." And I became a mechanic and that is one of the things I did in the service except we still carried a gun and we were still infantry. Combat engineers are infantry and engineer. So that's pretty much a thumbnail description of my growing up. A lot of my friends, you know, it's strange, a lot of my friends went to high school, not one of us even thought about going to OCS (Officer's Candidate School) and we had the opportunity. I was asked, and I didn't want to. I went in with all the guys, we were 32 from Middletown, and I just didn’t want to leave this group. I figured, "If I'm going to war, I want to go through it with guys I know." And with that, I turned it down. Although I did go to school in Baltimore at Holabird Ordinance Depot. And I did all kinds of maintenance and administrative work and so forth.

GL: What year did you start with the mechanic?

SD: 1942, the year I got inducted, but at least I had that background.

GL: Before Pearl Harbor how aware were you with what was happening with Japan or Germany?

SD: Very aware. In 1938 my history teacher Mr. Hoyt had a map out and he showed how the following year Germany would attack Poland. And he called it right on how he would take France without any effort. And, of course, we couldn’t believe it. We said, "How could he take France within a month?" And we thought he was crazy, and of course, he wasn't. And with that I became very interested in what was happening overseas. And with Japan there was an uneasy feeling at that time. First of all, no one liked the Japanese even before the war. There was something about Japanese, at least my group did, we didn't care for them. Honestly, I feel that that was the general feeling anyway.

GL: Was that limited to the Japanese or Asians in general?

SD: No, mostly the Japanese, because of what they did in China, the Rape of [Nanking] and later what they did to our guys. So, you know, you knew something was happening. And then I had read or either on the radio or an article, I don't quite remember anymore, right after the British attacked the Italian fleet at Taranto, I can remember just as clear the fella saying that's the same set up we have at Pearl Harbor. Now, this was back early '41 probably. And nobody paid attention to it which proved [to be a grave error]. Then the Japanese took [note of] that and that's how they planned Pearl Harbor, the same raid.

GL: What was your reaction when you heard about Pearl Harbor?

SD: Well, first of all, I know a lot of people didn't know where Pearl Harbor was. The fact that we had a history teacher that kept us abreast of things I knew where it was. And we were at the Middlesex Theater in town which no longer exists and they stopped the movie and the manager Ernie Doran came out and announced that the Japs had just attacked Pearl Harbor. And I can remember a woman screaming, "Oh my god, my son's there!" I'll never forget it. And you can hear people saying, "Where's Pearl Harbor? Where's Pearl Harbor?" And after that, of course, the whole country was up in arms. And some of the guys wanted to volunteer and I said, "No, we're going to go soon enough. We'll go when we are called." Which to me is the best decision I ever made. Again, I got to go with my buddies, plus we're all from New England so it worked out well.

GL: So, you received your letter and ...

SD: Yeah. Dear friends and neighbors ... [laughs] So, I received my letter, and in December I went for my physical and passed, and we were sworn in and I didn't go. I ended up with pneumonia. I ended up in the hospital. So I missed January, they didn't need me in February, so I went in March which was great because I went with the guys. So, actually I went from December to December, that was my tour. December of '42 to the December of '45.

GL: What do you remember about the physical exam?

SD: It was kind of a blur. I mean it was really a kind of a ... it wasn't much of a physical exam. It's kind of the same physical doctors give today, the GP [general practitioner] getting in and taking blood pressure and looking at your eyes. But yet, a friend of mine didn't make it because of bad knees. But as a rule, everybody made it. The thing that I remember, there was a fellow sitting on a chair and as we went through he asked me, "What time is it?" And I said, "I don't have a watch." And he said, "Hearing is okay." That's how they checked your hearing. [laughs] But the rest of it ... of course, we ran around naked all day. We had no clothes. I mean you were going from room to room, you just had only an overcoat. And that's all we did. And when we came home, my father was, said, "You made it, right?" I said, "Yeah, but I don't feel well." I said, "I just don't feel well." Of course, I ended in the hospital. But when we went back, when I was finally called I was glad to go. I was relieved. I was afraid they were going to turn me down. I had a chance to get out of the service when I was in Mississippi, in basic training. I was in the hospital as a kid and they had to operate on my back to get to a section of my lungs to drain it. And they had to cut ribs to get in. And in Mississippi the dampness gave me problems, so I went to the hospital and the colonel came to see me and asked me if I came from around the Hartford area. I said, "Yeah, I came from the Middletown, Connecticut." And the first thing he said was, "Are you related to Louie?" He was my uncle. He was a major in the medical corps. And he asked me, "Do you want to go home?" And I said, "No." He said, "You know, I'm giving you a chance to go home. I owe that to your uncle." I said, "No." And then, of course, I'm a bundle of nerves. He's a colonel and I'm just a rookie and I said something like, "I never leave in the middle of a movie. I've got to see how it ends." He said, "It could end with you getting killed." And I remember during the Battle of the Bulge when we were freezing I kept calling myself all kinds of stupid. [laughs] So, Mississippi, at Camp Shelby where we took our basic, we knew about it in Middletown because our National Guard had gone there a year and a half earlier, the 43rd (Red Wing) Division. We didn't know how bad it was, but we knew about it. But it was good training because it was rotten. It had every rotten thing you could think of, including the water. [The water contained much sulphur and so smelled like] rotten eggs, the water's so terrible. It had all the snakes and bugs so we thought we were training for the Pacific because it had all the elements of jungle training. But we didn't. But we had good people training [us]. They had a good cadre. They knew their stuff. Most were National Guard, so we received a very thorough training. I was fortunate to get into a section called Battalion Maintenance. [There] were fifteen [of us and we] went wherever we were needed, for whatever they needed us. I mean it could be for [mines] or bridges. Mostly for keeping equipment running. Whatever they needed us for, we went. And we had the greatest lieutenant in our Army, as our boss, Shelly Potter, he was just the greatest guy. He took good care of us. We were at Camp Shelby from March to late September. Now, I missed all the tough months. I was away June, July and August - the hottest months down there - and I lived a life of luxury in Baltimore and they were sweating there. [laughs] Well, somebody had to do it I suppose. And when I returned they were handing out stripes, we knew we were about ready to leave because they were starting to pack things and records, you can't find records that had been put away. And there were rumors everywhere [that] we were going to the South Pacific. And we found out we were going, one of the kids in the outfit ... Did I tell you that story?

GL: You can repeat it.

SD: Well, all these rumors are coming from everywhere. All the important people, the latrine orderly, the cooks, all the people in the know. And our company commander, Captain Leonard Supp had us fall in and he gave a chewing out. "No more rumors. No one knows a thing. You understand? No one knows. Group doesn't know, Battalion doesn't know, Division doesn't know. Any questions?" And this, I think his name was Mateo, a little guy, he says, "Sir, when we get to Camp Miles Standish next week are we getting passes?" And he was dumbfounded. He couldn't speak. He was dumbstruck. And he finally said, "What do you mean?" [Mateo] said, "My mother wrote and said we're going to be up at Camp Miles Standish. Are we going to get passes?" "Your mother? When did she send you this letter?" "A week and a half ago." And [Supp] said, "We just found out today." So ...

GL: But the locals knew.

SD: Yeah, they were waiting for us. And we pulled into Miles Standish they were lined along the railroad tracks and waved. And ...

GL: You were afraid you were going to be rejected from the service. Was that because you were seeking adventure or you were driven by hatred?

SD: The truth?

GL: Yeah.

SD: Because no one I knew would be at home; I'd be alone. All my friends were in the service and I didn't want to be the only one. I didn't want to be the odd man out. So, I wanted to go. I would have volunteered. I mean, I would have gotten into the Merchant Marines or something because they were all gone.

GL: You wanted to do your part?

SD: Yeah. I wanted to be part of the gang, whatever they were doing. And I think most of use felt that way. You get to the point, we knew the British were having problems, and no matter where you come from in this country, whether you are Italian or French, Britain is still the mother country. There is still that attachment. If you went to school in our day we received a lot of it. We knew that Great Britain was our mother country. I don’t think it holds true today. And we felt that attachment and what they were going through, they were being starved and bombed. Yeah, you wanted to go. And to be honest, I didn't give a damn about the French. I never cared for the French. The French were corrupt and they folded even though they outnumbered the Germans in everything, they folded. They depended upon the greatest monument to stupidity - the Maginot Line. So, I was ready to go, and like everyone else, I felt that we had to go and help bail them out. We were afraid of going to the South Pacific. Nobody wanted to go to the South Pacific. We knew what it was like. It was tough.

GL: You already knew about some of the atrocities by that time?

SD: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Corregidor had fallen. We knew about the Death March, [it] was starting to come through. So, we didn't want to go there. We figured we'd be better off [in Europe]. For one thing we'd go to England, it's an English speaking nation. And wherever you go it's a civilized nation, it's not a jungle. And, for the most part ... First of all, I liked England. I know there was a lot of friction, but I liked England, I liked the British people. They were great. They treated us royally. Ralph, a friend of mine, and I would stay with this family we met in Bristol, [England]. We spent weekends with them. And we'd take them and their daughters out to the movies at the Hippodrome. And so we were treated, even in Gloucester we found a pub out of the way, it was a kind of neighborhood thing, the people took us in. And they were just fabulous. We were at the Hippodrome in Bristol and as we were leaving the MC or the comedian went over to us and said, "There they are folks, the Americans. Overpaid, oversexed and over here. And I said, "Well, it's not so much that we're overpaid," real loud, I said, "The fact of the matter is your country's cheap." I said, "Your troops are badly underpaid. They're great people. They've given their all. And they created a British Empire. It wasn't one big grab for money," I said, "With your troops, when a fellow would lose a leg they'd pay him a pound a month." I said, "That's four dollars a month. ... I said, "The women make more than that. So, it's [your] cheap [government]... So, don't blame us. Give them what they deserve. And we're not oversexed, and we're over here will be here forever. We came here, we're going to give our lives if we have to and we're being ridiculed by this idiot." And they clapped. And he started, "I'd just want to shake your hand." And I said, "No thank you, I just washed my hands" and left him. So, to this day they can't convince me that this wasn’t started by the German propaganda, agents because they wanted to divide the troops, the Americans. And it worked. There was constant mistrust. And because of this they were frankly jealous of what we earned. I mean I didn't think it was right that I should earn as a sergeant as much as a captain in the British Army. That's kind of ridiculous. But that wedge was started and I say it was probably British, I mean German propaganda. And I say it worked very well. It worked, it was a problem even among the commanders in France so that they couldn't coordinate. It cost us the chance to end the war by September of '44.

GL: How did you end up in the engineers?

SD: We all did. Right from [the beginning] the whole group [was] at Camp Devens. We all came together. There were 75 from Middlesex county, 221 from Connecticut. [We came from] all over New England and ended up in Camp Devens. This whole group [then] moved to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. It took us 64 hours to get there by train. And when we came back to go over[seas] it took us 32 hours [laughs]. And we ended, you know, "Where you from?" "Gee, I'm from Bridgeport." "I'm from Greenwich." It was great because ... Oh I know, they'd say in those days Middletown was noted for the state hospital. And they'd say, "Oh, yeah, I know Middletown, the bug house is there." [laughs] That's a heck of a thing to be known for. So, it was really great the fact that we were all from New England. And it's not unusual. The 110[th] anti-aircraft artillery, which I said was along side us most of the way, was the same thing. The 151st ... 150[th] Combat Engineers, one, I can't remember, was also from New England, they trained in New England, they trained in Rhode Island. So there was a lot of outfits that came from New England. So, it wasn't unique.

GL: You were slated from the start to be in engineering?

SD: Yep. The combat engineer was an experiment. What they wanted to do was they wanted to train us as infantry, and that's [what] they did in Mississippi. We went through the whole training. And then they wanted an outfit that could go out, take the ground, hold it while they built bridges or cleared mines or whatever had to be done. And the rest of the training came in England, the engineer portion of it. And they did a job, they did a heck of a job training us.

Note: Sebastian became part of the 296th Engineer Battalion. This was an all-New England unit and one of the first combat engineer units.

GL: What can you tell me about your trip over to England?

SD: Well it took eleven days. I was seasick eight days. It was on a little ship, a little cruise ship called the Santa Elena. Later it was sunk in the Mediterranean by E-boats, German E-boats. And it was overcrowded, we had to sleep in shifts, twelve hours on deck, twelve hours in the hold. I just put my stuff in the hole and I [did not go] back there down until we landed in Liverpool. Being a British ship the food was lousy. Very few ate. Very few would go to chow. They'd eat crackers or whatever they could get their hands on. Moving in a convoy is quite a thing. You were in a certain position and the following morning you had no idea where you were. There was a complete change, [it was] constantly changing. And sometimes you're almost alone. Now, that's scary. Or at least you think you're alone. You can't see ships. The weirdest experience was going through the gulf stream. And we were not far from Iceland and it became warm and foggy. And they went through that. That was great. And all the sudden you're taking a bunch of gear off. [laughs] We landed in Liverpool at 4 o'clock in the morning. And everybody staggered, they had no legs. [laughs] And the cobblestone streets, it was dark. And we went to Devizes, England by convoy. And at Devizes is Prince Maurice Barracks. And our first meal was boiled mutton. Boiled cabbage. And boiled potatoes. And no one ate. I mean the smell was terrible. And, you know, you can't fault them. These were people who had been under the blockade of the U-boats and being bombed. And whatever they had, this was it. So, they were doing the best they could with what they had. We learned later on. We would have given anything to have that meal. There were times we would have been glad. We would have taken that right down. And we were there two days, long enough to pick up the first of our equipment. And from there they split us up. A and B Company went to Yeoville, England onto an estate outside of Yeoville, Berwick House. And H and S and C Company went to Plymouth and we were out in the moors sleeping in tents. No, I take that back. From there we went to outside of Taunton, England at Camp Stapley and we were there November and December. Then they split us up. And it was the first time they had snow. The people said, "We never have ..." I said, "We're here now, we have snow." And we remained there. We weren't far from an RAF base and it was the first time I realized that all the pilots weren't officers. They were flight sergeants that flew missions, fighter missions, whatever. And being sergeants we were able to go their NCO clubs. And the sergeants were treated like royalty in the British Army. And from there we went to Yeoville and Plymouth. And in January, I think, we went to an estate outside Gloucester, England called Highnam Court. It's on the computer, by the way. You can look up Highnam Court and it comes up. And this is where they fine tuned our training, we worked with live mines, we worked with building bridges. We did everything we had to do. This is the way they fine-tuned us. And we used to have ... this is where we found that little pub. Now, we went there every night. They taught us how to drink beer, you know, the British way, you sip beer, you don't [gulp it]. And they had, in back of the tavern they had a four-lane bowling alley. It looks like candle pin, they call it skittles. We'd do that once in a while. And on June 10th 1944, the day before my birthday, one of the women said, "Sit here." I sat with her a while and she was teary-eyed. And finally, she took my hand and said, "We'll never see you again." I said, "Oh, sure. Tomorrow's my birthday. We have to celebrate my birthday." She said, "No, you're going to celebrate your birthday on a ship going to France." I said, "No, no, no, no." And not much after that we hear the MPs saying, "Everyone back." And that night we were on way to Southampton, on the LSTs and off we went. And on June 12th, we landed on Omaha Beach.

GL: What was it like landing?

SD: There were still bodies. Still parts of bodies. And we went in, and of course, there were German bodies everywhere. And we didn't go too far in. We were near Vierville sur Mer. We dug in, and our job there was to dig up some of Rommel's mines. And the first night we were there the German air force decided to bomb and we got lucky, we got away without any casualties. And we dug 15,000 mines in short order. They said, "You're not going out in the field, you're clearing the road." So, you move right along. And the Germans actually did a lousy job of it, they had no, their heart wasn't really in it, which made it easier for us. The only thing you were afraid of was sometimes it was too obvious and you'd get a little reckless and a mine would be booby trapped.

GL: What was the procedure for locating and removing the mines?

SD: First of all, you would have somebody sweep with a metal detector. And when he'd find it, the guy with him would put in a flag and you'd move right along. And we'd come back behind him on your stomach and you'd probe and get the mine out. Then they'd come along and collect it. So, we'd use their mines for demolition, which worked out fine, [it] saved our own. I really didn't [like clearing] mines, some guys didn't mind it. Maybe I was overcautious, but that wasn't really my thing. But we did it. We [went] wherever we were needed. We eventually went into Caratan. And Caratan had a famous bridge. Patton wrote about it, everybody wrote about it. We would build it and the Germans would wait for it to be completed. And the minute a vehicle would go over it, they'd blow it up. Then they'd let us fix it again, and we'd complete it and someone said, "With all the equipment, all the air power we have, can't someone knock that stupid gun out?" And eventually some British Typhoons went in and that was the last of it. And we were able to move out and move along. But Patton came and made a big deal out of it. He stormed across the bridge. Now, Caratan like everything else was completely flattened, I mean there was nothing. We went back, when we went back in 1994 and the town was absolutely beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I asked one of the French officers and he said if you were here before the war started, this is exactly how the town looked. They went back and got all the blueprints and rebuilt the town the way it look[ed then]. And it's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. You'd never know. The first question asked when I got back from that 50th anniversary trip, more and more, "Has it changed much?" I said, "No, it's still bombed out, there are still craters there, the Germans are still firing at us." [laughs] But, moving through France through Normandy we had a tough time in France because of the hedgerows. Unless you have experienced the hedgerows, you'd never believe vegetation can grow so tough that it would stop a tank. Actually, it wouldn't actually stop the tank, but it would get the tank facing so the bottom's exposed and then with a light gun you could knock it out. And some engineer [Cullin] devised that cutter [put on the front of the tank, it would cut through the hedgerow]. So, we were there until July 25th. On July 24th the Americans bombed to get us out. Unfortunately, they bombed from behind us and got a lot of us. We lost quite a few. On the 25th they came and did it the right way. They waited for the markers to go in, and for the pathfinders to go in and 3500 bombers came in. Unbelievable. I will never, ever see anything that will match that. It raised a layer of dust over a hundred feet high. Solid. And the Germans came out staggering, I mean, without anything. Some had clothes blown off of them. And now it's time to go and we're all ready and [Omar] Bradley can't make up his mind. He wants to get ahold of Montgomery and find out if it's alright. "What should we do?" And while he's hemming a hawing General Collins said, "To hell with this. Let's go!" And off we went. We left Bradley and off we went. And out of the hedgerow country into open country, which was great. Then we had room to operate. The Germans couldn't hide and everything worked fine. We were into the apple district, cognac, Calvados cider, great cider. We found a cellar that had this huge cask of we didn't know what and it turned out to be cider. And it actually it fizzed, almost like champagne, and all the water cans were emptied. And you couldn't have a drink of water if your life depended on it. [laughs] But we went sailing through after that. After that ... In the meantime, of course, Patton made his move, and the Germans had to go, had to back off. We loused up at Falaise, it should have ended the war but Montgomery decided he had to wait for the right full moon or something. It had to be in the right phase and Bradley couldn't make up his mind, he wouldn't allow Patton to continue because he was encroaching on British and Polish and Canadian territory. So we lost them. The war should have been over in September. Like I told you, that captain (he looks in a book). No, it's not in here, it's in my other book. That captain was an adjutant to Rommel, Rommel said if he had led that invasion the war would have been over in two weeks with all the equipment we had. But unfortunately we didn't have Rommel. Once we got out into the open we moved right along, we went through, we wouldn't stop in Paris. Now the battalion is being split up. Each company had its own place to go so you can't really say we were, name any one city, because there were so many cities. You name a city and we had somebody there - Allencon, Mortain, whatever. In Mortain, my friend Stanley Barron and his squad had to dig up a 2600-pound bomb that didn't explode. And the bomb was still alive. So they had to hold it up with a hoist and dig all around it and go into the hole, disarm the bomb, and somewhere I have a picture of the guy ... I don't have the guy, just the bomb. And when we went back in '98 we went to Mortain and we're standing on the spot not knowing it until somebody said, "There was a bomb here." We were standing on the spot and didn't know it. So, this is a few of the things we did. We did a lot of bomb disposal. A lot of bomb disposal.

GL: Was that your specialty?

SD: Everybody's. There was no specialty. You were everything. You were a carpenter. You were a .. whatever you were needed. You walked in water up to your waist carrying Bailey bridge equipment. You did whatever had to be done. There was no specialty. "Because I'm a sergeant, I can't do it," there was no such [thing]. Everybody, officers and all. You see officers in there carrying like everybody else. There are no prima donnas. We're the ones to get in there first. We're the first ones in and the last ones out. We ended up, I was attached to A Company, my section ended up in Sedan. In Sedan there is a bridge that had been knocked out by the Germans. 262 feet long and it has to be built now. A Company put that bridge up in 72 hours, working around the clock being shot at. And they still put it up because the 2nd Armored, 3rd Armored and 1st Division were literally crawling up our backs. These were the things that we did. The other companies were doing the same thing, putting bridges up, filling shell holes. One of the things that gnaws at me. The engineers, the British and American engineers were the first troops to hit the beaches in Normandy. And there were supposed to be shell holes. And, of course, there weren't. [The big naval guns] were shooting inland endangering our airborne troops. So this is part of what happened at Omaha. It has nothing to do with the troops that landed. They did the best that they could, the few that got through. And under all those conditions they still blew up the German barbed wire and got us through there. But there wasn't a bomb dropped. Now, when they were planning [the invasion] - which started right after Dunkirk - Churchill said we had to have a plan to go back. We had a bunch of people who had never taken part in this type of operation. Yet they had people who were experts in it in the Pacific. Not just the Americans, the Australians. Yet, they would not call upon them because they thought the Americans and Canadians were a subspecies intellectually. And, so when they were told by an American captain, I think it was, [a] naval captain that they had to hit the shore with the shells. Montgomery said, "Won't they drown?" And they said, "No one's ever drowned in a shell hole. You need them for aid stations, you need them for communications, you need them to hide in. You've got to hit the beach with the big guns, if you don't, you're not going to get there." Of course, they chose to ignore it. And they told them not to use the big bombers because they can't hit anything. They're good for cities, but for precision bombing they're worthless. And this Bomber Harrison and Arnold said, "This is what we're going to use." And because it was overcast they couldn't use them. So, they (the troops) went in under no cover at all. They went in alone. And they were being shot out of their boats, out of their landing craft. That was terrible. That was almost the greatest blunder in the history of warfare. But out of the 5200 engineers who hit the beach, 27 survived. And yet they still got through. And I feel proud of that because they were our people. They were the 1st Engineer Brigade, I was in the 2nd Engineer Brigade. If they didn't make it in we were going in.

GL: Did you know when you were supposed to be going in for D-Day?

SD: No. All we knew was we would be first or second wave. We didn't know when. We were training for this. We went out to around Bridgewater in England to work on removing the underwater [mines and obstacles].

GL: Rommel's asparagus?

SD: Yeah, and the hedgehogs. So, we knew just what we were going to do. Whether it was us or others. And I heard from a pretty good source that we were supposed to go in first, and then we didn't. I always think of, we had a fellow in our battalion headquarters during basic training named Eddie, and he was brilliant. He went overseas before we did and he worked in Eisenhower's headquarters and we still think he changed us. I will believe that till the day I die. He probably saved our lives. For us, not for them. But we knew what we had to do. We knew it wasn't going to be easy. We knew when the Germans broke through during the Ardennes offensive we were going to be left behind, but this is what you're trained to do. So, there's pretty much no mystery. There's no mystery. Orders from the top are actually, they get you there, then it's up to you to get it done. The Army's run by platoon sergeants and lieutenants. That's who runs the Army, they do it in warfare. They make the decisions on the spot. And every decision, they are well trained. One thing about the American soldier, they were great improvisers. We had that natural knack. Yankee ingenuity. And that's really, that's one thing the Germans lacked. They had to have somebody tell them what to do. If someone at the top was killed they wouldn't know what to do. "Who's going to tell us what to do?" Or, "We have to call headquarters." Nobody wanted to take charge. Where somebody always stepped in [with] the Americans. Somebody always stepped in.

GL: I'm going to flip the tape over ... Should I continue, or do you have more to say?

SD: Go ahead.

<End of side one.>

GL: You have read some of Stephen Ambrose's books. He feels that the engineers have not been given their proper due.

SD: Well, I've watched more tapes on TV, on the History Channel or whatever. I've watched it on Public Television. And I've yet to hear, there are two things you don't hear. The engineers were the first to land on D-Day and nobody mentions the destroyers which saved Omaha Beach. No one does, only in passing. And it was so important. As I told you before I watched an interview that had taken place on CNN on May of '44 before the 50th anniversary and one of the officers that landed on Omaha was asked if he had anything to say. He said, "I want to thank the engineers" and I don't remember what the second one was, oh, his men. And said, "Especially the destroyers that saved them." And that's the only time I ever heard it anywhere, and it had to be somebody who was there. The only other time was [when] I was visiting a friend of mine who had been at D-Day in the Navy on an LST, loading the landing craft. And out of a clear blue sky said, "You guys never would have made it without the destroyers." I said, "My god, somebody knows." He said, "I was there." And Stephen Ambrose and Haystins they all just kind of fluff over it, Keegan, they all do the same thing. It's important because history is a continuous thing. It's not a haphazard thing. In history everything works, chronologically and in order. I mean it works, you can't jump parts. You've got to have this part here otherwise this part lags and the next part's not going to work. And the people who were trained to hit the beach and clear the mines. Yeah, we deserve the credit. When I was standing like everybody else in June of '94 and watched those [27 engineers of the 1st Engineer Brigade lay a wreath on World War II monuments], yeah I cried. So, yeah, we were never mentioned and the reason the Germans didn't make the Ardennes offensive, why it didn't work is because of two things. I told you this before, Bastogne and the combat engineers. We stopped them long enough so they ran out of gas. The one thing they didn't have was gasoline to run their vehicles. And we kept making them detour and detour and detour until they ran out of gas. And that's never mentioned. We're the last ones out. I mean, without us, we're the first ones in. Tanks don't float. We don't use the Zhukov method of clearing mines sending everybody through until they all get killed or it's all clear. We'd go through and clear mines. We'd build bridges. Tanks and trucks don't float. Like Sergeant Major Trevor Millett, retired English soldier, told the women on our trip, he said, "If it wasn't for these men, and all the men like them, the [supplies] would still be on the beach. They never would have moved out." And that's who we are. Am I bragging? Yeah. Am I proud of it? Yeah. And I wish to hell somebody would give us a little more credit than we received.

GL: What was your experience in the Battle of the Bulge?

SD: We were in Germany, we were in Monchau. I left A Company to go back to Eupen, which is just inside the border and they got hit. With a lot of casualties. But they held. They had the line, the line that extended down from Monchau to Bastogne, with the [296th] Engineers, A Company, a few anti-tank units and then the rest was sprinkled in. This is all there was to maintain that line. And we were fortunate that the Germans didn't ... the first time that they hit they were repulsed, so they swung south and missed us. So, this was my experience, that, and of course, the cold. I will always remember the cold. You can't believe how cold it can be until you can't find a place to warm up. We went to a meeting one time in Meriden and the Air Force was telling us how cold it was there. He said, "You know, it's cold up there." And I said, "Except for one thing. When your mission is finished you go home and get warm. It's cold [on the ground] and we don't go anywhere. We stay there right in the cold. That is home." And the Air Force, you've got to give them credit. They took a hell of a beating in the early stages. They were being knocked off [at an alarming rate]. Once the fighter protection left, they were being picked apart. They had more casualties than all the Marines in the Pacific. They had more medals than any unit of the service, and they deserved it. The one thing they accomplished was they knocked out the ball bearing plant, but mostly the gasoline plants making artificial fuel. That's the two things, but mostly the fuel. Because the factories went underground and they were no longer effective. They were producing more underground than they were before. We should remember the homefront. They made, they supplied all the troops, all the allied troops, not just us, all over the world, from this country. All this material, all this food. This is mind-boggling how they could come together so fast. I mean, this came on the spur of the moment. All of the sudden they were mobilized and they're doing all this and we're getting this stuff. Although, there was a little cheating going on. The Garson Brothers who sent us ammunition that didn't fire, it was empty. And Prestone, Union Carbide, you'd get a case of anti-freeze and one [gallon] would be empty, there'd be an empty every so often. So there was some profiteering, but as a whole the homefront doesn't receive the amount of credit they deserve.

GL: How much contact did you have with home?

SD: V-mail maybe twice a month. You know, mail delivery, I really don't know how they did it, but it really was pretty good. It was about a week. [laughs] They used to use the Queen Mary or the Queen Elizabeth and that was really quick. If they put it on a convoy the war would be over before the time you got it. Mail was great, mail was very important. You wanted to get that letter. It was the only connection you had with civilization. I would [write] my father ... there was a fellow in my outfit that didn't write home. And the mother would call my father and ask "Can you get your son to tell Paul to write?" And I would tell him once in a while. Now he was only a PFC, I said, "You'd better write or I'm going to take you off your vehicle and put you on the line." So, then he'd write for a while and then fall off. But mail was extremely important. Packages. We used to get packages. We got enough packages one time in the middle of nowhere to have a big spaghetti dinner. Yeah, everybody sent for a thing Chef Boyardee put out that had pasta, the sauce and the cheese in individual packages. It had to be cooked. And we must have had about twenty of them. I think somewhere in Belgium. We found a way to strain them through a t-shirt, strain the pasta and it was just like being at home. Packages were very important. They used to sneak bottles in, but you didn't have to. Alcohol was available. The other thing would be meeting the civilians. You know, you see soldiers all the time. To stop and talk to a civilian. You'd go through a town in France the town would be on fire. You not going to see anybody, and when you would you'd want, even though you don't speak French, you'd still communicate. I used to speak French, speak Sicilian with a French accent. And it worked. They knew what I was saying. Everyone thought because of my name, LaBella, they thought I was French. So, my lieutenant was having a problem with a civilian, and he couldn't understand him so he called me over and said, "Ask him what he wants." So I said, "What do you want?" [laughs] And said, "What's that?" And I said, "I'm not French." But eventually we got to know enough French to be able to handle the civilians. Civilians were a problem, they had to be in your way. I'm sure, yeah, they were glad to see us, but they were in the way, they were slowing you down. It was easier to pick up German than the French, even with my Italian background. It was easier to pick up German.

GL: What were your feelings about the Germans as an enemy versus the Japanese?

SD: The Germans ... Well, first of all, you've got to divide this. The Wehrmacht were us in German uniform. They were the draftees so they went by the rules. The SS, kill them on sight because that's what they do to you. They took no prisoners. They killed nurses in the hospital, nurses and wounded and doctors in Malmedy. The killed the prisoners in Malmedy/St. Vith out in the field. We were nine miles up the road and didn't know it. Had no idea. Fifteen of us. Of course, we couldn't have done anything anyway. We didn't care for them [the SS]. Then there were the SS [troops] in American uniforms. They didn't amount to anything. They made so many blunders it was pitiful. If one of our guys was a prisoner of war, he was fortunate, if you can call being a prisoner fortunate, he's going to end up in a Luftwaffe camp. And they treated the prisoners much better than the regular camp. The German civilians, for the most part, were so sick of the war they welcomed us. They were glad to see us. And knowing the war is over and hopefully their children or their men would be home. We had no problems with the civilians at all. In the town of Bad Berka, in fact, Mary [his wife] just got a letter from Bad Berka yesterday. A postcard. And in Bad Berka we were treated like family. The civilians were sick of it. Outside of the big cities, in the small towns, they wanted nothing to do with the war. They wanted the war to end. And seeing us they knew the war was coming to an end. And after the Ardennes offensive failed and once we got through the "Gettysburg charge" they put us on so we'd get all slaughtered like they did at Gettysburg, once that was over, we wheeled through Germany and the prisoners were just giving themselves up. We didn’t even take prisoners, we just kept motioning them back, they went back on their own. They'd just throw their weapons away. We were moving that rapidly. And I'd like to say something about the Battle of the Bulge. We knew it was coming. We had enough civilians, we had recon[naissance] people that saw them. Ted Knight of television, Teddy Konopka his real name, had seen them. I mean, everybody knew they were coming except Ike [Eisenhower], Brad [Bradley] and Monty [Montgomery]. Larry, Curly and Moe. I'm sorry. They all took off to wherever they wanted to go and we got hit. Now, Bradley said it was a decision that he would make again. Except that he wasn't there. Patton wanted them to let him through. Let him come in, we'll close this, we're never going to have another chance to trap them, lets do it. They said, "The weather." He said, "To hell with the weather, it's the same on their side of the line as ours. Let them through, we'll close the trap, get them from the side and end it once and for all." No, they couldn't see that. So, we went into their guns. Exactly the way the Confederates went through the Yankee guns at Gettysburg. The results were exactly the same - 80,000 casualties. 22,000 killed. 'A risk he's willing to take.' That idiot. There were kids that came in from the states, four, five weeks training, never got to know their names. It was terrible. That was terrible. And for that, I could never forgive them, the three of them. I'll never, ever forgive them. There were wounded that were patched up and sent back to the line. On TV, one of the fellows, a first sergeant, said one fellow came back four times and he said "That time they did it right. They killed him." It took four tries. But eventually we got through on sheer weight, but the price, the price. I think Ike and Zhukov had a lot in common, they thought men were the answer to everything. But that's World War I tactics.

GL: Were there rumors at the time that the Germans might be planning an attack?

SD: The civilians were telling us. In Luxembourg people that were, you know, waited, that had soldiers staying at their homes or waiting down in the bars said the soldiers were telling them "We're going to attack December 16." And all this information went in. But it was a problem. There was a problem at Caen with this [type of] information. Montgomery didn't believe in intelligence whether it was British, American or the underground. He would not take their word for it. That's why he didn't take Caen in four days like he was supposed to. That's why it took him [31] days. And repeated Stalingrad all over again. Never learn, never learned from history. He did the same thing the Germans did at Stalingrad and the results are exactly the same. So, we knew. Everybody knew. Everybody you talked to, especially the civilians. "The Germans are in the woods. The Germans are in the woods." Now, I don't know if you have ever been there but you can't see anything. It's so thick. And you could drive through because every tree is exactly the same, so it has lanes to drive in. It's so thick, the first time Mary saw it when we went over in '94, she said, "My god, no wonder they couldn't see them from the air." I said, "Yeah." But everybody knew. But what can you do? You can't change orders. But that's what happened. When the British landed on their beaches they had very little opposition. In fact their LSTs came right in, they didn't even use boats. They came right in and unloaded everybody, tanks, and went right in. And they were told that Caen was lightly [defended], I think it was a couple of regiments, they should be able to wheel right through. But he [Montgomery] didn't believe that. And that's when he starting saying, "I think we should encircle it." And Dempsey, Dempsey was a good man, he should have been in charge. Dempsey said, "Look, let's take the town first. We'll go through and take the airstrip there. We can use that." And by the time Dempsey decided it was too late, [a panzer division] had moved in. Now, on one tape Stephen Ambrose is saying he stopped for tea. How did he stop for tea? He didn't stop for tea, he was afraid of making an error, making a mistake. Well, if you are, you shouldn't be commanding troops. You take all the information you have and move. That's what Collins did back on the 25th of July while Bradley was hemming and hawing we went off and there was no one there. What was there was either dead or stunned or couldn't do anything. So, West Point, I don't think they used to teach history, but I think they should teach it so you don't make the same mistake again. And they did. They didn't want to use German blitzkrieg tactics, even though it was successful. Even though we had all the equipment to out-blitzkrieg the Germans we didn't use it. We would not use dive bombers. The Germans had, the British had the Typhoon which was equipped with rockets and this would have been great to support troops, but they wouldn't use it. They'd come with these big lumbering things and drop [bombs] and they killed more [Allied] soldiers than the Germans did. We just would not use the tactics that were proven. They say those were de Gaulle's tactics in his book. De Gaulle wrote the book the Germans based Blitzkrieg on. And the French wouldn't listen to him either.

GL: Did you have much contact with replacements?

SD: Well, I'll tell you a story. Every so often the Ordinance would set up these huge trailers and you would go in one end, take off your uniform, everything but your shoes. There'd be showers and when you came out you'd had new clothes, even with your stripes, everything. So, we had gone to a place somewhere in Belgium, I don't remember where, and as we came out these recruits were moving out, brand new recruits. And I spotted one kid that I knew from Middletown and I yelled, "Billy, Billy." And over he came and my first sergeant's saying, "See if you can grab some replacements." So I thought, and [asked] "How long you been in Billy?" He said, "Six weeks." "Six weeks?" He said, "Yeah." And I said, "They can't train you in six weeks." He said, "Well, we're here." And my first sergeant said, "We don't need them. They'll be more of a problem and endanger our guys." So, the troops were badly trained. Badly trained. They panicked and rushed the program. They had officers supposed to be ninety days [changed to] a month. You learn nothing in a month unless you were fortunate to have the common sense to adapt. Some people adapt quickly. They say if you live through the first five minutes you're a veteran. You're alright. But recruits were very badly used. We lost [900-1100 on the] Leopoldville. Now the toll's about 1000. They started off with 600, now they admit the toll was closer to 1000, but you can bet it's more like 1500. They were coming out on Christmas Eve, I think it was as replacements, and they were semi-trained, they were trained pretty good. They weren't so bad as some of the others that were coming over, and, of course, they were torpedoed and the ship went down. We also lost 700 in training when [German E-boats] slipped into our training in England and sank two of our LSTs. And everybody couldn't believe it. Things like that unfortunately happen. Shouldn't, but they do. We were in Marché in Belgium and we took over a shop. We had some equipment that was shot up and we had to work on it and a young lad, tall, nice looking with a heavy Scottish accent. He's telling us how he came to [be] here and that he was a student and blah, blah, blah the Germans. And , well, we believe him, he's got a heavy Scottish accent and the next thing we know they grab him and off he goes. He was SS. And he was Scottish but his parents were German. A lot of German-English ties. So, you didn't know who to trust. You trust just the guys you know. In this town, in Marché, it was a pretty little town, I liked it. And the garage we took over had an office. And as the office opened you went into the home. I still remember the piano when you went in. And the daughter, Josette, played the piano. Badly. But she played and it was good to hear her, hear somebody playing. [laughs] And these are the moments that would kind of ease, kind of make you feel a little bit more at home and take some of the tension of the war off your mind. We met a family in Verviers. We went sailing into Verviers, we were supposed to meet A Company, we were always to attach to A Company and when we arrived, there's no one there. And the civilians are looking at us with this look of surprise and they are saying, "What are you doing here? The Bosch. The Bosch." Well, the Germans were in town. A town the size of, well, smaller than Meriden. About the size of Middletown. And we're on one end. Fifteen of us. So, they said, the owner had a huge warehouse and he pulled all of our equipment in there and we stayed with them until we found out where we were to go. We didn't know where our battalion was. And we lived in their homes. And they were absolutely fabulous. The Belgians loved, just loved the Americans anyway. The Belgians just had a love affair with the Americans. And when we left, she cried. But for four days or three days, we were home. We weren't soldiers, we were at home. When we went back in '94, back to Bouillon and Florenville in Belgium, [where we had] built some bridges. One bridge at Bouillon divided the town. And when we went back, not just there but all the towns we went back to they put plaques up for our battalion. You can't believe, these people kept souvenirs for fifty years. For fifty years! [they] had pictures. And, of course, they would ask, and you'd say, "No, he died." And they would cry, and it's just fabulous. And of course, the Germans put our monument up in Bad Berka, Germany. And we had a big thing there, a big celebration, a big ceremony. And we went back four years later and it looked like the day we put it in, everything was spotless. And we wanted to give them money to take care of the monument, they said, "No." They said, "No, it will be taken care of forever." So, the civilians were civilians. They weren't military. The only ones they really didn't like were the air force [men]. They would pitchfork them to death. But the ground forces, we had no problem with them. They knew there was a war on and we were doing what we were supposed to do and they accepted it. And we helped them if we could. And they would appreciate it.

GL: Ddi you view the Japanese as more of an enemy?

SD: Yeah, yeah. No question. There was an article about how the [American prisoners] were treated and how they tried to sue the [Japanese] government, [and] our government [sided with the Japs].

GL: The Japanese who were interned you mean?

SD: No, the soldiers who were prisoners.

GL: Oh, tried to sue the Japanese government?

SD: Yeah. And they were working the mines, the were beaten and when they wanted to sue, our government went to bat for the Japanese against the soldiers. That makes you feel good. So, you know who owns our government.

GL: Did you have a buddy?

SD: I had a lot of buddies, but one especially. Joe Palermo, living in Old Greenwich. I met him in Hartford. We went from Middletown to Hartford. And boarded the train to go to [Fort] Devens. And it was four of us from Middletown sitting together and this fellow came along and there was an empty seat. So he sat with us and we started, "Where are you from." And he said, "I'm from Greenwich." I said, "Gee, do you know the Mitchell Brothers?" He said, "Yeah, I know the guy from Mitchell Brothers construction." I said, "My father built bridges for them," and then, "Do you know if they still got so and so, and do you know so and so?" And we got to know each other and then we were separated for a while then we got back together in Mississippi. And we're buddies to this day. To this day we still see each other. He was my closest buddy. The others seem to have passed away.

GL: You were in the same section?

SD: Yeah, we were in the same section. I still see Stanley Barron from Lebanon because I have a lake cottage in Lebanon and so I get to see Stanley at least once a week. He was in A Company. In fact, he was in the hole when they were digging out the bomb. And he always yelled at the sergeant, "I was down there and you were up there." and I'd say, "Stan, if it went off, he'd only fly a little higher than you, that's all. Don’t worry about it."

GL: Is he the man who never told his children what he did during the war?

SD: Yes. I'm guilty of that too. You know, there are things you just don't want to talk about. Over the years you've kept things to yourself. His son was stunned. He could not believe his father went into a hole to take a bomb apart. He just couldn't believe it. He asked me, "Is that what my father did?" I said, "That and more." I said, "We took mines apart, booby traps apart." You know, I think the kids of today are, I don't know, feel they are a little more advanced in education and technology and can't imagine their fathers doing what they did. But technology has always been there in one form or another. It only gets a little more complicated. Yeah, there's ... He's not the only one. You know, when Mary went back with me in '94, she never heard ... she said, "I never heard [some of these] stories. You guys are sitting around laughing and kidding around at the reunions but I heard stories that I've never heard before." She said, "My god, this is different." Well, now we're on the spot where things happened. You remember what happened here, you remember what happened there. Suddenly all this stuff comes out. And it's good that we went. Not because it was the 50th anniversary, but because we got a lot of ghosts out of our system. The ghosts pretty much are gone. It's tough going to ... we went to the grave of Louis Santo from Norwalk, Connecticut. Louis was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. He's still there. And we visited his grave. That was tough. Reverend Stanley Hoagland who became a minister after getting out of the service, he was in B Company, in fifty years he has officiated at a lot of funerals, couldn't finish at his grave. So, that did a lot to make us face up to what happened.

GL: In terms of the life experiences, many veterans say the war was the single most significant period in their life. Do you feel the same way?

SD: That's one of them. Not the most significant event in my life. My marriage is more significant. My children. These are things ... They say this because we grew up in the Depression. Nothing ever happened to us. Other than going to the movies, we did nothing. Once in a while if you wanted to take a four-hour trip to New York, that's what it was to go to New York for a ball game, four hours. That was something you could talk about. And then the war came along. And of course this was something out of the ordinary. I mean this was something unbelievable. And yes, this really made an impression. But as you went along, as your life went along, things happen, a lot of things happen and you can't put everything in one ... you have to put it all in its proper place.

GL: Did it help form your character?

SD: Yes. I grew up. I was only a kid. We were all kids. I was nineteen, I was older than some of them, most of them were eighteen. I was nineteen, but I was still [just] out of high school. I was still raising hell. In fact, I went from 142 pounds, by the time I went into the service I was 120 pounds. And I grew up. Of course, when you are given responsibility you have to grow up. It changed my life, it changed my way of thinking. It changed the way I think about life, how important, how precious it is. You know, you are talking to someone one minute and the next minute they are gone. You've got to believe that. So, you've got to realize how ... I feel bad about these kids who get into these stupid accidents nor realizing what life is. It's just too precious to waste it. And that, yes, that was the greatest education in my life. It really was. It changed me completely.

GL: How was your homecoming?

SD: I really didn't want to come home. I was in Berlin. When we got to Berlin, Joe Palermo and I went on detached service with the Air Corps. They were looking for somebody to blow up safes in stores and businesses to get the paperwork out to see how the bombing affected the business. So, they wanted us to open up the safe. So this Major Harris, I finally thought of his name, said to me, "What do you want to go home for? I'll help you get transferred. I'll get you transferred to the Air Corps, you'll be attached to me." He said, "The Air Corps is going to be a separate unit. It's going to be wide open for promotion." And he was right. And he almost convinced me. And I received a letter from home saying, "We miss you" and so I went home. And then I was home in December. In February I went to Hartford to reenlist and it was Washington's or Lincoln's birthday and they were closed. The post office was closed. And I met a buddy of mine, Danny Sullivan, who was in my company and he wanted to know what I was doing. I said, "I came to reenlist." [laughs] "Are you crazy?" So, we went out to have lunch and a few drinks, and, of course, in the meantime I had met Mary and here I am.

GL: When we first spoke you talked about your time in Berlin the friction between the Russians and the colored soldiers.

SD: Yeah. The Russians came in. We were the first American troops in Berlin. And they gave us all kinds of grief. They'd block roads and we'd just go right through. At one time they put a bulldozer down, put the blade down and pushed our equipment to the side of the road. And after a while we were able to come in and calm things down. And, of course, the black troops, African-American, the Russians decided these are the ones they we're going to push around.