SG Fall - Girard College

8
Steel & Garnet
From President
of the School
Dominic Cermele
Girard’s mission
continues to be
accomplished.
On New Year’s Day
1848, Girard College
opened its gates to its
initial 300 students. Those must have
been heady and scary days for the
first to walk through the heavy
wooden gates that breached a
seemingly endless stone wall.
Undoubtedly they were frightened,
for they were entering into an entirely
new kind of school and home. This
was, indeed, a revolutionary
institution, whose founder, Stephen
Girard, had assigned it a mission to
save the poorest of children through
education and all-encompassing care.
Such an undertaking was unheard of
a century and a half ago. Girard’s
vision was to foster children who, by
circumstances of poverty and loss of a
parent breadwinner, were at risk of
becoming underachievers or worse.
He hoped that through intensive
education and dedicated care those
children could be turned into
productive citizens.
Over the last 160 years, more than
22,000 children completed their
primary and secondary education at
Girard College. The school’s mission
was accomplished and many went on
to truly achieve greatness. They
became doctors, teachers, social
workers, lawyers, captains of industry,
judges, public officials, and even
advisors to presidents. Almost all
became not only productive citizens
but also founders of families whose
descendants were equally productive.
Further, more than our share of
graduates fought bravely in defense of
our country – from the Civil War to
the current conflicts in Iraq and
Afghanistan. As they served, and as
they grew in stature and success, so
too did the reputation of this great
institution.
To successfully maintain that
reputation the educational program at
Girard has had to evolve, and so have
our admissions policies. That is how
the mission of the school continues to
remain true to Stephen Girard’s
vision. Today, we still recruit and
accept children from single-parent
families of limited means, and
continue in our quest to turn them
into overachievers. But we know that
the practical education mandated by
Stephen Girard no longer ends in
being bound out as “an industrious
apprentice.” We know that in order to
achieve greatness our students need a
sound education program that will
prepare them for post-secondary
education.
Thus, the program at Girard has
taken very much of a collegepreparatory direction in recent years.
As a result we often lose as many as
ten percent of our students each year
for failing to keep up with its rigors.
Other students are lost because we
determine that their behavior is such
that they are “unfit companions” for
the rest of the enrollment, to use a
direct but distasteful quote from
Girard’s will. The loss of each and
every single student, whether from
failure at scholarship or from
behavioral issues, is painful to me.
When we fail a student or when we
adjudge a student an “unfit
companion” we must ask ourselves:
Have we done all in our power to help
this student overcome bad behavior,
or overcome a scholarship deficiency?
Only after we examine our conscience
and justly feel that we can answer that
question in the affirmative do we then
seek the dismissal of a student.
All of this is very hard but very
necessary work, and I am gratified
that we have such a dedicated
academic and residential staff to carry
it out. As we begin our 161st year —
this last year of my administration —
I invite everyone in the Girard
community to join me in a resolution
to dedicate ourselves anew to the
vision of Stephen Girard. Let us carry
out this year with a new vigor to do
our best to be the best — for
ourselves, for our school, and
especially for the students.
Steel & Garnet
9
Girardians
in arms:
Second in a series.
Complied by the
GCAA office.
1930 — Bill Kieme, still going strong
at age 95, was back at the Hum on
Founder’s Day last, thanks to Tim
Worrell ’56, who chauffeured. Bill
received special recognition from the
podium during the Chapel service
and special attention from students
who escorted him around the
campus. Bill, who has flown WW II
fighters and MIG jets, assures us he
will be back next Founder’s Day but
says he’ll be coming solo on his
Harley, as Tim’s driving proved to be
a bit pokey for his taste.
June 1940 — Russell “Prof” Roberts
is enjoying good health and his
retirement near Catasauqua in the
great Lehigh Valley, from whence he
came to be admitted to Girard
College on Ground Hog Day in 1932.
He returned to the United States to
retire in 1994, after being away some
51 years working for the U.S. Army.
In 1946, Roberts was discharged
from the Army to take a civilian
position with the War Department. He
was involved in a variety of logistics
projects and assignments spanning the
entire Cold War period. Along the way
he earned a BA from the University of
Maryland and a BS in Logistics from
the University of Southern California.
Upon return to the United States,
Roberts was delighted to find many
Hummers indeed did remember him,
among them: Francis Dugan,
Dominic Menta, Ted Marchese, Tom
McGovern, George Ciervo,
Leonard Daddona, Charles Gentile
and, down in Florida, Denton
Shafer and Luther Reitmeier, his
roommates in Allen Hall.
1944 — Tony Costanza has managed
and played in the John Walter Cape
Community Band, Cape May, NJ,
for the past ten years or more, and
continues to be a credit to his
(continued on page 18)
World War II
Ed. Preface: If the men and women who
grew up during the Great Depression
and were robbed of their youth having
to fight the Second World War constitute
“the greatest generation” (with a nod to
news anchor and author Tom Brokaw),
were the Hummers who fought in that
war the greatest Girardians? A
convincing argument could be made
that they were. And are. But we’re not
here to argue.We’re here to acknowledge
the one fact of WW II about which
there can be no debate, to wit: we owe
Hummers who served in it a debt so
large as to be unpayable.We can but
show these veterans our gratitude at
every turn and thank them at every
opportunity. As many times as we may
do that it will never be enough. Sharing
their stories here is just one small
attempt to make up the deficit.
You may remember that we launched
the series “Girardians in arms” in the
last issue. Logically enough, we began
with the Civil War — the first declared
conflict in which Girardians would
have had an opportunity to fight.The
intent was to then proceed
chronologically
through our country’s
war history, hoping
there would not be a
new one to add by
the time we got to the
end.That route would
put the World War II
account several issues off and at least a
year away.We decided instead to move
it forward in recognition of the Girard
vets who are still with us and who could
provide first-hand accounts of their
experiences.
There are many such Hummers and
many such accounts — more than we
can hope to cover in our modest
magazine. Five stories are included
here.We chose them because they had
previously been told to us or were
readily available from the archives or
past issues of Steel & Garnet. It is our
hope that this will encourage other
Girardian veterans to tell us their story.
We will publish these in part two of this
article in the next edition. If we get too
many we’ll publish them in yet another
edition, and continue in that manner
until everyone who
wants to be heard is
heard. If you have a
WW II story to share
(photos, too, if they are
reproducible) send it to
the alumni association
office to the attention of
the editor. Should you prefer to tell your
story via interview, send us your
contact information and we’ll call you.
One additional note about these
initial five stories.The Hummers in
them, to a man, told us: “Don’t make it
all about me; don’t make it look as if I
did anything special.”We tried to respect
their wishes but you won’t have any
trouble drawing your own conclusions.
Besides, we have always subscribed to
the idea that anyone in the service in
WW II, whether in combat on foreign
shores or supporting the effort on our
own soil, was a hero.The difference is
that many carried that fundamental
heroism to extraordinary levels of valor.
And some took it to the ultimate
sacrifice.
(continued on page 10)
10
(“World War II” from page 9)
The Second World War is often
referred to as The Big One. It would
be more accurate to call it The Great
One, but an earlier war had already
made that claim — a claim that
proved overstated, sadly, just two
decades later. WW II followed that
“war to end all wars” by a scant
twenty-one years and was the largest
armed conflict in the history of
mankind. Depending on what source
you reference, the estimated military
and civilian death toll is put between
50 and over 70 million. It was a
global conflict in every respect,
waged on six continents and on
every ocean of our planet. And there
is sustainable evidence that
Girardians had a presence in all of it
— every theatre, every branch of
service, every grade and rank, every
aspect of combat.
The war drew on Girard
graduates mostly from classes of the
‘30s and early years of the ‘40s.
There were some exceptions. A
search of alumni of record in the
armed services, as appended to the
President’s Report for 1945,
revealed Carl Haussler and Elmer
Sturm of the Class of 1911 and
Nicholas Plate of the Class of 1909,
as still serving and, most remarkably,
Harry Ellis of the Class of 1897 as
just discharged.
Some believe the Second World
War began with the attack on Pearl
Harbor on December 7, 1941. In
fact, it began officially the next day
when Congress passed a declaration
of war against Japan. Others believe
our part in the war in Europe began
when the United States declared war
on Germany and Italy on December
11, 1941. In fact, it did begin that
day but with Germany and Italy
declaring war against us. At the
time, 127 Hummers were already in
the service: 73 Army, 24 Air Corps,
20 Navy, eight Marine Corps, two
Coast Guard.
The first Hummer to see action
Steel & Garnet
in WW II was also, arguably, the first
Hummer to lose his life in the war.
U.S. Air Corps Corporal John R.
Clanton ’39 was stationed at
Hickam Field, Pearl Harbor and was
wounded in the December 7 attack.
He recovered, made the grade as an
expert gunner, and was one
of the few in the 31st
Bombardment Squadron to
qualify as a radioman on the new
B-17 bombers. He perished in a
plane crash in New Zealand on June
6, 1942. One year later, nine
Hummers had made the supreme
sacrifice. Less than two years after
that, 39 had paid the price.
By May 1945, there were 1,181
Hummers in the Army, 563 in the
Navy, 24 in the Coast Guard, and
33 in the Merchant Service. In
addition to the 39 killed in action,
14 were reported missing, and
17 were recorded as prisoners of
war. The May 19, 1945 issue of The
Girard News reported that
Girardians had fallen in France,
Germany, Holland, Italy, and
Romania; and the Aleutians,
Guadalcanal, and Guam. There
would be many more losses in many
other places still to be reported.
The war in Europe ended with
VE Day, May 9, 1945. The war in
the Pacific ceased with the Japanese
surrender aboard the U.S.S.
Missouri on September 2, 1945.
When it was finally over, at least
2,075 Girard College graduates were
known to have been in the service.
While that is a more than impressive
number for a school the size of
Girard, it is sobering to realize it was
less than the number of soldiers and
sailors killed at Pearl Harbor. Such
was the scale of The Big One.
There are 66 names cast on the
bronze plaque affixed to the north
side of the World Wars monument
situated in the grassy commons
between Founder’s Hall and
Bordeaux Hall. Sixty-six who gave
their lives fighting for their country.
It is a huge loss but at the same time
a gratefully small number when
contrasted with the 2,000 Hummers
who were in harm’s way.
Accidents, mistakes,
bad luck, good luck.
Paul G. Reddington ’44 was the
youngest Hummer to lose his life
in the service of his country during
WW II, but he was not a casualty
of combat. In fact, the war had
been over more than a month.
Reddington was killed in a vehicle
accident in Germany on June 21,
1945, forty days after VE Day. He
was the youngest but not the only
Hummer to sadly lose his life by
mishap. Corporal Roland H. Quinn
’41 died May 31,
1945 in Ivenrode,
Germany, when
a carbine
accidentally
discharged. Sgt.
Joseph DeVirgilio
’42, even more
tragically if that is
possible, died in
combat after the
war was over.
He was killed by
enemy fire in Italy
on May 8, 1945,
one day before
victory was
declared but after
the fighting was supposed to have
ended.
It may sound glib to describe
someone as being “in the wrong
place at the wrong time” during a
war, but that was the tragic reality
for Captain Reed Lee McCartney
’30, United States Army. Reed was
reported missing in action in the
September 1942 issue of Steel &
Garnet. Three years later, the
Adjutant General’s office confirmed
that he had been killed on
December 15, 1944 in the most
heart-wrenching way possible: by
friendly fire. McCartney was on the
island of Mindanao in the early
days of the Japanese invasion of the
Philippines. He was captured and
held as a prisoner of war and on
December 13, 1944, he was among
1,691 other captives embarked at
Steel & Garnet
11
Subic Bay, Luzon for transfer to
Japan. Two days later his prisonerof-war ship was mistakenly bombed
and sunk by U.S. forces.
Signal Corps Corporal Americo
Dentino ’38 had luck that ran the
other way. During operations in
Sicily, he and two buddies stumbled
across an abandoned farmhouse in
the dark that had the potential to be
a comfortable place to spend the
night. They pushed furniture
around, tore down drapes for
bedding, and generally re-did the
place to their liking, secure in the
fact that medics had set up an
adjacent first aid station. In the
Clanton ’39, the first.
permission, he joined the
Pennsylvania National Guard’s
103rd Cavalry. With his eye on a
service appointment to West Point,
he subsequently enlisted in the
Army’s 3rd Cavalry where his
commanding officer was Colonel
George Patton. (Destiny would bring
the two together again when Patton
was the brilliant but controversial
pearl-handled-45s-toting commander
of the Seventh Army.)
West Point was not to be (20/30
vision) and in 1941 Koch had the
honor to serve as Sergeant of the
Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier at Arlington National
Reddinton ’44, the youngest.
morning they found the door of the
farmhouse posted: “Do not enter.
Booby traps.”
George Koch ’37: no time
for sergeants.
We first told this story in the Spring
2005 issue of Steel & Garnet, but an
abridged version bears repeating
here. In his military career George
Koch ’37 went from sergeant to
private four times — not because he
was busted but because he traded
his stripes for transfers to duties for
which he felt he was better suited.
Both he and the Army were better
for it all.
Koch graduated from Girard at
age 17, when the effects of the Great
Depression were finally winding
down and rumors of a second world
war were just picking up. Under age,
and thus requiring his uncle’s
unit sent out ahead of the troops to
look for Rommel’s Afrika Korps. It
was singularly dangerous work and
he was critically wounded in a mine
blast in Tunisia, with little hope
given for his surviving. After a
miraculous recovery he rejoined the
1st Recon Troop. As the North
Africa campaign drew to a close, a
battlefield commission was set in
motion for Koch but he was sent to
join in the invasion of Sicily before it
came through. Back with Patton
again, still a sergeant, Koch received
serious shrapnel wounds and was
transferred back to Tunisia and
eventually back to Walter Reed
DeVirgilio ’42, the unluckiest.
Cemetery. After doing two tours
here, his enlistment was up and he
returned to civilian life. But as soon
as he heard about Pearl Harbor he
reenlisted in the 3rd Cavalry and got
his sergeant stripes back.
Unfortunately, while George was
away, the cavalry had traded its
horses for armored vehicles. Koch
opted for the paratroops, and that
cost him his stripes again, which he
quickly earned back but not as a
paratrooper. The Army, in its
wisdom, sent him instead to Spence
Field, Georgia as a sergeant in the
military police. Koch hated it. He
traded his stripes yet again for a
transfer to the 1st Infantry Division
as a member of its newly formed 1st
Reconnaissance Troop. Here he
found a home, and quickly re-gained
his stripes for the last time.
Koch first saw action in North
Africa with a mechanized scouting
McCartney ’30, the saddest.
Hospital where he underwent a
series of operations.
Here is where his military career
goes seriously storybook. After
recovering, Koch was summoned to
the War Department and informed
that somewhere between his
wounding, his trip back to the states,
and his hospital stay, the order for
his commission was issued by the
European Theatre of Operations.
Trouble was, Koch wasn’t in the
European Theatre any longer. With
an efficiency not normally associated
with the Army, new orders were
issued and one fine day in January
1944, Koch was discharged as a
sergeant and immediately sworn in
as a second lieutenant. But wait,
there’s a real Disney ending. While
at Walter Reed Koch fell in love with
his nurse, Lt. Helen Adams, and
they were married in Oxford, PA on
June 4, 1944. (continued on page 12)
12
(“World War II” from page 11)
Steel & Garnet
Beaches but only by virtue of
experiencing the opposite of the
previously mentioned Reed
McCartney in Subic Bay, PI.
Barletta was in the right place at the
right time.
When he joined the Navy
immediately after graduating Girard
in January 1944, Barletta was 17
years old, five-foot-two inches tall,
and weighed 120 pounds. He barely
met any of the standards. But he had
a determination fueled by newsreels
he had seen of Nazi atrocities and
ordered off line so its crew could get
some rest. We’ll let The Inquirer story
pick it up from here: “The captain
ordered his men to grab some grub and
some shuteye. Barletta, more weary
than hungry, found a spot on deck and
threw down a mattress.The next thing
he knew he was airborne, propelled half
way up the mast by the force of an
explosion.The Tide itself had hit one or
more mines.The blast literally blew the
ship out of the water and broke the hull
in two pieces. Of the 112 men on board,
26 were killed instantly, including the
Steel & Garnet
13
rack. ‘Hold me,’ the officer pleaded.
The officer’s head was creased.
Shrapnel had virtually scalped him.
Barletta held and comforted the man.
The officer died in his arms.”
Barletta continued helping survivors
until he passed out again and was
Russell Johnson ’42: “Don’t
make me out a hero.”
Actor Russ Johnson has this thing
for islands — Gilligan’s Island is
one, where he made his career
playing the part of “The Professor.”
Bainbridge Island is another, where
he makes his home with his wife,
Connie. But the one that may stick
most in his mind is Morotai in the
Philippines, an island far from the
safety of television make believe or
the comfort of Puget Sound.
Barletta. His ribbons include
the Purple Heart.
The U.S.S.Tide after hitting one or more mines.
Koch ’37 on duty at th
e Tomb of the Unknowns.
Carmen Barletta ’44:
the longest day, the
lasting nightmare.
Carmen is now 82 yeas old,
but his memories of the DDay invasion of Normandy
have not dimmed. And the
images these memories
produce are not for the
faint-hearted. “They were
getting slaughtered like hell,”
Barletta said in an interview
with The Philadelphia Inquirer last
spring. “As soon as the ramp went
down the Germans started blasting
away. I saw bodies float by, some
with their faces up. Occasionally, it
all comes back to me. I wake up in
the middle of the night and see the
bodies again.”
Barletta survived that day in the
waters between Omaha and Utah
the fact that his Italian immigrant
father wanted to fight for the U.S. in
World War I but couldn’t because he
wasn’t a citizen.
Barletta was assigned to the
U.S.S. Tide, a minesweeper, whose
D-Day assignment was to make safe
the waters of the invasion site and
then escort the waves of infantry
landing craft to the beach. At the
end of that longest day the Tide was
captain. Had Barletta chosen to eat
instead of sleep, he would have perished
as well; the mess hall was destroyed.”
Barletta was knocked unconscious
by the explosion and woke up on a
nearby PT boat. Shaking off his
injuries he returned to the Tide to
search for surviving shipmates.
Again, The Inquirer: “Below deck, he
heard someone calling for help. He
found an officer lying on a depth charge
transferred back to the PT boat. It
took him a month in England to
recover sufficiently to be transferred
back to the states for leave, only to be
subsequently hospitalized for combat
fatigue. He was awarded the Purple
Heart in October 1944.
“The invasion of Normandy
was a great thing,” Barletta
concludes. “I’m glad I took part in
it. I feel honored.
Morotai was the
base from which
Second Lieutenant
Johnson flew B-25
bombing raids
with the 75th Bomb
Squadron, 42nd
Bomb Group, 13th Air Force
against the Japanese on Zamboanga.
The morning of March 4, 1945
was to be another of those raids and
Johnson’s forty-fourth mission as a
navigator-bombardier since arriving
in the Philippines in late 1944. He
would fly in a formation that day
with five other B-25s and twelve
P-38 escort fighters on a low-level
drop using 500-pound bombs. It was
short-life-expectancy kind of work
— the B25s were big, low, and slow
and there was always lots of antiaircraft fire to greet them. There was
also the terrifying prospect of being
shot down and captured; the
Japanese by now had developed a
propensity for torturing and killing
prisoners, usually by decapitation or
using them for bayonet practice.
Forty-four turned out to be
Russell Johnson’s unlucky number.
Early in the raid his plane took hits
in both engines and was burning
badly, making ditching in the sea the
only viable option. Just before the
pilot could do that the radio room
took a direct hit, killing the
radioman and breaking both of
Johnson’s ankles. Despite it all the
pilot made a successful ditch and
the crew was able to get into an
inflatable raft before the plane sank.
Two other B-25s had gone down
and their crews were also in the
waters off Zamboanga.
Johnson and the three other
survivors from his plane were the
closest to 1st Lt. Frank Rauschkolb
in a PBY Flying Boat, which
had just arrived on station.
Rauschkold observed the life raft
being pursued
by and under
fire from
Japanese barges,
and it became
a race with
desperately high
stakes for the
downed flyers:
be rescued or
be captured.
The PBY pilot
radioed for the
surviving planes from the raid to
strafe the barges while he landed
under heavy fire to pick up Johnson
(continued on page 14)
14
(“World War II” from page 13)
and his crewmates. He then taxied
500 yards under additional fire from
shore batteries to pick up the second
crew. With eleven rescued airmen
now aboard he headed for open sea
to get out of range and, with luck,
get airborne.
It never happened.
Outside the protective reef the
seas proved too rough to attempt a
take-off. Incredibly, the plucky PBY
pilot taxied the entire fifteen miles to
where the third B-25 had ditched.
Overcrowded already and taking on
water through flare tubes and bullet
holes, the rescue plane was in bad
shape. When the third group of
survivors was taken aboard the
count became seventeen rescued
plus eight crew. The PBY was too
heavy to take off. Only after all
non-critical equipment was
jettisoned and 400 gallons of fuel
dumped could the pilot get his
wounded aircraft back into the air
and headed home.
Johnson was treated on Morotai
Island and then shipped to a
hospital in New Guinea. For him the
war was over, and for his efforts in it
he was awarded the Purple Heart,
the Air Medal with oak leaf cluster,
Steel & Garnet
the Asian-Pacific Theatre of War
ribbon with four battle stars, and the
Philippine Liberation Medal. He
also earned a chapter in Reel Heroes
to Real Heroes & Real Heroes to Reel
Heroes, a book published in 2006
chronicling the war experiences of
film stars.
Russell Johnson was the first
Hummer I interviewed for this series
to say, “Don’t make me out a hero.”
Then he added, “To me, the real
hero was that PBY pilot.” Indeed,
of being true.”
In fact, the story is recounted in a
book, The Dark Years of Vlaardingen,*
about the Dutch resistance against
the occupying German army and
the dramatic rescue of one of its
underground leaders from a Nazi
prison in the last days of the war.
A major player in the rescue drama
was Pete Scotese, Girard College
Class on 1937, who had no business
being in Holland at the time. Did
we also mention that he had
Scotese, far left, receives wreath of appreciation.
Lt. Frank Rauschkolb was awarded
the Distinguished Service Cross for
his actions in rescuing Russ and the
sixteen others.
Peter Scotese ’37:
The chaplain’s jeep.
This story, without exaggeration,
could take up an entire issue.
Perhaps we should have saved it
because it will have to be drastically
abridged here. But I wouldn’t be
surprised to see it someday as an
historical novel or even a movie. It’s
that good. And, as Henry Kissinger
used to say, “It has the added value
“appropriated” a U.S. Army
chaplain’s jeep for the adventure?
Or that he posed as an officer in the
Canadian Army? Or that he was
AWOL the whole time? Yeah, that
Pete Scotese; none of this is too
surprising if you know him.
As we said, this all takes place in
the last days of the war. But Second
Lieutenant Peter Scotese, 17th
Airborne Division, had already
done his fighting. His first combat
experience was in a daytime drop
above the Rhine called Operation
Varsity on March 24, 1945.
(Daytime drop is another term for
“go for broke,” which really means
Steel & Garnet
“all or nothing,” which is a
euphemism for “your ass is in a
sling, buddy.”) Within two hours,
17,000 men jumped into 85,000
waiting German soldiers. That day,
1,070 paratroopers of the American
17th Airborne Division and the
British 6th Airborne Division
were killed.
Scotese recalls the night before
the jump: “I remember hearing
‘Berlin Sally’ announce on the radio
that the Germans knew we were
coming and that we shouldn’t bother
wearing our parachutes, as the flak
would be so thick you could walk
across it. She wasn’t far from the
truth, as anti-aircraft guns hit me in
my right shoulder just before
jumping. It was a superficial wound
that could be treated.” His second
wound, received on the ground,
wasn’t. Scotese was evacuated to the
76th General Hospital in Liège,
Belgium. In addition to the Purple
Heart he received a Bronze Star for
his action in the Battle of Buldern.
After recovering from his wounds,
Scotese rejoined his unit in
Oberhausen, and that is where our
story really begins. There he
befriended a young Dutch
interpreter who had escaped the
Germans by swimming across the
Ruhr River to the American side.
The man wanted to check on his
family in Rotterdam so Scotese gave
him a uniform and arranged for a
pass to Paris, but instead they
hopped a truck back to the hospital
in Liege where Pete knew the
Catholic chaplain. Scotese convinced
the padre to give him his jeep for a
day and appropriated the driver, as
well. Before departing for Rotterdam
Scotese loaded the jeep with food
and cigarettes for the young
interpreter’s family and tied an
American flag onto the front. Later,
he would add a Dutch flag.
The adventurous little party soon
discovered that, although liberation
was all but at hand, there were still
thousands of German soldiers in the
Netherlands. The route to
Rotterdam turned circuitous and
along the way a fourth member was
15
added to thicken the subterfuge: a
young Dutch medical student
wearing a Red Cross beret. At one
point the jeep encountered a stream
it couldn’t cross. In a display of
chutzpa for which they don’t give
medals, Scotese walked up to a
farmhouse where German soldiers
were stationed and commanded
them to build a bridge from some
beams. That would be Scotese
alright.
As the jeep with the American
and Dutch flags neared Rotterdam it
became clear that it was being
mistaken as the vanguard of the
approaching liberation. Scotese
wrote in his diary: “It is difficult to
describe the emotion with which we
were greeted. It was the first time in
five years that the Dutch citizens
were able to laugh and cheer as part
of a crowd. They were standing on
both sides of the road with flags that
they had hidden and with welcome
signs which they had quickly made
with whatever they had.” But the
reality of the situation was that the
cheeky little group in the chaplain’s
jeep was the only Allied presence in
Rotterdam and it was surrounded by
German soldiers. Scotese began to
think that returning the jeep on time
might be the least of his problems.
Meanwhile in nearby Vlaardingen
the Dutch resistance was in crisis.
One of its popular leaders, Piet
Doelman (Oom Piet, for Uncle
Pete), had been captured by the
Germans and there was real fear he
would be executed before the
liberating troops arrived. What did
this have to do with Scotese? Nada.
Except that three downed American
airman, who had been helped and
hidden by the Dutch underground,
stumbled onto Scotese and his
American flagged jeep completely
by accident near The Hague. Right
place/wrong place, right time/wrong
time? And for whom? That was all
yet to unfold.
When the American flyers related
their concern that Oom Piet was
about to be killed, Scotese replied,
“Well let’s rescue him.” Asked in a
later interview if he thought about
his offer to help, Scotese answered:
“No. I did it because the airmen
asked me to.” Asked how the group
prepared to pull off such a rescue,
he replied: “We didn’t prepare.”
The group proceeded to the
prison where Scotese, posing as
an officer in the Canadian Army,
did the talking through his Dutch
interpreters. They were apparently
very convincing. Scotese demanded
to see the commander and then
demanded from him a list of all
prisoners, the prisoners who had
been executed the previous month,
and the immediate release of
Doelman and his men. A lot of tense
discussion then took place and the
danger of the situation was palpable.
We’ll let Scotese tell how it all
played out in his own words: “After
a little while we were told that the
prisoners were waiting in the prison
yard and we left immediately. We
were flabbergasted when we didn’t
only see our three prisoners, but that
in fact the whole prison had been
emptied.” They now had too many
men to be accommodated by the
little jeep, and in a final act of
bravado or insanity, you call it, they
demanded and got the commander’s
car. Scotese: “I have often reflected
how surprised the Germans must
have been when I asked for Oom
Piet’s release in a chaplain’s jeep, an
air force leather jacket, a P-38
German pistol in a shoulder holster
and an odd assortment of passengers
who represented me as the vanguard
16
(“World War II” from page 15)
of the Canadian Army.”
It was ten days before Scotese
returned the jeep to an unhappy
chaplain and reported back to his
outfit where he had been listed as
AWOL. Standing in front of his
company commander, Scotese must
have felt a little as he did the time
Emil Zarella caught him red handed
in the Hum tunnels. But did he
really give a damn? The war was
over, he was in one piece, he had
one hell of an adventure, and he had
done a wonderful thing for the
Dutch people. As he related the
sordid tale and showed signed
declarations from officials in
Vlaardingen corroborating his story,
a seemingly unmoved C.O. fixed
him with an icy look. “Lieutenant,”
he began deliberately, “if you ever
do anything like this again
(pregnant pause) take me with you.
Dismissed.”
* The book is in Dutch, however
Scotese’s grandson was able to obtain
an electronic copy of an English
translation. If you are seriously
interested, an e-mail only copy is
available. Contact me at:
[email protected].
Tom McGovern ’40:
“Like staring into hell.”
You might say Tom McGovern’s
class was typical of all the Girard
classes with young men eligible to
enlist during World War II — typical
even of all the high school classes
and young men everywhere in
America at the time. Tom had 74
classmates when he graduated in
1940 and 72 of them joined up.
Perhaps it was just this kind of
unhesitating willingness to put your
life on hold and answer your
country’s call that led Brokaw to
coin his “greatest generation” label.
The Class of ’40 lost five of its
members to the war, including the
first Girardian to die, putting it at or
near the top for suffering the most
Steel & Garnet
losses. The previously mentioned
John Clanton was the first. (Class
records apparently list him as a
gunner on a B-17 shot down over
Pearl Harbor; our research shows
him as being killed in an air crash in
New Zealand). Nelson
Berger, an Army first
lieutenant, was
killed in New
Guinea. David
Dunmire, a first
lieutenant and fighter
pilot in the Army Air
Corps, was shot down in a
Thunderbolt over France.
Milton Barth, another Air Corps
first lieutenant, perished in the skies
over Italy when his B-24 blew up
after flak hit the bomb load. And
Stark McCraken, yet another first
lieutenant in the Marines, died on
the beach at Iwo Jima.
Tom McGoverrn was only sixteen
years old when he graduated from
the Hum, which qualified him for
the post-graduate program and
disqualified him for the service. But
by age nineteen he found himself
fully involved in the war against the
Japanese as a co-pilot on the
celebrated B-29 bomber. When Tom
caught up with it the war had only
ten months to run. He saw combat
for six of those, flying a total of 24
missions.
McGovern was with the 21st
Bomber Command, 20th Air Force
flying high-altitude, precisionbombing missions over Tokyo and its
suburbs. His B-29, the “Janice E”
(named after the pilot’s wife) was
part of the combined Air Force and
Steel & Garnet is grateful to the
WW II Girard veterans who
shared their stories with us for
use in this article, and to all the
former editors of Steel & Garnet
during the war years whose
reports provided invaluable
reference. We especially want to
acknowledge the assistance of
Brian Ruth ‘78 whose research
was indispensable.
Navy Air operations that destroyed
49 percent of Japan’s cities — all
this before the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki atom bombs.
Precision bombing by the famed
B-29s was the stuff of great newsreel
footage but it was nowhere near
as successful as it was
reported to be.
McGovern remembers
his unit bombing
Tokyo five times and
being about eight percent
effective. A textbook he has
since acquired on the history
of precision bombing in WW II
bears this out. It describes one
mission when B-29s, in clear weather
on January 3, 1945, dropped 348
bombs on a 1,500-foot railroad
bridge to get one hit on the bridge
and four hits on the abutments.
The plan B for such ineffective-ness
was firebombing and McGovern
Steel & Garnet
remembers it well. His plane
dropped the incendiaries in clusters
of 140 bombs and carried 40
clusters. After returning from fire
bombing raids Tom recalls the bomb
bay being filled with newspapers,
household items, even chairs, from
the target that were caught in the
updraft. He vividly remembers
looking down on sixteen square
miles of Tokyo ablaze and likening it
to “staring into hell.”
Tom McGovern left the Air
Corps with the rank of captain, a
seasoned war veteran barely out of
his teens. But he left with a
rewarding experience that only the
tiniest fraction of American
servicemen had the privilege to be
part of. As the Japanese signed the
surrender documents on the U.S.S.
Missouri, Tom’s B-29 participated in
the celebratory fly-over. “It was the
mother of all fly-overs,” he says with
17
justifiable satisfaction. “The whole
damn 73rd Wing was in the air!”
Flying over the Missouri, McGovern
had to be overwhelmed with the
realization that the war was over,
that he had helped end it, and
that he was finally going to get
on with his life.