Tracing my 1st Ranger dad - Gela to Nice to Oslo

September 12, 1943. 75 years ago tonight the 1st Ranger Btn moved out of Gela and up the dirt road to capture the walled town if Butera. As my father remembered it, as 1st section riflemen in Co "C", he and Robert Olesen where the first Rangers into the town. LIFE magazine had a good accounting by a war correspondent who was there.

https://books.google.com/books…

 

September 21 1943. 75 years ago today The 1st Btn was fighting to hold the Chiunzi Pass into Naples against a much larger German force. "C" Co was ordered out onto an exposed mound in what was described in a book by a ranger who was there as a "Bad Action". A letter to my dad in hs papers spoke of getting 'the truth out" about that day. From across the valley a German 88 opened up and started walking shells closer and closer until one dropped onto the men in the first rifle section and then stopped firing. Pfc Lindsay died instantly. Sgt Bunde, Pfc Rieker and Pvc Paskavan wouldn't survive their wounds. Pfc Gorski was hit by shrapnel in his butt and listed as "wounded - not hospitalized". He was treated by Doc Sommers who pulled him off the line and into the 1st Btn HQ Medical unit as "His driver". The way dad told me the story, the doc and he were talking and when the doc found out that dad was a good golfer he said "You're a golfer too!! Yo aren't going back to the front, you can be my driver." The way I see it is this. 37% of the casualties in Italy at the time were psychiatric. Dad was was cracking and the doc needed to break the bond with his band of brothers by creating another one. Dad was with Sommers for the duration.

 

This hospital discharge after treatment for "Cardiac Arrythmia - In the Line of Duty" dated 2/6/45 begs a question. Dad was pulled off the line on after getting some shrapnel from a German 88 in his buttox as a Ranger on 9/21/43 and moved from Rifleman to Truck Driver as his MOS shows.Seems the PTSD was still an issue. On the other hand, he was with the same doc that pulled him out through the FSSF and into the 474th who had taken dad under his wing. Dads CMB date is the same as the date of a hospital discharge while in the FSSF. and I do watch a lot of MASH reruns.

 

Well Christmas has come early to this Ranger historian. I have gained access to view all of the Morning Reports for all of the Ranger battalions in WWII. I have never seen any other morning reports to compare I'm still not sure of what some of the abbreviations mean but to say they make interesting reading for me is an understatement. Quite a number of men moving from duty to sick and back to duty. Duty to AWOL to duty. AWOL to MIA. MIA to KIA. AWOL to Deserter to Court marshal. Private accidently shoots himself in the chest at 2:30 in the morning with his rifle.

The records were acquired through a donation to the Descendants of World War II Rangers, Inc, and protocol speaks against "pirating" and for "Honor"

 

Well, one question answered My question was "Where was Pfc John Gorski on 7/9/43 during the invasion of Sicily at Gela?" On 6/29/43 while loading onto the AST USS Dickman, a mortor round in the back pack of Pfc Reid exploded killing Reid and wounding 20 other Ranges including my dad who had a hand wound. The answer is that he was temporarily transferred from 1st Btn "C" Co to the 1st Btn HQ. on 7/4 along with 4 others who were injured in the incident. He was returned to Co C on 8/1 in Corleone where the Rangers would continue training until the invasion of the Italian mainland at Maori on 9/9/43. During the campaign through Sicily, the total casualties from Co. C was 5 WIA.

 

The MR's have shown me everywhere my father was from his Ranger training to the disbandment of the 1st and 3rd battalions after they were wiped out at Cisterna. My new project is to find where he was on Google Earth when the German 88 walked a shell into his platoon and caused the surgeon who took the shrapnel out of his buttocks to treat him for PTSD by moving him from being a rifleman in C Co.to a driver iwith the HQ medical unit. I've narrowed it down to within 1 kilometer from here. My next step is to look for info from this Axis forum about the artillery defenses of Naples.

Axis History Forum - Index page

This is the crest of the Chiunzi Pass overlooking Naples. The lightly armed Rangers were pinned down and waiting for the invasion forces to catch up and relieve them. I believe that one of the buildings is what was called Ft Shuster. A name given to a church being used as a forward HQ and hospital.

 

Been a year since I've updated

January 23 1944. 76 years ago the 700 men of 1st and 3rd battalion were being marched to Rome as POW's to be paraded through the city before continuing on the POW camps. The 1st and 3rd Ranger Btns were no more. According to the Morning Reports, on Jan 20, 1944 after he was done loading equipment and men onto the HMS Princess Beatrix at Lucrino, Italy, Pfc John Gorski was reported as " fr dy to DS Rear Ech " and soon after he went to see his brother Stan who was in the AAF stationed with the 449th Bomb Group in Grottaglie, Italy. On Jan 29, John is back with 1st HQ at Campo di Carne. On Jan 30, 6 officers and 39 enlisted are recorded on the Morning Report as MIA

 

Been a while. This forum is very unstable for me. After Anzio, dad was folded into the medical unit of the FSSF. He continued to work for Doc Sommer and Olsen was in the unit too. Dad's had a Truck Driver MOS and transported wounded and supplies through the Italian mountains during the winter of '44. This news clipping popped up on the FSSF Facebook page. Guess sad went from one group of terrorists to another.

 

As long as I'm here, my brother found a picture of dad in Oslo during the summer of '45 when he was with the 474th Div. He's with the his girlfriend and her father. The way dad told the story, the lasses dad said that the family was going to go on a sailing vacation and dad could go if they were engaged. Dad said he knew some fellas that had bags of gold teeth so he bought one and had a jeweler make a ring. Now in Germany the 474th had been given the task of moving tons of nazi gold in a convoy of trucks from the Merkers Mine to a secure storage. My research told me that accounting for all of that art and jewels was pretty straight forward but the piles of dentures were difficult to measure. I guess some of the bags fell off the truck along the way.

 

Seeing as how I know more than anyone alive about my father and, aided by the internet, more then he knew about his war I know that he would want to relate this story that he told me. It is story described by another Ranger in "An Infantryman's Journal". It is a story of an event in Sicily 1943 that at another time and place would be a story of gang rape.

In order to better understand the world at that time and my fathers place in it and why he acted as he did, it helps to know these facts.

The people of Sicily were considered to be a Black race under U.S. law until 1920. The year my dad was born.
Dad was he son of poor Polish immigrants and lived in an area of other immigrants . Polish and Italian and Sicilian. He learned to speak Polish first, then Italian and then English when he went to school.

As described in the book, the Company had set up camp in Corleone and there was a girl at the edge of the bivouac "peddling her ass for a can of C rations." The author said by the time he got there that it was "just too disgusting".

The way the story was related to me by my father was that when he went and saw the girl she "Looked so sad and hurt that I gave her all of the C rations I could get and left."

It is this heroic action of his war experience that I am most proud of. Because he had been raised to see Sicilians as equals as a boy he saw them as human beings.

 

Excellent recap of the 1st Ranger Battalion form the time it was envisioned as a pool of instructors to train the infantry to a under trained, under supported infantry battalion.

 

My brother discovered more pictures from the MTO. This is Capt. Sheldon Sommers. The Ranger surgeon who patched up my dad and made him a driver in the 1st Btn. HQ medical unit. Anyone know the make, model and year of the car?