The Little Sergeant

Der Kleine Sergeant, that's what German POW's called Staff Sergeant John DiBello shortly after the conclusion of World War II. He was a mess sergeant in a POW camp in southwest England. That's where they put him after he drove an ambulance through the living room of a house outside London and that was after he ran a craps table from a pup tent in Le Havre once Patton and The Battle for Germany were through with him. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I have put off writing this for far, far too long. John Ignatius DiBello is my father-in-law. He is now in the ICU at the VA hospital in Syracuse. He's been suffering from congestive heart failure and kidney failure for some time. We don't know if he is going to come home. He is a frail, fragile remnant of a combat veteran; a former turrent gunner on both the M4 Sherman tank and the M2 Half Track scout car.

We lose one thousand WWII vets every day...

Even if we have know them for years, we tend to think of people as we see them now, not as they were years ago. This blog is an attempt to capture what this man was; his memories as a member of America's greatest military assembly, the WWII vets.

It is through the memories of a 5' 1/2" tall, 118 pound, 18 year-old called Johnny that I have the strongest associations of the generation before mine. I will try to capture everything he has told me since I first met him when I started dating his daughter in 1979. Some things will remain murky for I have waited too long to do this.

John was grabbed off the streets of Syracuse by a recruiter in August of 1944. He was working at a defense plant and had tried to join the Navy with his buddie, but he was rejected because he was too short. An Army recruiter saw him on the street, asked him why he wasn't in the service and then marched him to the recruiting station and swore him in on the spot.

Johnny managed to get a phone call off to his parents that he was going in the service and then he was put on the train. Off he went to Fort Dix, NJ, for basic training. He would return a year and a half later - just in time to scoot to a family wedding reception where his mother almost passed out when he walked through the door. No one was expecting him.

After basic, he was sent to Fort Knox, KY, for armor school. There he was introduced to the Zippo, the nick name for the M4 Sherman tank. In a few short months he would find out for himself why GI's derisively named the Sherman after a cigarette lighter.

Here is a picture of the very tank he trained on in the fall of 1944.

While in training at Fort Knox he is informed that his mother is in critical condition at the hospital. He is panic stricken and poor as a church mouse because he already sends much of his Army pay home to his mother. He seeks emergency financial assistance from the Red Cross. They refused to help him. He goes to the Salvation Army and they give him the money to take a train to Syracuse. Fortunately his mom recovers and Johnny is back at Fort Knox within a week. Johnny never forgot this. In the future, whenever the Red Cross came begging, he would turn them down.

While I'm on the subject of the Red Cross, Johnny had one other thing to say about them. He said he never got a damn stinking stale donut or a cup of coffee from them while he was fighting in Europe.

Once his training was completed at Fort Knox (December 1944?), he was sent to New York City where he deployed to France. His cross Atlantic voyage was aboard a captured French luxury liner, the Louis Pasteur. It was a beautiful ship and he was amazed at the interior. He figured he shipped to France in style. Unfortunately the style and comfort of this luxury liner spoiled him for future ocean voyages. In July of 1946 his ride home was far less comfortable. But again I'm getting ahead of myself.

The troopship Louis Pasteur. Dad said it was a beautiful ship.

To amuse themselves while at sea, the soldiers organized boxing tournaments on the way to Europe. So Johnny figures "why not?" and fights in the bantam weight class. He wins his first fight.

Johnny is small but he is a real scrapper and was very involved in gymnastics in school. He at one time was sent through parts of NY State in the late 1930's and early 1940's giving gymnastic exhibitions. For a small man he is extremely well built and well coordinated. And his size belies his strength.

"I thought, 'This ain't so bad...' " he told me years later regarding his boxing experiences. Well, he got his brains beat out in the second bout and retired from the ring. When they enter the French port of La Havre, he looks upon the ruined city. In his words, it was"flattened, there was nothing there. I never seen such a thing."












La Havre, France, circa 1944. By 13 SEP 44 the battle for Le Havre - Operation Estonia - is over. Over 60% of the city is destroyed in the fight.

The Allies establish "Cigarette Camps" - staging areas named after cigarette brands - just outside of La Havre, for fresh troops arriving in the ETO.

Johnny is now introduced to the French 40 and 8 rail system that takes him to the German front on the west side of the Rhine. He hated these old box cars. The men are crammed in them like sardines sans oil.
















French 40 and 8 boxcar. These were also used to transport doughboys in WW1.

In December of 1944 the Allies were gearing up for the invasion of Nazi Germany and had been rocked by the Battle of the Bulge. It was just a few weeks after this fight that Johnny shows up as a replacement in his outfit.

He is assigned to the 714th Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division. He has no idea what a concentration camp is. He will find out as this member of the 714th (he was the same age as Johnny) and others did. The reek of death could be smelled miles away.

He is listed in the 12th Armored Division's roster. His name is about halfway down the page here. The address given on Court St. is his parents' home during WWII. Today his older brother's sister-in-law and her husband live there.

Picture this. A barely five foot tall kid shows up in a tank battalion as a turret gunner/driver. It is winter and colder than a ditch digger's ass in January. He is wearing an Army great coat that is far too large for him, the bottom of the coat is dragging in the frozen mud. He wears a size 6 shoe and the Army can't find military footwear small enough for him, so he is wearing the same civilian shoes that the recruiter found him in. His pants are rolled up into cuffs because his legs are so short. The Garand rifle he carries is almost as tall as he is.

When he walks into his unit's bivouac, the first remark by a member of his new unit is "Oh my God! Now they're sending us children! We're losing the war!" They were not pleased to see Johnny. There is one combat vet in his unit who is also from Syracuse. He is too embarrassed to acknowledge that he knows Johnny and ignores him.


More to come...


10/13/07
I am a little panicky myself as I am looking for the photos he gave me two years ago and his unit's battle map of where they fought in Germany. I can't find them. But I know I have them.

10/26/07
Dad passed away yesterday morning. My wife and I have spent some time at his apartment getting his affairs in order. I found some photos he took during WWII that I never saw before. I also looked at his discharge papers. As we looked through what little he had, it was brought to my attention in such a vivid way that the things he cherished the most- was us. His family was his life. Oh sure, he loved to gamble and have a good time. But he didn't allow his entertainment to hurt his family. It was sad because what he left behind was so little - but that's because material possessions were not where his heart was. He loved people, not things.

My father-in-law spent the last years of his life bitter at God because his wife was taken from him in 2004. He had been so sick for so long that he expected to pass before Frances did. But that's not the hand he was dealt. Before he died, God saw fit to bring a friend and his family to him and he left this life without that burden. My wife and I both believe that he experienced the saving grace of God before he died.

In the next few weeks I'll scan the pictures he has. And yes, I got two pictures of him putting on the gloves for an impromptu boxing match and another of him shooting craps in Germany before he was shipped back to England.