This interview took place on Tuesday, May 22, 2001 in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Dante Rotondo. Dante Rotondo is a veteran who lives in Canton and has been an active part of this community for well over forty years. He once owned several garages around our town and has had brothers and sisters that have been equally as active. Through this interview, I hope to learn more about Mr. Rotondo and his war experience so that I can later write a vignette about his experience.
K
= Interviewer (Kate)
K- What is your name?
R - Dante Rotondo
K- What branch of the military
were you in?
R- The 86th infantry division but I was in the field artillery part of it
K- Really…was there any
particular reason you were in that branch?
R- They called me up and a… well a whole bunch of us were going into the infantry and there was another fella from Bloomfield and he was going into the … oh I forget the second artillery battalion and to me they said, “you are going to the service battalion.” The service battalion, I had no idea…
K- And what was it?
R- Actually a battery is the headquarter battery, the A B C and D firing battery, and the service battery. The service battery has to haul ammunition, food, take care of the rest of the people.
K – When were you in the
service? From what years?
R- In Feb 1st of 1943 – April 1946
R- Yeah, a little more, I even had a hash mark
R- The marks you see on the soldiers sleeves, every three years you get a hash mark some of them had been in for thirty years and had ten hash marks. But not me
R- Not quit twenty-one
R- Oh, they sent you letters…I was suppose to go in, in November but I worked for this man who had a garage and nobody could work, so he said he would get me a few months deferment, I said “go ahead”, so I went in Feb. 1943
R- When I got out I was a sergeant, three strips… hah well it took me forever to get it…
R- You mean what was my M.O.S.? …DO you know what that is? …Military Occupational Specialty. Well, when I first got it, because I had worked in a garage they had me working in the motor pool, which was very interesting at first but then you got to the point were you did all you could do. So they put me into driving, which was very nice because at least you got to see the country.
R- Oh, whenever they needed you, there were no such thing as hours, we would go nights and days.
R- Sometimes you had an assistant driver, and you hauled in infantry, if they didn’t have enough trucks to move in their own people, we had to move them in for them. But they were in the back and we were in the front, and it was just another job.
R- Well, we spent a lot of time in the United States, from Fort Devin Mass. To Saint Louis Habisco California, down to San Diego, and then back to Camp Milstanish in Mass., then we went to France, we went to Belgium and Austria, no not Austria, Belgium and Germany, then into Austria and that is when the war ended. So we came home and we had a 30-day leave, and then we were shipped back to Oklahoma. And they packed us up one afternoon and we went back to California and then we wound up in the Philippians.
R- Terrible, after the war ended beautiful. Yeah that was, they didn’t even have a place to unload us off the ship, we just walked, down under the landing craft where we had to climb this plank down, probably the length of this table, and the plank was about this big (demonstrates with hands – twelve inches or so) with all your gear across there and hope you don’t fall off because it was a long drop down
R- No I didn’t see anybody. Everyone is pretty careful
R- Everything you had. All your gear, your duffle bag, your blankets, and everything else, it was pretty heavy, and to try and balance that and yourself on that plank was not easy…
R- When I got out… haahaa…Well, you know you can’t…I never was one who liked to take orders, “You’re gonna get up now, you’re gonna go to bed now, you’re gonna do this, you’re gonna do that.” It’s not “will you? Will you? Will you?”
K- I don’t really have any perception of what the war was like other than what is on television…
R- Well, you know when you are there you don’t know what is going on, they tell you what to do and you do it. We didn’t have any newspapers, no radios, no news, we had no idea “Where we going? I don’t Know” wherever they tell us to. Get in the convoy sometimes and drive, “where the heck are we going?” This one time , I had this officer that used to stutter like something awful, and one time my truck broke down. My truck just stopped, and he said “Well, if you get it fixed go to Doosle Dwarf.” So I got it fixed. So I got it fixed and all of a sudden I said, “I don’t see anymore G.I.’s around here.” People are looking at me, finally I get a funny feeling, before I had turned around, I was out of there pretty fast. That was when the battle of the Bulge was just ending and the Germans were running fast. So I guess I wasn’t in much danger, but I wasn’t about to be out there by myself … the guy didn’t mean to… but that was the way I took it because of his stutter…
R- I had a friend that used to come to the garage I worked at and would say “lets volunteer” and I said “I ain’t volunteering. So he asked me why, and I said, if I volunteer and don’t like it I can’t complain, but if I get drafted I can do all the complaining I want. So he didn’t go either, we ended up going in together he went to the armory and I went into artillery. There was a world of difference. They had to work hard, the guys had to work day and night, walk every place they went, where we drove, he came to seem me one night and he was almost crying, and if you were sick you could go on sick call. But if you were on sick call, whoever was your sergeant would take it out of your hide the next day. ..Yeah that was rough, I am glad I never got into that.
K- So do you consider yourself to be pretty lucky?
R- Oh yeah, yeah sure do, riding trucks in the battle of the bulge, it was pretty much over but there was still some fighting going on. And I had this truck that was all banged up, and it would break down all the time. I reported it to the motor Sergeant, I said “this thing is knocking so bad you can’t drive it.” And then he said, “Well, there is nothing we can do about it, drive it until it blows the engine.” So I went, and it was knocking real bad, so I shut it down, he asked, “What’s that matter,” So I started it up, and he said “alright, we’ll tow you back.” It took them three days to get, before they could change the engine, and I had nothing to do but just sit there and watch them work, it was unbelievable how well they ate, and we were eating sea rations, k rations… the sea rations were two cans, they had different stuff in them, the other one had a couple of biscuits, cigarettes, stuff like that. But these guys, they were having chicken, and one guys asked, “What kind of chicken you like?” I said I liked white meat, so he put a big slab on my plate and said, “Welcome back.” I said “are you in the same army I am in?” When I got back, they finally put the engine in, our battalion was moving so fast that they couldn’t tell you where they were going or where they would be, last we heard they were in this place, so I headed for that place, and I just accidentally run into one of our trucks, all the trucks had numbers on them, so I found the men, and they said “where you been?” I said, “oh down, and they put a new engine in my truck.” They had gotten pinned downed by 88’s, those are Germans aircraft, they could use if for artillery or anything they wanted. I said, “Where are we headed,” I never saw so many guys digging foxholes, like that. All this happened while I had been away.
K- So you just happened to miss all the action?
R- Just because my truck broke down.
K- A little divine intervention there maybe?
R- I kept saying, “somebody up there likes me,” and I will never forget that. I was complaining about it breaking down, it was the best thing that could have happened to me.
K- How long had you been at the Garage for?
R- It was three days. When I got towed in, they didn’t start it until noon on the third day, and by three o’clock I was heading out…