(machine gun fire)
(shell whistling)
(explosion)
MAN: "Here lie three Americans.
"What shall we say of them?
"Shall we say that this is a fine thing,
"that they should give their lives for their country?
"Why print this picture anyway of three American boys,
"dead on an alien shore?
"The reason is that words are never enough.
"The eye sees.
"The mind knows.
"The heart feels.
"But the words do not exist to make us see, or know,
or feel what it is like, what actually happens."
NARRATOR: In the September 20, 1943 issue of LIFE magazine,
the editors had published a photograph
taken on a New Guinea beach in the South Pacific,
ten months earlier.
It was the first image of dead American servicemen
that American civilians had been allowed to see
in the 21 months since Pearl Harbor.
MAN: "And so here it is.
"This is the reality that lies behind the names
"that come to rest at last on monuments in the leafy squares
"of busy American towns...
"The camera doesn't show America...
"and yet here on the beach is America.
"Three parts of a hundred and 30 million parts.
"Three fragments of that life we call American life.
"Three units of freedom.
"So that it is not just these boys who have fallen here,
"it is freedom that has fallen.
It is our task to cause it to rise again."
LIFE magazine.
BURT WILSON: The war was always around us.
We had an air raid warden, uh, a block warden on the street,
who wore a white hat and a gas mask.
None of the rest of us had any.
Across the street from my house on 46th Street
there was an empty lot, so we built a victory garden there.
And of course we all relished the vegetables
that came up the fastest.
NARRATOR: The war was now being felt by every citizen
in every town in America.
In fast-growing Sacramento, California,
and quiet Luverne, Minnesota, even children found themselves
caught up in the effort to win victory.
Waterbury, Connecticut, and Mobile, Alabama,
had been transformed into "war towns"
almost overnight--
and in Mobile that transformation
would lead to confrontation and ugly violence.
Overseas, victory seemed a very long way off.
Americans had landed in ltaly--
and then found themselves stopped by terrain and weather
and an implacable enemy.
There was still no firm date for the cross-channel invasion,
without which the Nazi grip on Western Europe
could never be broken.
In the Pacific theater,
more than a million Japanese troops
were on the offensive in central and southern China
against the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek
and his sometime ally
Mao Zedong.
The Americans were fighting on Bougainville
and preparing to attack the Gilbert Islands.
But Tokyo was almost 4,000 miles away--
and the Japanese seemed ready to defend
every island chain in between.
Over the coming months, Quentin Aanenson of Luverne,
who saw the romance of flight
as his way out of the hardscrabble life
his farmer father had led, would begin to see
that there were bitter realities in the sky
of which he'd never dreamed.
Robert Kashiwagi, a Japanese-American
from the Sacramento Valley,
whose family had been interned by their country
simply because of their ancestry,
would nonetheless demonstrate his devotion to that country
as few Americans ever have.
Family memories of heroism in an earlier war
would help propel a Princeton man from Connecticut
named Ward Chamberlin to find a way to serve
despite handicaps that could have kept him safe at home.
And Babe Ciarlo, a factory worker from Waterbury,
would see things no one should ever have to see--
and say nothing about them in his optimistic letters home.
Everywhere, the war was tearing Americans apart,
and bringing them together--
and infusing every detail of daily life with a new intensity.
PAUL FUSSELL: Every family had somebody in the war.
And almost every household
had somebody wounded or killed or missing.
Everybody had some bad news they didn't want to talk about.
And it was very bad to bring up the subject among strangers.
You'd say," How you doing?"
Well, he'd say," Well, my son was killed in Anzio
last Thursday."
And so your relation to strangers was different
from what it is now.
People were likely to tell you if things were intolerable.
JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: l went down to the recruiting office,
the Navy, and volunteered.
I volunteered in response to the call
that they made specifically
for men to man the offices.
The recruiter for the Navy said, "What can you do?"
I said," Well, I can, uh, I can run an office.
I can type, I can take shorthand if that's needed."
I said, "And, oh, yes, I have a Ph.D.
in history from Harvard."
And I wondered what he was going to say.
He said," You have everything but color."
And, uh, lsaid," Well, I thought there was an emergency,
but obviously there's not, so I bid you a good day."
And I vowed that day that they would not get me,
because they did not deserve me.
If I was able-- physically, mentally,
every other kind of way, able and willing
to serve my country-- and my country turned me down
on the basis of color, then my country did not deserve me.
And I vowed then that they would not get me.
NARRATOR: John Hope Franklin would keep that pledge
and never serve in the armed forces.
He would go on to become
one of the country's most distinguished historians.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: By January 1st, Congress had appropriated
over two billion dollars
for emergency housing in America's war boom towns.
Here's how some of it was spent in Mobile.
These are the slums we have seen.
Slum clearance projects had been the local, private enterprise
of a few high-minded, far-sighted individuals.
But in Mobile, such projects as these
have become one of the obligations of good government.
They are rented only to certified colored war workers
and are equipped with auditoriums, playgrounds,
and day nurseries to take care of the children
while their parents are working in the war plants.
NARRATOR: To relieve the desperate overcrowding in Mobile,
the National Housing Agency provided 14,000 units
for white workers--
but fewer than 1,000 for blacks.
There were 30,000 African- Americans in the city now--
and just 55 hospital beds that would take them.
JOHN GRAY: You had a white water fountain and a black water fountain.
And a black would get into trouble
if he went and drank at the white water fountain.
My friend at Brookley Field had his head busted wide open
because he drank at the white fountain.
NARRATOR: 16-year-old John Gray of 407 Royal Street
was working as a carpenter's helper
at Alabama Dry Dock before the war began.
There had been then no way for a black employee
to be upgraded to the ranks of skilled workers.
Similar discrimination was found in defense industries
throughout the Jim Crow South
and in other parts of the country as well.
But black leaders had insisted on more jobs for black workers,
and President Roosevelt had established
a Fair Employment Practices Commission
to combat discrimination in defense plants.
Things were beginning to change
even for the African-American citizens of Mobile.
GRAY: A lot of black people who used to work in private homes
as cooks and chauffeurs and maids
got jobs at Brookley Field.
And it created some tension.
One white person asked a black person,
"Do you know where I can find me a good girl?
I'll give her $25 a week and carfare."
And the black woman told her,
"If you can find one, I'll give her $35."
NARRATOR: With change came trouble.
In August of 1942, a city bus driver named Grover Chandler
shot and killed Henry Williams, a black private in uniform,
after he refused to move to the back of the bus.
GRAY: And they put the bus driver in jail,
but they boasted that he never stayed in a cell.
They let him sleep on a cot that the sheriff used.
And then they let him out eventually.
It died down, but nothing was done to the man actually.
NARRATOR: Tensions continued to rise.
On Tuesday morning, May 25, 1943,
they exploded at the Alabama Dry Dock shipyard,
after management gave in to a federal directive
and agreed to let 12 black workers become welders.
CLYDE ODUM: We were training them
to be burners and welders and become mechanics.
And the white people was resenting it.
NARRATOR: Shortly after the new welders had finished their first shift,
white shipyard employees
set upon the first blacks they could find, shouting,
"No nigger is going to join iron in this yard."
ODUM: I'm standing up there watching,
and I never saw people so mad and agitated in my life.
And they'd have sticks, like three-foot long.
They would knock them down to their knees.
I saw men and women bleeding, blood running down their face,
and they didn't stand a chance coming down that gauntlet,
men and women on each side beating them with sticks.
And a good many of the blacks
went out and jumped off the piers,
tried to swim the river.
Coast Guard was out there picking them up.
GRAY: The riot upset the whole community.
Most people who worked were afraid to go back,
because there would be a bunch standing outside
and they would have their cars parked.
And in their cars they had monkey wrenches
and tire irons and stuff like that.
NARRATOR: More than 1,000 black workers formally requested transfers
to other defense jobs.
The requests were denied.
Some left Mobile altogether,
but most were persuaded to stay on the job.
We had to send out and get them and haul them back
because we needed them to do the work.
And they came back because we begged them to come back.
GRAY: And they would not go back until they had some protection.
When they went back, this is when you had to separate them.
Normally, one ferryboat would take whoever came.
But after the riots, they had a ferryboat to take blacks over
and a ferryboat to take whites over.
NARRATOR: In the end, the shipyard itself was segregated.
Four separate shipways were created where blacks were free
to hold every kind of position, except foreman.
Blacks working in the rest of the shipyard
remained largely confined to the kind of unskilled tasks
they had always performed.
The African-American newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier
denounced the compromise as a victory for "Nazi racial theory
"and another defeat for the principle embodied
in the Declaration of Independence."
In the following months, there were racial confrontations
in industrial areas all across the country--
Springfield, Massachusetts, and Port Arthur, Texas;
Hubbard, Ohio, and Newark, New Jersey;
and in Detroit, where 34 people were killed
and more than 200 wounded.
Despite the violence,
the war was profoundly altering life for African-Americans.
Membership in the NAACP increased ninefold.
The Committee of Racial Equality demanded the desegregation
of restaurants, theaters, bus lines.
And the Pittsburgh Courier campaigned for double victory--
over the enemies of freedom at home as well as overseas.
(eXplosions)
KATHARINE PHILLIPS: Going back through these letters written to me during the war,
I find almost every letter will mention,
"We had a v-mail from Sid."
He was the main concern of the entire family.
Daddy would try to anticipate
where he thought Sid would be sent next.
And when the Battle of Tarawa occurred,
we lived in horror for five days.
We thought Sidney was in the Battle of Tarawa.
NARRATOR: Katharine Phillips's brother Sid,
who had endured four harrowing months on Guadalcanal,
was actually in New Guinea in November of 1943, not Tarawa,
preparing for an assault on Cape Gloucester,
on the western tip of New Britain.
SIDNEY PHILLIPS: It rained the entire time we were at Cape Gloucester.
Everything rotted.
Clothes rotted, your shoestrings rotted.
All the wounded were brought right by our position,
and that was when I decided I would like
to do something in life that would amount to something.
And I decided that I wanted to study medicine that day.
Because here were all these wounded
and there was no way that I could help them.
NARRATOR: Cape Gloucester would be a rugged, bloody jungle campaign,
but Phillips was fortunate not to be among the Marines
ordered to take Tarawa.
The hard-won victories at Midway and Guadalcanal
had ended Japan's expansion in the Pacific.
The Americans were free to begin their two-pronged offensive.
While General Douglas MacArthur's forces
moved north from Australia toward the Philippines,
the Navy, under Admiral Chester W. Nimitz,
began its advance across the Central Pacific.
Tarawa was part of the Gilbert chain, a coral atoll--
a ring of 38 tiny islands around a blue lagoon--
that marked the easternmost edge of the perimeter
Japan had built to shield its new empire.
The main target was a heavily fortified island
with an airstrip.
It was only a little larger than New York's Central Park,
but defended by 4,500 Japanese Imperial Marines,
hidden within a maze of rifle pits and trenches
and hundreds of interconnected blockhouses
and concrete pillboxes.
Tarawa was to be the test case
for a new theory of amphibious warfare:
any island, no matter how fiercely defended,
could be taken by an all-out frontal assault.
The official version for the people back home
was that everything was going smoothly.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: The invasion force of warships and transports steams
for the conquest of the Gilbert Islands,
and aboard vessels crowded with troops,
religious services are held.
The worshipers are fighting men
who know they are going into desperate peril,
where many are destined to give their lives.
And now, official Navy motion pictures
of the bombardment of the Japs on Tarawa with giant salvos.
NARRATOR: But the bombing and shelling yielded so much smoke
and coral dust that the fleet's view
of the landing craft was obscured.
Firing was stopped for half an hour to clear the air,
plenty of time for the Japanese
to ready themselves for the assault.
The landing craft, meant to ferry the Marines
of the 2nd Division close to the beach,
hung up on the coral reef, easy targets for enemy guns.
(machine gun fire)
Men were forced to wade shoulder-deep
for hundreds of yards under enemy fire.
The first wave suffered some casualties.
The second was badly hit.
(explosion)
The third... nearly destroyed.
By nightfall, 5,000 Marines had made it to the beaches--
but some 1,500 of them had been killed or wounded.
Maurice Bell, a neighbor of Sid Phillips from Mobile,
had watched the landings with his binoculars
from the deck of the USS Indianapolis.
BELL: I could see the fighting going on on the island,
just like if it was just across the street here.
Looked like it was that close.
And soldiers and sai... Marines falling all over the place
and you could see bodies in the water.
And it's something that I hope never happens again
because it's just things that happened
at that time I'll never forget.
NARRATOR: "A million men cannot take Tarawa in a hundred years,"
the Japanese commander had said before the battle.
It took ten thousand Marines just four days.
But more than one third of them
had been killed or wounded.
The Marine commander told the press
Tarawa had fallen only because
so many young Americans had been willing to die.
Outraged parents denounced him for callousness.
Eventually, the War Department reversed policy
and produced a film called With the Marines at Tarawa,
containing combat footage more brutal
than anything ordinary Americans had ever seen.
Some in Washington argued that its release
would damage morale, but President Roosevelt himself
ordered that it be shown.
(film running through projector)
("Marine Hymn" playing)
He wanted to give Americans a clearer sense
of what their men were facing.
FILM NARRATOR: These are the men of the 2nd Marine Division,
who are now embarking
on a full amphibious operation after many...
When we saw those first pictures of Tarawa,
we were overcome,
just overcome.
FILM NARRATOR: For three days before we moved in,
over four million pounds of explosives
had been dropped on the island.
KATHARINE PHILLIPS: It was just devastating to us.
Those American boys' bodies floating in the surf.
FILM NARRATOR: The chaplains assistants tend the dead.
KATHARINE: We just sat around and cried,
and I know that's why they'd kept it
from the American public for so long.
FILM NARRATOR: These are Marine dead.
This is the price we have to pay for a war we didn't want.
KATHARINE: Our dislike for the Japanese was very violent,
that they would do this to us
and would kill our boys like that.
And, 'course, the idea was "Kill the Japs."
I'm ashamed to say, but that's the way it was.
We just had to get that war over with.
NARRATOR: Mrs. Martina Ciarlo, a widow in Waterbury, Connecticut,
had two daughters and three sons.
The oldest boy and the youngest
were exempt from the draft and safely at home,
but the middle son, Corado, known as "Babe,"
was with the Fifth Allied Army somewhere in Italy.
His letters home
were the most important thing in his mother's life.
OLGA CIARLO: She'd wait every single morning on the porch
for the mailman to come to bring her a letter.
And he would go by sometimes, and he would say,
"Mrs. Ciarlo, not today."
So the following day she'd wait again for that letter
and finally she would get a letter, she'd be so happy.
She'd run upstairs and she'd let us read the letter,
'cause my mother couldn't read English.
And we would read the letter to her
and she'd be happy just knowing that she heard from him.
BABE CIARLO (dramatized): "Mom, how are you getting along?
"Fine, I hope, and keeping happy always.
"I know I haven't written to you for a long time
"and I hope you understand
"the Army has been keeping me pretty busy.
"I'm doing good, and always happy
"because I know you're okay.
Love, Babe."
DANIEL INOUYE: Consider the fact that I'm 18, so...
your emotions are that of a young person.
I was angered to realize that my government felt
that I was disloyal and part of the enemy,
and I wanted to be able to demonstrate,
not only to my government, but to my neighbors,
that, uh... I was a good American.
NARRATOR: After Pearl Harbor,
Washington had ordered some 110,000 Japanese aliens
and American citizens of Japanese descent
living along the West Coast,
out of their homes and into ten internment camps.
All Japanese-American men of draft age,
except those already in the armed forces,
had been classified as enemy aliens,
forbidden to serve their country.
Then, in early 1943,
Washington announced a new policy.
Japanese-American men were now going to be permitted
to form a special segregated outfit,
the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
When the Army called for 1,500 volunteers from Hawaii,
where Japanese-Americans had never been locked up,
10,000 turned up at recruiting offices,
including a freshman in pre-medical studies
at the University of Hawaii-- Daniel lnouye.
INOUYE: And my father took time off.
And we got on the streetcar.
And he was very silent
until we got close to the point of departure.
He cleared his throat, and I knew something was coming.
He's not a scholarly person,
but I know he struggled, and he said,
"This country has been good to us.
"It has given me two jobs.
"It has given you and your brothers
"and your sister education.
"We owe a lot to this country.
"Do not dishonor this country.
"Above all, do not dishonor the family.
"And if you must die,
die in honor."
You know, I'm 18 years old
and here he is telling me these heavy words.
And I've always thought to myself,
would I be able to say the same thing to my son?
ASAKO TOKUNO: I think that they may not really
have known it themselves,
but I think this feeling was instilled in them
through all of our parents.
It's called "yamata damashi,"
and it's this... it's like a proving of yourself
and that your... your loyalty goes beyond
just saying it or talking it, you know.
It's proving it,
giving it your all,
even if you die in the process by going to war.
And I think that's so strongly instilled
from when you're very young
that I think that that was one of the things
that pushed them on.
NARRATOR: Now, Army recruiters went to work
inside the internment camps.
Robert Kashiwagi, from Sacramento,
was still bedridden from a lung ailment
when recruiters turned up at Camp Amaohe, in Colorado.
KASHIWAGI: When the recruiting team came around,
they announced that this is going to be
a segregated combat infantry unit
slated for frontline duty.
And I protested very vigorously.
I don't mind volunteering, but it's really unfair for me
to volunteer only to an infantry unit
that's slated for frontline duty.
But we're only to have one choice--
volunteer to a segregated infantry unit,
or don't and call yourself disloyal.
My feeling was
that the United States is our country
and if we disowned United States,
we were a man without a country.
We had no other place we could go to.
So I more or less volunteered... from bed.
NARRATOR: Those Japanese-Americans already in the armed forces
when the war started
were reassigned to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team
and sent for training to Camp Shelby in Mississippi--
where the governor assured them
they would be treated as "white" people.
KASHIWAGI: There were drinking fountains marked "colored"
and "white" and you had to adhere to the instruction.
Can I go into that restaurant
or will I not be served, you know?
These are the difficult questions that entered my mind.
And then when I got on the bus,
why, all the black people had to go to the rear of the bus,
and whites stayed in the front.
That's confusing to me,
because I didn't know where I was belonging to,
as far as a situation like that.
So I just, without any... without thinking,
I would always go towards the black section,
but they would turn me around and put me in the white.
NARRATOR: Early in 1944, the 442nd received its orders
to head overseas.
Tim Tokuno, from the Sacramento Valley,
was granted leave to go and say good-bye to his parents.
TOKUNO: They gave us a 15-day furlough.
And so I went back to visit my folks at Topaz, Utah.
As I entered the compound, the MP captain stopped me
and said, "Sergeant, have you got any liquor in your bag?"
I said, "Yes, I have a fifth of whiskey to take to my folks."
The captain shook his head and says, "Sorry, Sergeant.
No liquor allowed in camp."
"Hell of a war, isn't it?"
That's what he told me.
"Hell of a war, isn't it?"
I said, "It sure is, Captain.
"Look, you got machine guns on all four corners,
"with live ammunition
"and you got the guards patrolling the perimeter,
"and here I'm going into combat
with my folks behind barbed wire."
I said, "Yeah, it is a hell of a war."
(Count Basie band playing "For the Good of the Country")
TOM CIARLO: Waterbury at that time during the war
was like, uh, you could almost compare it
to a miniature Times Square.
It was never quiet
because there were so many factories
and each factory had three shifts,
so they're going around the clock.
So we had buses running up and down from the center of town
to different streets all over the city going constantly.
NARRATOR: Like Mobile and countless other American towns,
Babe Ciarlo's hometown
of Waterbury, Connecticut, was booming.
Its peacetime industries had all switched over to defense
and were working 24 hours a day,
seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Workers came to Waterbury from everywhere.
LEO GOLDBERG: While looking for work, there was one memorable morning
when I got on a bus,
sat down next to a stra... somebody
who turned to me and said, "Good morning."
And I looked at him as if to say,
"Who are you to say good morning to me?"
After all, I'm from Brooklyn, New York.
But any rate, the impact was very great.
The friendliness that I found in Waterbury
was something I was not accustomed to.
NARRATOR: 23-year-old Leo Goldberg quickly got a job as a saw sharpener
at the Scovill Manufacturing Company.
Scovill produced so many different military items,
the Waterbury Republican reported,
"That there wasn't an American or British fighting man
"who wasn't dependent on the company
"for some part of the food, clothing,
"shelter and equipment
that sustained him through the struggle."
Mattatuck Manufacturing gave up making upholstery nails
in favor of cartridge clips for M-1 rifles,
turning out three million of them a week.
Chase Brass and Copper made more than 52 million mortar shells
and cartridge cases
and more than a billion small-caliber bullets.
GOLDBERG: Having a job and no attachments,
it gives you a freedom.
You don't have to answer to anybody.
"Hey, Mom, I'm going to stay out until 10:00,"
or "You got to be home by noon," or whatever it was.
So, it was a burst of freedom.
So couple that with the friendliness.
I got to know people.
I went horseback riding for the first time in my life.
I never knew what a horse looked like.
And, uh... it was just great.
NARRATOR: Waterbury also sent group after group of draftees to the war,
12,000 of them.
The mayor saw them all off at the railroad station.
Each man received a prayer book and a carton of cigarettes,
courtesy of the Shriners.
Meanwhile, young Waterbury women did their best
to keep in touch with the men overseas.
ANNE DeVICO: We wrote letters to all the boys we knew.
And they loved getting the letters
because they said at roll call
they wanted their name to be called over and over
because they said it was so wonderful.
They loved these letters because we told them
where we went last night.
We went for a hot dog or something.
You know, it wasn't anything big,
or we went to the USO dance and we saw so-and-so there.
And at Christmastime, they got boxes galore.
My whole kitchen table,
my mother used to help, everybody helped.
And we sent boxes to all of them.
NARRATOR: On December 31, 1943, some of Anne DeVicds friends
asked her to go with them into Manhattan.
They wanted to see in the New Year in Times Square.
DeVICO: Well, we had to argue with my mother
because my mother said, "Only bad girls go to New York."
And finally we all cried and everything
and my mother finally said,
"Okay, you can go because there's eight of you going.
How could eight of you do something wrong?"
So we were at the Times Square Hotel
and we said, "Let's find an Automat,"
and all of a sudden this big, tall,
good-looking dreamboat comes by...
And he said, "Hey, we're looking for the Automat.
Why don't you look with us?"
And I said, "Fine."
So, uh, that was my future husband, Bob.
And, uh, as he's walking with me, and he said,
"Here, the ball is going to come down."
And he turned and kissed me
and he said, "I'm going to marry you."
And I said, "Oh, right."
I had to say he was my girlfriend's boyfriend's friend
because if my mother ever thought I picked up somebody
in New York City, you know, she wouldn't have allowed me
even to go outside the house again.
When I came home, I'm thinking, "How could it be
"that I'm from a small city-- Waterbury, Connecticut--
"and how could I meet somebody from Valparaiso, Indiana,
in New York City, and how could we fall in love?"
And really, he said he fell in love with me
that very first day.
It was as if fate had just said,
"You're going to meet somebody,"
and whoever thought it would be like that?
BABE CIARLO (dramatized): "January 1, 1944.
"Dearest Vic and the babies,
"I am feeling fine
"and I hope to hear the same from you always.
"I didn't write sooner because I was very busy
and there was no mail service where I was."
"I had a big turkey dinner for New Year's
and it was very good."
"Don't worry about me.
Love, Babe."
(lively march music playing)
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: General Eisenhower,
named to command the gathering Allied invasion forces,
surveys the Italian front
with General Clark, 5th Army Commander.
In the mountains of central Italy,
he observes artillery fire blasting the way toward Cassino.
(no dialogue)
NARRATCDR: As 1944 began, the Allies continued
to slowly battle their way northward in Italy,
pushing the Germans out of one defensive position
after another.
With them now was Ward Chamberlin,
from Norwalk, Connecticut.
CHAMBERLIN: My father was in World War I.
He was at Belleau Wood and he was wounded twice,
got the Distinguished Service Cross,
second highest medal you can get.
After he died, I was walking by St. Patrick's Cathedral,
and I saw Father Duffy out there,
the famous chaplain from World War I.
But I'd met him with my dad a couple of times.
So I went up to him on the steps of the cathedral.
I said, "Father Duffy, my name is Ward Chamberlin."
He said, "That's a wonderful name."
He said, "Your father's one of the bravest men I ever knew."
That'll break your heart, yeah.
NARRATOR: Chamberlin had been captain of the Princeton soccer team
when the war broke out, and he was eager to do his part.
But there was a problem.
CHAMBERLIN: I couldn't serve in the Army or the Air Force
because I'd lost my eye, my right eye, with meningitis
when I was about ten.
And so I was 4-F
as far as the military services were concerned.
Then I heard about this organization called
the American Field Service,
which at that point were with the, uh, British
in the North African desert.
NARRATOR: The American Field Service was a relief organization
that had been formed during the First World War,
and now Chamberlin signed on as a volunteer ambulance driver.
He had originally shipped out for North Africa,
only to find himself hospitalized there for six weeks
with a mild case of polio.
CHAMBERLIN: And after I did that for six weeks,
I was in pretty good shape.
And I got some orders to report back to my Cairo headquarters,
and, um, I read them and they said,
"You're supposed to have desk duty for a year."
So I just tore those up
and never gave them to anybody, so...
And ten days later I was in Italy.
Exactly where I wanted to be, exactly.
Wasn't so sure once I got there.
NARRATOR: In early January 1944,
Chamberlin had his first taste of war.
CHAMBERLIN: We were in a forward position probably, you know,
a half a mile from the actual front line,
if you could call it that.
And the first guy that they, that they brought in
who was so badly shot up...
...we got him into the ambulance on a stretcher,
and I've... I don't think I've ever said this to anybody,
but I went around the side of the ambulance
and just let everything out.
I just... sick, sick as I could be for about 30 seconds.
And it's just... I'd never seen a body cut up
as badly as that guy was.
NARRATOR: The Allies now came up against new
and still more formidable German defenses--
the Gustav Line.
It combined three rivers--
the Sangro, the Garigliano and the Rapido--
and a chain of mountains
honeycombed with mines, pillboxes
and sheltered gun emplacements.
Its keystone was the 1,715-foot Monte Cassino.
Looming above the village that gave the hill its name
stood the most important monastery in Europe,
a Benedictine abbey
whose origins went back to the sixth century.
Behind it lay the broad Liri Valley and the road to Rome.
Time and again, Allied forces tried to fight their way
around its edges and were stopped cold.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill
proposed a daring solution to the impasse--
a surprise landing behind the German lines at Anzio,
35 miles south of Rome.
It was a risky idea that would take time to plan and execute.
Meanwhile, the Allies-- including American, British,
Canadian, New Zealand, French, North African, Indian,
and Free Polish troops--
would mount a series of all-out assaults on Cassino,
aimed at somehow breaking through.
CHAMBERLIN: It was a horrible battle
because... we kept throwing divisions,
new tactics...
You couldn't get through there.
And we'd lost an awful lot of casualties.
The guys that I admired most
were the guys that were really scared to death,
and did what they had to do.
Some of us were too stupid to, uh, feel so scared,
or you just had some protective armor, psychologically,
that you put on.
(gunfire, bullets whizzing)
But the guys I admired were the guys who really were frightened
and went on and did what they had to do,
whether they were soldiers or ambulance drivers or whatever.
NARRATOR: In the early morning hours of January 21,
Chamberlin watched as the 36th Texas Division
tried to cross the fast-moving Rapido
in the center of the line.
"We might succeed,"
its commander had written in his diary,
"but I do not see how we can."
He was right.
There was no cover.
The men stumbled into minefields,
drawing torrents of machine gun and mortar fire.
Every man who managed to make it across the Rapido
was killed, wounded or captured.
Some who tried to swim back to safety drowned.
CHAMBERLIN: How anybody could have sent people through that
I just can't imagine.
They were shot to pieces.
I saw them come out of the line.
They were walking... when I first came up,
they were, they were coming out of the line,
walking down the side of the road just eyes shut,
just... plodding ahead one foot after the other.
They looked like they'd been through the worst stuff,
and they had been, they had been.
Germans just sat across the river and sprayed 'em off.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Now, taking the Nazis completely by surprise,
the Allies hurl their fleet upon Nettuno and Anzio--
points behind the German lines 30 miles south of Rome.
At dawn, landing ships and barges stand offshore.
Small boats begin to pour in.
The initial landing meets with no opposition.
NARRATOR: The same day Ward Chamberlin watched
the men of the 36th Division stagger back
from the aborted crossing of the Rapido,
36,000 Allied troops landed at Anzio.
Babe Ciarlo of Waterbury was with them,
part of the 3rd Infantry Division.
The Allies had caught the enemy totally unprepared.
But the Allied commander,
General John P. Lucas, was a cautious man.
His orders were to move inland 20 miles,
seize the Alban Hills that overlooked Rome
and cut off the railroad line and two roads
that supplied the enemy.
Lucas wanted to be certain he had enough men
and enough fire power to be successful.
He took nine days to consolidate his position--
more than enough time for the Germans
to build up their defenses.
By the time the Allies began to move forward
toward the Alban Hills,
the better part of eight enemy divisions-- 100,000 men--
held the high ground along the Allied perimeter,
ready for any attack.
Babe Ciarlo's division tried to fight its way
through the German lines near the town of Cisterna,
only to be hurled back toward the beach.
Unable to advance, Americans and Britons dug in
as best they could on the Anzio plain--
15 miles long, ten miles deep,
and totally exposed to enemy fire.
They would remain pinned down there for four miserable months.
The secret landing meant to stun the enemy had stalled,
just as the assault
on the Gustav Line it had been meant to aid
had also stalled.
As Churchill said about that Anzio thing, he said,
"I thought I was putting a wildcat ashore.
It turned out to be a bloated whale,"
because we just sat there.
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, the Allied armies back at Monte Cassino
were faring no better.
In February, New Zealand and Indian troops
were ordered to take Cassino.
They failed.
Their commander insisted the Germans were using the abbey
as an observation post to direct fire on the huddled men below.
Waves of American warplanes dropped 586 tons of bombs,
turning the abbey into rubble.
The men below stood and cheered.
Some wept with joy.
But German resistance was actually strengthened.
Having promised the Church not to disturb the sanctuary,
the Nazis had never actually used the abbey
as an observation post.
But they quickly turned its ruins into a new stronghold
from which they directed fire to destroy the men
that were again sent against them.
In March, the Indians
and New Zealanders attacked once more.
The battle seesawed back and forth
for two days and two nights
before the Allies fell back to where they'd started.
4,000 men were lost.
The Germans held.
In the mud and snow and bitter cold,
the killing went on.
(gunshots)
CHAMBERLIN: You'd get a guy in and he looked okay,
but a little further on, there'd be a medical guy
and he'd say, you know, "This guy's, this guy's going."
And I said, "Should I stop?"
He said, "Yeah, why don't you stop for a minute."
So I went back and held his hand and...
you know, he just looked up
and kind of gave a sign of recognition
and then he was gone.
It was quick, quick.
It's hard to describe what it's really like, it's...
You can remember the moments, but...
but, um...
it, uh...
you see some guy leaving this world, it's not a lot of fun.
("America, My Home" by Wynton Marsalis playing)
AL MclNTOSH (dramatized): Luverne, Minnesota.
Rock County Star-Herald.
"The four grim lead lines of the newspaper seem
"so tragically cold and bare.
"Staff Sergeant Richard E. Mueller is reported missing
"with seven others following the crash of a medium bomber
"in the Atlantic near Columbia, South Carolina, Saturday.
"All are believed dead.
"Four grim lines of newspaper type
"that tell so much and yet so little.
"For us and thousands of other friends,
"none of the usual information, or even a picture, is needed
"to help us remember Red of the A&P,
"because that is the way he will be remembered here,
not as Staff Sergeant Richard E. Mueller."
"With hair as vivid as a June carrot
"and a grin that had the power of a locomotive headlight,
"this boy never walked down the street
"or round the aisles of the store.
"He fairly danced or ran
"and you knew that here was a chap
that was going places."
Al McIntosh.
(orchestral film music playing)
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: What is there we can all do on the home front
to help the men coming back and the men still over there?
Make your home an arsenal for victory
by fighting waste every day from now until the war is over.
(reading)
("Opus One" by Tommy Dorsey Playing)
KATHARINE PHILLIPS: All the old iron beds were pulled out of the garages
and they were put in the metal drives.
The Boy Scouts did a great deal of that.
The city took up the old streetcar lines
that went down Government and Dauphin Street
and we added those to the scrap pile.
But everyone took part in World War ll,
down to the youngest child.
NARRATOR: The Office of Civilian Defense called upon each American family
to become a "fighting unit on the home front."
Everyone was asked to collect scrap metal
from which armaments could be made.
In one year alone,
Mobile's citizens amassed 22 million pounds.
Children were the most avid collectors.
JIM SHERMAN: The motto was "wash and squash."
You wash out the can and then...
you take the top off.
Then you take the bottom off.
Then you put the top and the bottom together in the middle
and then you'd squash it, you'd stomp on it.
And then you put these in a box and then--
I don't know if it was every week or every other week--
the city would come by and they would pick up...
You'd set them out on your curb kind of like recycling now
and then the city would come by
and they'd pick up all these tin cans.
NARRATOR: In Sacramento, 22 big "Victory Bins" were set up
on downtown street corners for the duration,
even though some people thought they were unsightly.
Luverne, Minnesota, had been founded by Civil War veterans,
but now the town council volunteered
to melt down the cannonballs that formed part of the memorial
to the Union dead to make munitions for the new conflict.
And in Waterbury, Connecticut,
281,135 pounds of tin were collected,
along with 65,000 pounds of rubber,
225,458 pounds of rags,
and 372,733 pounds...
of fat.
SHERMAN: If you were lucky enough to get a pound of bacon, for example,
and you get the fat in there,
you were supposed to pour that into a tin can
and then take it down to the salvage guy.
Now, I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out
how are they going to make ammunition out of bacon fat?
All of this we knew made ammunition,
but we didn't know how.
But anything to help the boys.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Fats make glycerin and glycerin makes explosives.
Every year
two billion pounds of waste kitchen fats are thrown away--
enough glycerin for ten billion rapid-fire cannon shells...
...a belt 150,000 miles long,
six times around the earth.
A skillet of bacon grease is a little munitions factory.
(soldiers yelling)
(machine guns firing)
(bomb explodes)
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: At Fort Bragg, North Carolina,
in the largest training camp of its kind in the world,
800 colored rookies get their basic physical buildup
for eventful clays to come.
Ten weeks ago they were coal miners, steel workers,
mechanics, professional boxers;
in fact, most everything from college teachers
to Pullman porters.
A few weeks more of this intensive drill
and they'll become
the field artillery replacements of the famed 16th Battalion;
a compact fighting force
of cannoneers, radio and signal men;
an all-Negro group assembled from all over the nation;
a well-trained unit ready and eager to join the fight
for survival of the great democracy that gave them birth.
OFFICER: All right, men.
On behalf of the United States Army,
and the reception center here at this camp,
we're glad to welcome you here today,
and into the United States Army.
We're glad to see all of your happy, smiling faces.
You'll be converted from a civilian
into a full-fledged soldier.
GRAY: When I went in, they, uh,
had a pad.
And "eyes: Negro;
"Hair: Negro;
"Color: Negro;
"Complexion: Negro;
Race: Negro."
Everything was "Negro" except height and weight.
NARRATOR: Despite the bravery
of African-Americans in all of America's previous wars,
despite the argument made by the NAACP and others
that "a Jim Crow army cannot fight for a free world,"
the armed forces of the United States
remained strictly segregated.
Black draftees from the North
sent to training camps in the deep South,
encountered Jim Crow laws for the first time.
Some, who defied those laws,
paid with their lives.
Some men refused to serve in a segregated military
and were imprisoned for it.
At home and overseas, there were frequent
and sometimes bloody confrontations
between black servicemen and white civilians,
black troops and white ones,
over women and local customs,
and equal access to military facilities.
Growing protest by African-Americans
would force the military to make a few changes.
An Army Air Corps training camp
was set up at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
A single ship,
the USS Mason, was manned entirely by blacks--
except for her commander.
The 761st Tank Battalion
would eventually fight in Europe,
sent to the front by George Patton
with the admonition: "I don't care what color you are,
"so long as you go up there and kill
those Kraut sons of bitches."
The Marine Corps had refused to accept any blacks at all,
but after 1942, as casualties in the Pacific mounted
and pressure from civil rights groups intensified,
John Gray and others were finally allowed
to sign on and serve...
in segregated units.
GRAY: They did not intend
to have blacks as fighting units.
They intended to have them,
if at all, as support units.
Look like you ought to appreciate the fact
that you're not up front.
But they didn't want you to get that kind of a glory.
NARRATOR: John Gray was sent to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina,
where he joined the 51st Defense Battalion,
one of only two black units
being trained for combat in the Marine Corps.
Its commander was Lt. Colonel Floyd Stephenson,
a veteran of the attack on Pearl Harbor,
who won his men's loyalty by declaring,
"There is nothing that black troops cannot be taught."
He was a far cry from the officers
John Gray was used to.
GRAY: And that was different from Major Larsen,
who said he had been out in the jungles
and he had fought this and he had done that
and he came back to find women Marines
and dog Marines and then "you people."
We didn't like for people to say "you people."
So instead of referring to troops as "troops,"
they would always refer to black troops as "you people."
And we resented that.
NARRATOR: John Gray and his unit were eventually
sent to the South Pacific.
They had been trained as expert gunners
on 90 and 150 mm guns,
and were so skilled, Gray remembered,
"we could shoot the sting off a bee."
But their white commanders
did not see fit to send them into battle.
The men took to calling themselves "The Lost Battalion"
because they had so little to do,
and white Marines resented their presence--
especially when Samoan women were involved.
GRAY: And when they got a chance to dance or something...
and those girls were told that we had tails.
So when a girl would dance with you,
she would reach down and try to see if you had a tail.
(chuckles)
But those girls would be so glad to have the treatment.
So they extended, uh,
"separate, but equal," so to speak,
into the armed services.
(Edgar Meyer's "Concert Duo mvt. 1" plays)
♫ ♫
QUENTIN AANENSON: I wanted to fly fighters.
And by the luck of the draw, I was sent to Harding Field
at Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
That's where they had the P-47 Thunderbolt.
And that was the plane I wanted to fly.
NARRATOR: The war offered Quentin Aanenson of Luverne, Minnesota,
a chance to realize his boyhood dream of flying.
Color blindness had kept him out of the Army Air Corps
until he took the test enough times to memorize it.
In early 1944, he was one of hundreds of thousands of men
being trained to play their part
in the coming invasion of France.
The P-47 Thunderbolt was
a powerful airplane.
We could carry
two 500-pound bombs under the wings, or we could carry
two 1,000-pound bombs under the wings.
We carried up to ten rockets.
We had eight .50 caliber machine guns
mounted in the wings that had a rate of fire
of 600 rounds a minute per gun.
So we, in a second,
we could throw a hundred shells on a target
and just devastate anything
that was in front of us. (rapid gunfire)
NARRATOR: Fighter training in Baton Rouge was exhilarating,
but dangerous.
(explosion)
Five members of Aanenson's group of 40 trainees
died before they got a chance to go overseas.
(Mills Brothers' "Paper Doll" plays)
♫ I'm gonna buy a paper doll ♫
♫ That I can call my own... ♫
AANENSON: And I had been there only about ten days or two weeks
when I met Jackie.
I went to a dance that was put on
by a girls' club that she belonged to.
And this absolutely darling girl came up.
JACKIE GREER: And that particular night,
I had a darling Valentine dress,
you know, the red and the white stripes and all.
There was a song called "Paper Doll"
that was so famous at that time.
And as I took her
to dance with her, I said,
"Hello, paper doll."
GREER: We did have our dance,
and we danced for about five minutes,
the music stopped to let the band rest,
and I went home.
And when I got home that night,
my sister was already in bed asleep.
We slept together.
And I woke her up and I said, "Nelwin,
tonight I met the man I'm going to marry."
AANENSON: Well, we had 90 days
to work with from the time I met her
until the time I shipped out to go overseas.
We would go to parties,
and we saw each other almost every night.
And we knew within a matter of just a short time
that this was something serious and everything was...
it's sort of like on fast-forward.
You live your life realizing that, uh,
you don't have a lot of time.
NARRATOR: Before he left for England,
Aanenson laid down some ground rules for Jackie.
AANENSON: So I said
that "I'd like to make a deal with you.
"I will come back and survive this war
"if you will agree that while I'm gone
"that you will not date any one guy
more than three times."
I don't know where in the world he came up with that.
I never did understand it.
But the rule was,
I couldn't have over three dates
with any one fella.
And he explained it that I wouldn't get
too familiar with them in three dates,
and if I couldn't have any more, it couldn't go any further.
And it surely worked.
(creaking)
NARRATOR: From guns hidden in the Alban Hills...
The Germans continued
to hurl artillery shells at the Allied troops
pinned down at Anzio.
For more than eight weeks,
since the end of January 1944,
they had been stuck there.
With the American forces
was Private Bill Mauldin, a cartoonist
for Stars and Stripes.
MAULDIN (dramatized): "There wasn't any rear.
"There was no place in the entire beachhead
where enemy shells couldn't seek you out."
"Wounded men got oak leaf clusters on their Purple Hearts
"when shell fragments riddled them
as they lay on hospital beds."
(explosion)
"Nurses died."
"Planes crash-landed on the single air strip."
"You couldn't stand up in the swamps
"without being cut down,
and you couldn't sleep if you sat down."
(explosion)
"Guys stayed in those swamps for days and weeks."
(men shouting)
(eXplosions)
NARRATOR: Soldiers lived underground.
Some turned emptied hand grenades filled with gasoline
into lamps, with bootlaces for wicks.
The men made up names for their tormentors.
The biggest German gun was "Anzio Annie."
The plane that rained hundreds
of small butterfly bombs on them every night
was the "Popcorn Man."
"Being at Anzio
was like being in a comic opera,"
one soldier remembered.
"You died laughing."
CHAMBERLIN: One AFSer got hit near the front,
and they took him back to the operating table,
they were operating on his leg, and he got another piece
of shrapnel in his arm.
Luckily, neither one of them were fatal,
but I mean, to get hit twice in one day...
That was rough stuff up there.
They were completely exposed to the German armies.
NARRATOR: After one massive shelling,
a mess sergeant fell to his knees and began loudly to pray.
"God, help us," he said.
"You come yourself.
Don't send Jesus."
"This is no place for children."
Some 7,000 Allied personnel were killed
during the Anzio campaign.
36,000 more were wounded or missing,
and another 44,000
were classified as "nonbattle casualties,"
victims of frostbite and trench foot,
shell shock and madness.
"Axis Sally," the Nazi radio propagandist,
began calling Anzio "the largest self-supporting
prisoner-of-war camp in the world."
And German aircraft littered the beach with leaflets,
urging Allied solders to surrender.
"The beachhead," they said, "has become a death's head."
On the front line with the 3rd Infantry Division,
Babe Ciarlo saw all of it, took part in some of it,
but never said a word about any of it in his letters home.
BABE (dramatized): March 27, 1944.
"I just got through with chow.
"We are having beautiful weather here,
"and I hope it's the same way there,
so you could take the babies out every afternoon."
TOM CIARLO: He never mentioned a word
about what he was doing, where he was.
You couldn't say much about where you were anyway,
but it was always the upside.
"I could only write a few lines right now because I'm...
I'm going to chow, and I don't have time."
This is in the heat of the battle,
and he's going to chow line.
I mean, there's no such thing as a chow line when you're in...
But you don't realize it at the time, until years later,
you get a little smarter and you go, geez, you know,
uh, how could he be going to a chow line when you're in
the middle of a battle or you're in a foxhole or someplace?
But he always had that upbeat outlook about him.
BABE CIARLO (dramatized): April 14, 1944.
"I am in the very best of health, and I hope to hear
the same from all of you always."
"Well, things here are moving pretty smooth
"and the only thing I do is eat and sleep.
And if I keep it up much longer, I'll be like a barrel."
"Well, take care of yourselves and keep those stoves roaring,
because I'll be doing a lot of eating when I get home."
NARRATOR: By the end of April,
the Allied command was determined
to break the stalemate
and resume its drive toward Rome.
Babe's division had finally been pulled back to rest
and to get ready for the big battle to come.
BABE (dramatized): April 30, 1944.
"Dear Mom and family..."
"This afternoon, I might go swimming in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
"The salt water will do me good.
"Last night, I received about ten letters.
"I'm glad to hear that the house
"was filled with flowers for Mother's Day
"and that you all got a gift for Mom.
"Don't worry about my money situation,
"because there isn't anything to spend it on here in Anzio.
"Well, I had my dinner and guess what I had--
pork chops, about a dozen of them."
"I'm getting to be a chow hound.
Love, Babe."
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: The Allies are stalled at Anzio,
but patrol clashes are frequent.
Here's a German outpost.
(automatic gunfire, explosions)
TOM CIARLO: You see, probably, on the newsreel
or you read about it
in the paper about different battles.
But you don't actually put Babe in that position,
because he's always telling you
how everything is fine, everything is no problem.
At one point, as a matter of fact, my mother had my aunt
write a letter in Italian
that she had sent to Babe.
"When you get to Rome, when you get to Italy,
"we have relatives over there.
"When you get there,
show them these letters and they'll treat you well,"
and everything else, you know.
And at the time, you think, well, yeah, he's going to Italy.
He's going to go to Rome and he's going to see his relatives.
Can you imagine that?
It's so unreal.
(indistinct children's voices)
BABE (dramatized): May 9, 1944.
"I'm glad that you're going down to the beach with the babies,
"and I hope Morn goes down with you,
because it'll do all of you good."
"I won't be with you this year,
"but I'll guarantee you I'll be there next summer.
That's a date."
"I'm all right.
"Nothing ever happens here.
"I guess it's like Waterbury-- dead.
Love, Babe."
(Benny Goodman's "Memories of You" plays)
NARRATOR: By the middle of May,
American artillery had managed to target German guns,
and things at Anzio had calmed down a good deal.
The rain of shells that had once fallen day and night
was reduced to sporadic, harassing fire.
(laughter)
In one sector, German gunners held their fire each afternoon
while Gls played a game of baseball.
In a ceremony on the beach,
37 foreign-born members of Babe's division were sworn in
as American citizens.
300 men from his outfit attended a wedding
between a first lieutenant and an army nurse.
The bride cut the cake with a trench knife.
(rapid gunfire)
BABE (dramatized): "I figured out just what
"I'm going to do after the war when I get home.
"I'm going to loaf for a while, and then I'm going to work,
"and the next spring,
"I'm going to get a car.
Not bad, huh?"
May 19.
"I am in the very best of health,
"and I hope to hear the same from all of you always.
"Today we had a little rain, but it wasn't bad at all,
"'cause it cooled us off.
"We had beer again today,
and I gave my share to the fellas."
"Mom, how are you getting along?
"Fine, I hope, and keeping happy always.
"I'm doing good,
"and always happy, 'cause I know you're okay.
Love, Babe."
(man shouts)
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: The heaviest Allied barrage of the war
precedes a dawn attack in the final battle for Cassino.
(distant gunfire)
(airplanes droning overhead)
(weapons firing, rumbling)
NARRATOR: On May 11, Allied troops had begun still another assault
on Monte Cassino.
(gunfire, distant shouting)
French forces from North Africa battled their way behind Cassino
and began to choke off German supplies.
(gunfire and shouting)
(soldier grunts)
(explosion)
(gunfire and shouting)
(rapid gunfire and explosions)
(distant rapid gunfire)
NARRATOR: Polish troops,
eager to avenge the Nazi invasion of their country,
finally took the ruined monastery
and the positions around it.
(explosion)
The Gustav Line had broken.
The Germans began falling back.
Monte Cassino was in Allied hands.
Meanwhile, at Anzio,
General Mark Clark ordered his forces there
to begin their own offensive on May 23.
He was determined to break out of the beachhead
and link up with the Allied armies
coming up from Cassino to trap the enemy
now retreating northward.
(explosions)
(rapid gunfire, shouting)
(eXplosions)
(distant shouting)
Babe's regiment helped lead the way,
finally taking the fiercely defended village of Cisterna
they had tried to take months earlier.
(distant gunfire)
(explosion, man shouts)
But when his men broke through,
General Clark astonished his own staff
and his British Allies by racing toward Rome
rather than trapping and destroying
the retreating German army,
which had been the original plan.
CHAMBERLIN: And when we finally did break through there,
we didn't even beat the German army then.
So there wasn't a lot to show for all that.
All those casualties, all those terrible things.
The only thing we did from a larger perspective
was to keep a number of German divisions occupied there
that otherwise could have gone to France,
or could have gone to Russia or somewhere else.
But there wasn't a lot to show for it.
It was horrible.
(radio static, radio changing stations quickly)
(over radio): This is Douglas Edwards reporting
that the 5th Army, tanks and motorized infantry,
has roared on through Rome today in relentless pursuit
of two battered German armies.
That's the picture in Italy as Allied planes continue
hammering German-held Europe from the west.
Now General Electric takes you direct to Rome,
Winston Burdett reporting.
BURDETT: The people of this ancient and still splendid capital
have seldom celebrated such a riotous holiday
as they did today...
NARRATOR: On June 4, 1944,
units of the 5th Army marched into Rome.
BURDETT: A tremendous shout went up in the square...
NARRATOR: It was Babe Ciarlo's 21 st birthday.
BURDETT: We are bringing some 3,000 carabinieri into the city.
NARRATOR: Back in Waterbury,
his sister Olga sat down to write him a letter.
OLGA: "Dearest Babe..."
(piano playing "The American Anthem")
"It is now about 3:15 in the afternoon,
"and it's a beautiful day.
"We are all in the best of health
"and always hope to hear the same from you.
"We just had news a little while ago,
and our American forces are in Rome."
"The Allies have passed the city limits in Rome,
"but they're not doing any fighting.
"Gee, I don't have to tell you anything.
You know everything from beginning to end."
"Babe, try to tell us a little more about you--
"where you are and what you are doing.
"We do hope everything is all right with you.
Remember always to take good care of yourself."
"Well, Babe, today is your birthday,
"and we do wish you a happy one.
"May all your wishes and dreams come true.
(voice breaking): Let's hope that you'll be home for your next birthday."
"I'm sure you will be.
"It won't be long now.
"We'll have the biggest party you've ever seen.
"Just keep your chin up.
"You're 21 years old, and what a man.
"We're all so proud of you,
"especially Mom.
"There's not a minute that goes by
"that she doesn't think of you.
(voice breaking): "We all miss you and pray so hard
for this war to end so you can come home."
"You said you sent home $30.
"We didn't receive it yet, but it will get here soon.
"Mom is going to put it in the bank for you, Babe,
"so that when you come home
you can have everything you want."
"You can buy your car and all your new clothes."
"Well, Babe, I guess I've said enough for now.
"Love from all.
"Take good care of yourself
"and write as often as you can.
"May God bless you and keep you safe.
"Our thoughts are always with you.
Your loving sister, Olga."
NARRATOR: 22 days later,
on June 26, 1944,
a telegram arrived at the Ciarlo home.
Babe was dead.
He may have been wounded as early as May 23,
as his battalion struggled to take Cisterna
during the first few hours of the Anzio breakout.
995 men from his division were lost that day,
perhaps the largest number suffered in a single day
by any American Army division during the entire war.
Hundreds more were killed or wounded
during the next few days,
some of them hit by American fighter planes
whose pilots mistook their advancing countrymen
for retreating Germans.
Whenever Babe was hit, however he was wounded,
he died on May 27,
eight days before his birthday.
Among the belongings in his pockets were two rosaries,
his driver's license,
a wallet with 16 photographs of family and friends,
a blood-stained letter, and $1.61.
OLGA: Well, I was out that night with the girls.
We had a sewing club.
I came home and after I got off the bus,
I see all these lights lit, which is very unusual
that my mother would have all these lights lit,
and the closer I got to my house,
lights were all over the place and I can hear people talking,
and as I went up the front stairs,
I can hear my mother screaming, crying.
My aunts, uncles, everybody was there,
and I didn't know what had happened,
so my aunt called me aside and told me what had happened.
Well, it was a terrible night.
When I got upstairs and found out what happened,
of course... a complete shock to all of us
because we thought everything was fine.
Babe said everything is fine.
He's coming home soon and it would be great...
So to tell you the truth, I just went to my room,
I closed the door, and that's where I stayed.
("Exiles" by Amy Beach playing)
NARRATOR: The news of Babe's death spread throughout the neighborhood.
DeVICO: And my girlfriend called me up.
She's crying.
I said, "What happened?"
"Babe Ciarlo was killed."
You know, we couldn't do a thing for days after that.
We didn't because all we could think of was him.
He was always so happy and jolly and always so fun-loving,
and then I'm thinking, "He's not coming back."
And it was terrible 'cause you started to realize
that this isn't just going over there and...
They're not coming back.
Some of them aren't.
NARRATOR: Babe's mother refused to believe her son was gone.
There had been some mistake.
She was sure of it.
OLGA: My mother, of course, was... well, how can I explain it?
She was a disaster.
We would be getting the newspaper
and my mother would look at pictures
and she'd say to me, "There's Babe.
That's Babe."
And I'd say," Gee, no, Mom."
"No! You have to write.
You have to write."
I don't know how many newspaper offices I would write to,
magazine places I would write to,
questioning the name of that boy that was in that picture
because my mother always thought it was Babe.
But it never came to be.
It was so bad in our house that nobody ever knows.
I used to play the piano ever since I was a young girl.
When my father passed away and my brother Babe died,
my mother had no music in the house.
I never played the piano again.
("Two Pieces for Strings" by William Walton playing)
NARRATOR: By the late spring of 1944,
events were accelerating at last.
In the Pacific, the Americans were on the move
and a large force was steaming toward the Marianas--
the islands of Guam, Tinian, and Saipan.
(bomb explodes)
On the Eastern Front,
the Soviets had triumphed at Leningrad,
then destroyed or captured some 250,000 German troops
in the Crimea.
But the basic fact remained,
that until the Nazi grip on Western Europe was broken,
Allied victory was impossible.
The German Army had taken up new positions
on the Adolf Hitler Line north of Rome
and the greatest test for the Western Allies--
the long-delayed invasion of France--
was now just days away.
Back in Baton Rouge, Quentin Aanenson from Luverne
had to say good-bye to Jackie and prepare for war.
AANENSON: We were very much aware of the fact that it was a...
deadly calling.
And we knew thatthe loss rates were extremely high,
and so it was the, uh, Judge Advocate General's office
that put this program in place
that all of us should have our wills drawn up.
And, of course, we knew the reality of our situation,
and so we tried to make light of it,
but, nevertheless, we...
we all signed our wills, drew up our wills--
they were standard-type wills--
and there had to be three pilots
that would witness the other pilot's will.
The three pilots that witnessed my will...
were all dead in six months.
(slow instrumental of "Until I'm in Your Arms Again" playing)
(song ends)
(lively version of "Until I'm in Your Arms Again" playing)