WWII Veterans Share Their Stories With NHS Students

By Eliza Hallabeck

World War II veterans and representatives from the Military Museum of Southern New England of Danbury visited Newtown High School on Wednesday, June 8, to speak before students about the war.

“It’s really important that you guys meet these guys,” said Military Museum of Southern New England representative Sam Johnson to students in the school’s Lecture Hall, “and listen to what they have to say, because there will be a generation… that will ask you, ‘Did you ever meet a WWII vet?’ It’s going to happen.”

The veterans and Military Museum representatives spoke through different periods at the school, and as class periods ended, new students ventured in to hear the presentation.

“I think it is very interesting,” said NHS freshman Cole Ricciadi. “I’ve always had an interest in WWII, and in history in general.”

Cole said it was good to hear the veterans’ stories from their own perspectives.

Multiple local veterans attended the event, and one, according to Board of Directors member for the Military Museum Lois Barber, showed up, spoke, but never shared her name. Ms Barber asks that the army nurse who spoke, or anyone who knows who the nurse was, call her at 203-270-8017. Ms Barber also asked for any other veterans who are interested in participating in such events to contact her through her phone number.

Sandy Hook resident and Army veteran Warren Pinckney said most of the students who spoke to him on Wednesday, wanted to know what the country was like during the war.

“I don’t know how many of you will go onto college,” said Mr Pinckney, “but then, a lot of us just weren’t able to. We had to serve our country.”

A member of the 66th Infantry Division, 264th Regiment, Company B, Warren Pinckney was a mortar gunner in the US Army during World War II. At age 18 he had signed up for the Army Specialized Training Program, an accelerated college program for which he qualified, in hopes of earning his engineering degree. Following basic training he was sent to the University of Missouri to study, but the program was shut down when all Army personnel were pulled into the infantry to assist the war effort.

After training in 1944, Mr Pinckney explained he eventually found himself aboard the SS Leopoldville with an English convoy about ten miles, as Mr Pinckney estimates, out at sea in the English Channel. It was Christmas Eve, and, after being stationed in England, Mr Pinckney’s company received the orders to move out. He and the rest of the men with him were placed in the bottom level of the ship for transport, and there was one stairway leading out of the area. When a German missile struck the SS Leopoldville, Mr Pinckney said communication became muddled. Men were “pushing and shoving,” Mr Pinckney remembered, until one man began singing Silent Night. The rest of the men then began to sing.

The crew of the SS Leopoldville had taken all of the lifeboats by the time Mr Pinkney and his division made it to the top of the ship.

Mr Pinckney explained an English destroyer was brought by the side of the SS Leopoldville for men to jump to safety, but some were get caught between the two ships. Just before the destroyer left, Mr Pinkney jumped. He was hit hard by the fall, and met with “a fellow” who offered him tea and a cigarette for comfort. It was the first time he had ever smoked.

Two days before the end of the war, Mr Pinckney collapsed due to an undetected injury from his jump. Mr Pinckney recalled the day the war ended he was being operated on in the hospital.

When asked, Mr Pinckney said he could not remember dissention toward the war at home in the United States, but he had been a high school student before being drafted for the war.

Wounded In Action

Newtown resident Alfred Green, Jr, also spoke, and displayed a sign he held during Newtown’s 2010 Labor Day Parade. The sign read, “Alfred Green Jr. WWII Vet. Recipient: Purple Heart, French Legion of Honor.”

Mr Green was 23 years old when he joined the army in 1943. Stationed just north of Rome with the 83rd Chemical Mortar Battalion, Company D, he served as a mortar gunner. When volunteers were sought for glider missions into the Riviera region of France, Mr Green stepped up. In early December 1944 in Zellenberg, France, near the German border, the unit was setting up its mortar guns when German soldiers on the other side of the mountain opened up on them, shelling the village. Mr Green was hit by shrapnel in multiple places, and was eventually received honorable discharge from the army.

Another resident, Richard Andrews, told the students how he was in his senior year of high school when he signed up for the Army Air Corps. After several months of training with different divisions in different areas of the country, Mr Andrews explained he was sent to England. Mr Andrews briefly described the sleep quarters on the ship on which his unit traveled to England. There were seven bunks stacked high above each other, and Mr Andrews said he was given a bottom bunk. During the trip all of the men sleeping above him got sick from being at sea.

“I didn’t use my bunk at all,” he said. “I went and sat in the corner.”

As The Newtown Bee reported in 2008, Mr Andrews has was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, a US Army Individual Decoration awarded for combat heroism or for meritorious service. Mr Andrews, who was captured by the Germans and held as a prisoner of war from December 1944 until May 1945, has also been honored with two Purple Hearts, the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Good Conduct Medal, the Prisoner of War Medal, and the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, The Bee reported.

Mr Andrews described being marched, and put on a train for the students after being taken by the Germans.

The presentation by the Military Museum of Southern New England to Newtown High School students has become an annual event at the school, overseen by NHS teacher Anthony Metz.