November 18, 2019 • 22 mins
Army Private 1st Class John Bistrica was in the 1st Infantry Division – nicknamed “Big Red One” – on D-Day, June 6th, 1944. His story balances watchful anticipation and fierce action as he moves from Youngstown, Ohio to stateside base camps, then to the D-Day beaches and into Normandy, finding both feast and famine along the way.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode reenacts scenes of war. You'll hear gunfire and
descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised. America Looks Abroad, presented
at this hour on Sunday afternoon by the officers and
staff members of the Foreign Policy Association One Martin, which
(00:21):
they had not yet successfully controlled. Meanwhile, the British government
has begun to racition food and Prime Minister Chamberlain on
Monday warned the British public that they would face rim
sacrifices and a lower standard of living for the duration
of the war. Hi, I'm JaQuel interposo. And one thing
(00:42):
I did not expect when I started sitting with our
World War two veterans, where how many of them would
share stories of feeding foreigners abroad want golf. They were
friendly and they were abracious that we were there prefer them.
But we pulled into the light. Everybody's waving as a
ship were in because we were bringing in nothing at
(01:02):
that time was very stuprations and what happened ended up
the kids didn't have not much to eat. We fellow
in the mooring and what we call ten of one
rations Welcome to Service, Stories of Hunger and War A
production from I Heart Radio and me your host. There's
(01:22):
a lot of weight to the word rations when we
look back at this point in history. The word alone
means a designated amount of food assuring survival, but hunger
and want are associated with it too. In our episode
with Coast Guard gunners mate Frank DaVita, we heard about
ration ng in Scotland and how much it meant a
family to receive a tinned ham. Today, we spend time
(01:45):
with John Vastrica, who was on friendship on D Day
before storming into Normandy with the Army's First Division. For
those in the infantry, like John, rations could mean a
few things k rations or survival food, a combination of
served and dried foods like biscuits and jerky that could
be carried from position to position and they'd stay dry
(02:05):
and fresh. When you hear John say that he only
has a d bar to eat, he's referencing an oat
and chocolate bar the Hershey Company created that wouldn't melt
and was bitter enough that men wouldn't want to scarf
it down unless truly hungry. And as we're going to hear,
because they were staples in the cave, rations and at
base camps. Several veterans reference how much they hated powdered eggs,
(02:27):
so many of them remember the simple joy of finding
a fresh egg. Sea rations were cans mixing wet and
preserved foods. Evidently there was a lot of hash in
those sea rations. Today, these kinds of rations are called
m r ees Meals ready to eat, and weak civilians
can thank such wartime production for our favorite instant drink,
powders and protein bars, a connection we're going to explore
(02:49):
on this show down the line. Then there are the
rations imposed by governments upon civilians to help regulate food stuffs.
In short supply transportation means prioritized moving war equipment and
per sonew and so imported items like coffee, sugar, meat,
and canned goods became limited and could only be purchased
with ration cards. Grocers would stamp the items you were buying,
(03:09):
and once your stamps ran out, no more of that
item for the month. As well. Here, John's war and
food story is a bit feast or famine with both
sides of the word ration at play. So now let's
slow and sit with John Bastrica m Johnny Bistrica Private
(03:37):
first Class I grew up in Young Sad, Ohio. My
father worked hard. He was a blacksmith. He worked forty
two years as a blacksmith in the don Ohio, the
US skill. He used to speak the Croatian language mostly
to Us instead of English, and then my mother used
to holler adom speaking English, speaking English, but he used
(03:58):
to sit at the supper table talking Croatian. My mother
made Croatian food and English food. She means to make
a nut roll, roll the dough on the dining room
table and put the nuts in here, then rolling the bacons.
It took a lot of time. And when she made
raisin cookies and cake, that took a lot of time.
And at breakfast, I had Jack Armstrong's American Boy Wheeze.
(04:23):
That's what she would give me. I got a hold
of the newspaper and I sat down on the chair
(04:44):
and my dogs jumped up on my lap, and my
father was sitting in a rock or in the other room.
And then as I was reading the paper, the radio
came on and told us December some United States of
America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by nabling their forces
(05:07):
of the Empire of Japan. And then my father said
to me, See, I told you they would throw the
scrap back at you. The Japanese used to come and
pick up the scrap metal that it was no good
to us anymore. They used it in Japan. They made
things out of it that they didn't have to steal
there at all. When they used to come to McDonald
(05:28):
to pick up the scrap, Tell everybody out there that
someday we're going to get it back at us. And
that's what happened. When I went to church on Sunday,
I found out one man, he was a ten thirty
mass with me two weeks ago, and he says, I'm leaving.
I gotta go back and to Hawaii. And then we
found out that he was killed in Pearl Harvard blund
(05:48):
the Arizona. Well, everybody was worried about what was going
to happen. All the conversation was about the war. We
talked about it in school. All the boys was wondering
if they were going to be drafted and what was
going to happen. I graduated JUNI forty two. I went
(06:09):
to work at a brewery and then I went to
a commercial shearing gland and the things that I was
welled in parts of baby bridges and pontoon bridges. I
didn't know that someday I would go over them. I
got drafted in October. I never got called up until January.
I was an infantryman, but I was actually armored in
(06:32):
free if it was an armored US in the tech,
and that's when the armored infantry would come and back
them up. You had a train for everything. You had
a train for half tracks, and a jeep wasn't called
the jeep, it was called the peep, and you had
to learn how to drive them. I got a T
five reading and I got the jeep driver for the
(06:54):
Colonel four made Maryland. They called that boon Town because
there were tents and they were selling all kinds of equipment,
shoelaces and whist watches, and the area selling food. I
would saved before Thanksgiving. I was in forty three. I
(07:14):
was going to be leaving that day, so I ordered
the hamburger. That was the best hamburger ever eat. Just
some about how they put it together. It was just
so tasty. Maybe because I was eating all the bad food,
I don't know. We got on the ferry in New
Jersey and it took us across to New York to
(07:35):
Pier ninety and that's when I got on h M. S. Rangitiki.
It traveled from New Zealand, Australia and maybe South America,
and they picked up Coca cola and white boars and chocolate.
We used to get a lot of spam and we
had a lot of mutton. About two hundred of us
called on the ship. Convoy probably had a hundred ships.
(07:56):
You could see the screws of the ship behind you,
and we were escorted by Canadian corvettes aeroplanes, and we
had Navy ships with us. The ship on the right
side of us going up was full of wax and
registered nurses. We used to wave to him. That's all
we could use. Wave to him. I guess they were
getting ready for the war too. You had exercise every
(08:19):
day jumping off the ship, and we had special life
reservers May West life reserves somebody gave him then, and
if you went out on the deck you had to
put the may West on in case the ship was shot.
We had two submarine attacks at nighttime, but nothing happened
(08:41):
to us. The convoy broke up into three parts and
I stopped at Liverpool and at Liverpool and we were
put in trucks and we were sent up north to
Litchfield and then we took us the Lime Regis where
I joined the first division. What I remember burn Lime Breaches.
Everything was a blackout. You had to keeep the lights
(09:04):
shut off to arriving the vehicle. And when I first
got to England, I used to horror at the English
people get on the other side of the road. I
was the wrong, not them. Sometimes they used to swear
they were in the wartime status. But the best thing
I ever had out there was putting Yorkshire pudding. That
(09:25):
was good Yorkshire pudding. We didn't talk about the war.
We weren't talking about the invasion at all. We try
to keep it off our mind. We didn't want to
know what was going to happen. We used to go
downtown and get fish and chips. We played in the
wreck room. We played pat pong in there. There's nothing
much you can do there. One Sunday I went to
(09:46):
the charge of quarters. Is there a Catholic church around here?
He says, yeah, it's up the road St. George's. So
I was in my uniform and I walked through the door,
and the offters took me up front. I said my prayers.
I sat down. Then all of a sudden the priests,
dressed in his investments already came out. He says, were
(10:07):
you an alder boy at home? I says, yes, I
used to serve ten thirty masks. He said, well, guess
what you're going to serve mass today? So I served
Mass in my uniform and then after Mass, you're the
ushers of that couple of women there. They took me
down the hill in the restaurant and they bought me
a breakfast meal and they told me it wasn't powdered eggs,
(10:29):
it was real legs. So it's the first time I
had real eggs. When I was in England, the English
people were very good to us, and before we least
they had tears in their eyes and they were wishing
us luck. After we left Line Regis, we went to
d camps in Portsmouth. Everything was quiet down there. You
(10:53):
couldn't go anyplace. The MPs were watching the gates. You
couldn't even write a letter. They didn't want the Germans
though what was happening. You had nothing in your wallet
identify You had to take all your patches, off, your
uniforms and your hat. But the Germans knew already that
we were at the first division. Samuel Chase was the
(11:16):
ship that carried all the landing craft. They had a
special code word Piccadilly Circus. That was the code name
on the landing craft. You were supposed to stop at
Piccadilly Circus, which is actually eleven miles out in the channel,
because they didn't want the Germans to know where the
heck we were at. While we were sitting on Samuel
(11:36):
Chase going to run in circles before I got to
the landing craft, one sailor came up to me. He said,
how would you like some nice food? I said I
would love it. He said, but you'd have to give
me your blanket. So I gave him my k rash
and boxes three boxes. He filled it up with fruit
cake and bolowny sandwiches and everything else. And then the
(12:00):
invasion was delayed one day because of the weather. I
carried my assault jacket, over a hundred rounds of ammunition
for renades, and I carried a whole packet rifle grenades,
my cartridge belt, then my life reserves, and then I
had the gas mask. I would say that forty pounds
(12:24):
of equipment after the break. When I got off the
landing GRAF, I prayed that I get off on shore
in one piece. Stay with us, MHM, Welcome back to
(13:02):
Service stories of hunger and war from my Heart Radio.
I'm Jacqueline Proposo, And as we continue with John Bastrica's story,
I'd like us to keep something in mind. This season,
we're hearing the voices of men over ninety years old.
John just turned only a few years ago. He was
able to travel for the seventieth anniversary of D Day,
(13:24):
connecting with and educating crowds. Now that's not physically possible
for him. Our veterans are very aware of how many
of their compatriots are passing daily. Bodies want strong and true, fallen,
prey to tide and time. These Service episodes honor the
stories our veterans can share with us now. But if
(13:45):
you visit Service podcast dot org, you can see and
hear more of their contributions over past years, and the
scars from what they gave in that service over seventy
five years ago now haven't nearly faded. Would I be
(14:09):
lyne if I said I wasn't scared. When I got
off the landing grave, I prayed, did I get off
on shore in one piece? And I did? But I
went off in waste deep water. How many of your
guys didn't make it? There was nobody in my way.
(14:30):
There was no Germans or nothing, because they already had
pulled out. But after I got off on the beach
and I was looking for my Sea company guys, I
come up into the hedgerows and I've seen a g
I he was bent over the hedgerow. Well, he was
from Sea company, but he was also dead. He had
(14:50):
a bullet through his head. A sniper has caught him
from a tree. I finally found the rest of my company.
The first thing, the sergeant says, you got any rifle grenades?
I think there's two snipers in those trees. So I
set the rifle down and he told me which way
to push it to the left, the right or up
or down? And I fired two rifle grenades. No shots
(15:15):
from the trees. Either I killed them or they took off.
After we got organized and we went on the road,
we run into some French. They gave us kanya to drink,
and all they would say is bosh kaput. That means
the Germans took off and they would tell us which way.
So as the day went on, we were going through
(15:35):
the fedgerows. So they get to the other hedgerow. You
had a crawl underneath the hedgerows or over the top
of the hedge rows. You didn't go through the gate
because the Germans had their guns zero in on the gate,
so if you went through the gate, you certainly wouldn't
get killed. When we stopped before nightfall, we were told
don't dig a slip churnch they foxhole because we might
(15:59):
have armor attack while some of us. I looked at
my rations and all those k rations that I got
from the sailor on the ship, they were so cont wet,
so I couldn't eat them. I had to throw them
away or I wasn't. With no food except the d
bar and no blanket. That night I used the raincoat
(16:20):
to cover myself up. The guys he gave me food
and then all you heard the big guns streaming me
me the battle wagons where you could touch the shell
of going over your head. We were going south in
France from Omaha Beach. So that night nothing happened, but
(16:43):
as morning came, the sergeant was coming down the line
where we were all dug in, and he would tap
us on the helmet and he'd put his finger to
his about to be quiet that he had point. We
run in the fourteen Germans, but they weren't Germans. They
were literally the ends, Polish and everything, just like the
American Army draftees. They surrendered, dropped all their guns on
(17:07):
the ground, and they were captured. Comant was the biggest
city we hadn't made. At Comant, they had bigger hedge rows.
That means we could dig a bigger hole. They go
sleep at night. We sent out patrols and at nighttime
guys had to go on and stand next to a
tree and make sure no Germans were sneaking over the
(17:29):
shoot at us. And then one time when we went
on out posts and we heard a noise and here
was a Red Cross truck and the girl got out.
She says, where's the front wine? And I said, well,
you better go back a couple of hedgerows. They didn't
know they were past it. They got back in the
truck and took off. We never did get coffee and
(17:51):
donuts that day. They brought rations up to us all
the time. The guys in the jeep I didn't smoke,
so I gave my sick read rational to the French winter.
He would give me a loaf of bread. And then
as we were walking along, if there was no Germans
the fight that we're just walking, we find them on
the road standing with cornak in her hand. Then we
(18:12):
would dump the water or whatever he had in our
canteen and put the cornak in here so it's saved
it till the next time. And then my aunts would
say us food too. They send us cake and candy
and everything there. What was happening at home? What was
happening to my dog? My father was still working pretty hard.
(18:39):
The food my mother used to make did not roll
it kbasi saucage. That's one of our favorite Croatian foods,
colossi and blood sausage. We were never hungry, that's for sure. M.
(19:02):
October forty four. Okay, everything was fallen down on I
mean the slag pile. I was awful of slag. I
couldn't hear ammunition that they're firing from their guns a loudness.
(19:22):
I guess when they picked me up, they were talking
to me and I couldn't understand them. I was losing
my hearing and they were making noise. I ended up
back in England and I wanted to go back, and
they wouldn't let me. M h calling away. I went
(19:50):
over or It took fifteen days. The Queen Mary took
five days to come home. I come home on a
train five days before Christmas. When I came to the door,
I knocked and the dog woke up. It's a Croatian
name Auchi. Nobody was home. Then I had to go
(20:10):
look for him. Where my mother was so I went
up the next street and she was up to neighbor's house.
When we come home, she unlocked the door. The dog
jumped on me, right up to my shoulders, and he
would never let me go because three years he hadn't
seen me. I went down on Front Street. It was
really something. We had box cars down there full of
(20:33):
Christmas trees. That was the first time I did since
I left the service. We had a special dinner and
I went to midnight Mass. How many of my friends
aren't going to be here this Christmas. I got killed
the Normandy. There's not many of us left. Of over
(21:10):
fifteen million surviving American World War Two veterans. We can
estimate that maybe three hundred and fifty thousand are living today.
We're thankful to have John Bastricca with us as one
of them. John was wounded in late October of nineteen.
He returned to Youngstown, got married to his childhood sweetheart
and Marie, and they had four children. He lives in
(21:31):
Youngstown to this day. Of course, there's a lot more
to John's story. You can hear him explaining details about
hedgerows and foxholes in our short supporting episode for the
Mechanically Minded, and you can see photos of letters he
wrote to Anne Marie during the war. Here a clip
of him sharing his run in with the Andrew Sisters
and more at Service podcast dot org and on Facebook
(21:52):
and Instagram. Where at Service Podcast, I always invite you
to invite your loved ones to the table, and if
so inclined, you can share raised back with us too,
or leave notes will pass along to our veterans. There's
a form for that on our website. Next time, we
move into Italy with George Hardy of the U. S.
Army Air Corps as one of the prestigious Tuskegee airmen
(22:12):
the segregated African American Fighter Pilot Squadron. We'll find that
George's food stories are less about what he ate and
more around when he couldn't eat service. As a production
of I Heart Radio, this episode was produced and edited
by me Jacqueline Proposo. Junny Ramikin was our excellent on
site engineer with John. Diana McGovern did our vocals from
(22:33):
a West Gabrielle Collins is our supervising producer. Our executive
producer is Christopher hasiotis. Our art is by a Girl Friday.
Thank you to John soun Joe for all of his help,
Thank you for listening, and thank you those who are
serving and those who have served
This episode reenacts scenes of war. You'll hear gunfire and
descriptions of violence. Listener discretion advised. America Looks Abroad, presented
at this hour on Sunday afternoon by the officers and
staff members of the Foreign Policy Association One Martin, which
(00:21):
they had not yet successfully controlled. Meanwhile, the British government
has begun to racition food and Prime Minister Chamberlain on
Monday warned the British public that they would face rim
sacrifices and a lower standard of living for the duration
of the war. Hi, I'm JaQuel interposo. And one thing
(00:42):
I did not expect when I started sitting with our
World War two veterans, where how many of them would
share stories of feeding foreigners abroad want golf. They were
friendly and they were abracious that we were there prefer them.
But we pulled into the light. Everybody's waving as a
ship were in because we were bringing in nothing at
(01:02):
that time was very stuprations and what happened ended up
the kids didn't have not much to eat. We fellow
in the mooring and what we call ten of one
rations Welcome to Service, Stories of Hunger and War A
production from I Heart Radio and me your host. There's
(01:22):
a lot of weight to the word rations when we
look back at this point in history. The word alone
means a designated amount of food assuring survival, but hunger
and want are associated with it too. In our episode
with Coast Guard gunners mate Frank DaVita, we heard about
ration ng in Scotland and how much it meant a
family to receive a tinned ham. Today, we spend time
(01:45):
with John Vastrica, who was on friendship on D Day
before storming into Normandy with the Army's First Division. For
those in the infantry, like John, rations could mean a
few things k rations or survival food, a combination of
served and dried foods like biscuits and jerky that could
be carried from position to position and they'd stay dry
(02:05):
and fresh. When you hear John say that he only
has a d bar to eat, he's referencing an oat
and chocolate bar the Hershey Company created that wouldn't melt
and was bitter enough that men wouldn't want to scarf
it down unless truly hungry. And as we're going to hear,
because they were staples in the cave, rations and at
base camps. Several veterans reference how much they hated powdered eggs,
(02:27):
so many of them remember the simple joy of finding
a fresh egg. Sea rations were cans mixing wet and
preserved foods. Evidently there was a lot of hash in
those sea rations. Today, these kinds of rations are called
m r ees Meals ready to eat, and weak civilians
can thank such wartime production for our favorite instant drink,
powders and protein bars, a connection we're going to explore
(02:49):
on this show down the line. Then there are the
rations imposed by governments upon civilians to help regulate food stuffs.
In short supply transportation means prioritized moving war equipment and
per sonew and so imported items like coffee, sugar, meat,
and canned goods became limited and could only be purchased
with ration cards. Grocers would stamp the items you were buying,
(03:09):
and once your stamps ran out, no more of that
item for the month. As well. Here, John's war and
food story is a bit feast or famine with both
sides of the word ration at play. So now let's
slow and sit with John Bastrica m Johnny Bistrica Private
(03:37):
first Class I grew up in Young Sad, Ohio. My
father worked hard. He was a blacksmith. He worked forty
two years as a blacksmith in the don Ohio, the
US skill. He used to speak the Croatian language mostly
to Us instead of English, and then my mother used
to holler adom speaking English, speaking English, but he used
(03:58):
to sit at the supper table talking Croatian. My mother
made Croatian food and English food. She means to make
a nut roll, roll the dough on the dining room
table and put the nuts in here, then rolling the bacons.
It took a lot of time. And when she made
raisin cookies and cake, that took a lot of time.
And at breakfast, I had Jack Armstrong's American Boy Wheeze.
(04:23):
That's what she would give me. I got a hold
of the newspaper and I sat down on the chair
(04:44):
and my dogs jumped up on my lap, and my
father was sitting in a rock or in the other room.
And then as I was reading the paper, the radio
came on and told us December some United States of
America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by nabling their forces
(05:07):
of the Empire of Japan. And then my father said
to me, See, I told you they would throw the
scrap back at you. The Japanese used to come and
pick up the scrap metal that it was no good
to us anymore. They used it in Japan. They made
things out of it that they didn't have to steal
there at all. When they used to come to McDonald
(05:28):
to pick up the scrap, Tell everybody out there that
someday we're going to get it back at us. And
that's what happened. When I went to church on Sunday,
I found out one man, he was a ten thirty
mass with me two weeks ago, and he says, I'm leaving.
I gotta go back and to Hawaii. And then we
found out that he was killed in Pearl Harvard blund
(05:48):
the Arizona. Well, everybody was worried about what was going
to happen. All the conversation was about the war. We
talked about it in school. All the boys was wondering
if they were going to be drafted and what was
going to happen. I graduated JUNI forty two. I went
(06:09):
to work at a brewery and then I went to
a commercial shearing gland and the things that I was
welled in parts of baby bridges and pontoon bridges. I
didn't know that someday I would go over them. I
got drafted in October. I never got called up until January.
I was an infantryman, but I was actually armored in
(06:32):
free if it was an armored US in the tech,
and that's when the armored infantry would come and back
them up. You had a train for everything. You had
a train for half tracks, and a jeep wasn't called
the jeep, it was called the peep, and you had
to learn how to drive them. I got a T
five reading and I got the jeep driver for the
(06:54):
Colonel four made Maryland. They called that boon Town because
there were tents and they were selling all kinds of equipment,
shoelaces and whist watches, and the area selling food. I
would saved before Thanksgiving. I was in forty three. I
(07:14):
was going to be leaving that day, so I ordered
the hamburger. That was the best hamburger ever eat. Just
some about how they put it together. It was just
so tasty. Maybe because I was eating all the bad food,
I don't know. We got on the ferry in New
Jersey and it took us across to New York to
(07:35):
Pier ninety and that's when I got on h M. S. Rangitiki.
It traveled from New Zealand, Australia and maybe South America,
and they picked up Coca cola and white boars and chocolate.
We used to get a lot of spam and we
had a lot of mutton. About two hundred of us
called on the ship. Convoy probably had a hundred ships.
(07:56):
You could see the screws of the ship behind you,
and we were escorted by Canadian corvettes aeroplanes, and we
had Navy ships with us. The ship on the right
side of us going up was full of wax and
registered nurses. We used to wave to him. That's all
we could use. Wave to him. I guess they were
getting ready for the war too. You had exercise every
(08:19):
day jumping off the ship, and we had special life
reservers May West life reserves somebody gave him then, and
if you went out on the deck you had to
put the may West on in case the ship was shot.
We had two submarine attacks at nighttime, but nothing happened
(08:41):
to us. The convoy broke up into three parts and
I stopped at Liverpool and at Liverpool and we were
put in trucks and we were sent up north to
Litchfield and then we took us the Lime Regis where
I joined the first division. What I remember burn Lime Breaches.
Everything was a blackout. You had to keeep the lights
(09:04):
shut off to arriving the vehicle. And when I first
got to England, I used to horror at the English
people get on the other side of the road. I
was the wrong, not them. Sometimes they used to swear
they were in the wartime status. But the best thing
I ever had out there was putting Yorkshire pudding. That
(09:25):
was good Yorkshire pudding. We didn't talk about the war.
We weren't talking about the invasion at all. We try
to keep it off our mind. We didn't want to
know what was going to happen. We used to go
downtown and get fish and chips. We played in the
wreck room. We played pat pong in there. There's nothing
much you can do there. One Sunday I went to
(09:46):
the charge of quarters. Is there a Catholic church around here?
He says, yeah, it's up the road St. George's. So
I was in my uniform and I walked through the door,
and the offters took me up front. I said my prayers.
I sat down. Then all of a sudden the priests,
dressed in his investments already came out. He says, were
(10:07):
you an alder boy at home? I says, yes, I
used to serve ten thirty masks. He said, well, guess
what you're going to serve mass today? So I served
Mass in my uniform and then after Mass, you're the
ushers of that couple of women there. They took me
down the hill in the restaurant and they bought me
a breakfast meal and they told me it wasn't powdered eggs,
(10:29):
it was real legs. So it's the first time I
had real eggs. When I was in England, the English
people were very good to us, and before we least
they had tears in their eyes and they were wishing
us luck. After we left Line Regis, we went to
d camps in Portsmouth. Everything was quiet down there. You
(10:53):
couldn't go anyplace. The MPs were watching the gates. You
couldn't even write a letter. They didn't want the Germans
though what was happening. You had nothing in your wallet
identify You had to take all your patches, off, your
uniforms and your hat. But the Germans knew already that
we were at the first division. Samuel Chase was the
(11:16):
ship that carried all the landing craft. They had a
special code word Piccadilly Circus. That was the code name
on the landing craft. You were supposed to stop at
Piccadilly Circus, which is actually eleven miles out in the channel,
because they didn't want the Germans to know where the
heck we were at. While we were sitting on Samuel
(11:36):
Chase going to run in circles before I got to
the landing craft, one sailor came up to me. He said,
how would you like some nice food? I said I
would love it. He said, but you'd have to give
me your blanket. So I gave him my k rash
and boxes three boxes. He filled it up with fruit
cake and bolowny sandwiches and everything else. And then the
(12:00):
invasion was delayed one day because of the weather. I
carried my assault jacket, over a hundred rounds of ammunition
for renades, and I carried a whole packet rifle grenades,
my cartridge belt, then my life reserves, and then I
had the gas mask. I would say that forty pounds
(12:24):
of equipment after the break. When I got off the
landing GRAF, I prayed that I get off on shore
in one piece. Stay with us, MHM, Welcome back to
(13:02):
Service stories of hunger and war from my Heart Radio.
I'm Jacqueline Proposo, And as we continue with John Bastrica's story,
I'd like us to keep something in mind. This season,
we're hearing the voices of men over ninety years old.
John just turned only a few years ago. He was
able to travel for the seventieth anniversary of D Day,
(13:24):
connecting with and educating crowds. Now that's not physically possible
for him. Our veterans are very aware of how many
of their compatriots are passing daily. Bodies want strong and true, fallen,
prey to tide and time. These Service episodes honor the
stories our veterans can share with us now. But if
(13:45):
you visit Service podcast dot org, you can see and
hear more of their contributions over past years, and the
scars from what they gave in that service over seventy
five years ago now haven't nearly faded. Would I be
(14:09):
lyne if I said I wasn't scared. When I got
off the landing grave, I prayed, did I get off
on shore in one piece? And I did? But I
went off in waste deep water. How many of your
guys didn't make it? There was nobody in my way.
(14:30):
There was no Germans or nothing, because they already had
pulled out. But after I got off on the beach
and I was looking for my Sea company guys, I
come up into the hedgerows and I've seen a g
I he was bent over the hedgerow. Well, he was
from Sea company, but he was also dead. He had
(14:50):
a bullet through his head. A sniper has caught him
from a tree. I finally found the rest of my company.
The first thing, the sergeant says, you got any rifle grenades?
I think there's two snipers in those trees. So I
set the rifle down and he told me which way
to push it to the left, the right or up
or down? And I fired two rifle grenades. No shots
(15:15):
from the trees. Either I killed them or they took off.
After we got organized and we went on the road,
we run into some French. They gave us kanya to drink,
and all they would say is bosh kaput. That means
the Germans took off and they would tell us which way.
So as the day went on, we were going through
(15:35):
the fedgerows. So they get to the other hedgerow. You
had a crawl underneath the hedgerows or over the top
of the hedge rows. You didn't go through the gate
because the Germans had their guns zero in on the gate,
so if you went through the gate, you certainly wouldn't
get killed. When we stopped before nightfall, we were told
don't dig a slip churnch they foxhole because we might
(15:59):
have armor attack while some of us. I looked at
my rations and all those k rations that I got
from the sailor on the ship, they were so cont wet,
so I couldn't eat them. I had to throw them
away or I wasn't. With no food except the d
bar and no blanket. That night I used the raincoat
(16:20):
to cover myself up. The guys he gave me food
and then all you heard the big guns streaming me
me the battle wagons where you could touch the shell
of going over your head. We were going south in
France from Omaha Beach. So that night nothing happened, but
(16:43):
as morning came, the sergeant was coming down the line
where we were all dug in, and he would tap
us on the helmet and he'd put his finger to
his about to be quiet that he had point. We
run in the fourteen Germans, but they weren't Germans. They
were literally the ends, Polish and everything, just like the
American Army draftees. They surrendered, dropped all their guns on
(17:07):
the ground, and they were captured. Comant was the biggest
city we hadn't made. At Comant, they had bigger hedge rows.
That means we could dig a bigger hole. They go
sleep at night. We sent out patrols and at nighttime
guys had to go on and stand next to a
tree and make sure no Germans were sneaking over the
(17:29):
shoot at us. And then one time when we went
on out posts and we heard a noise and here
was a Red Cross truck and the girl got out.
She says, where's the front wine? And I said, well,
you better go back a couple of hedgerows. They didn't
know they were past it. They got back in the
truck and took off. We never did get coffee and
(17:51):
donuts that day. They brought rations up to us all
the time. The guys in the jeep I didn't smoke,
so I gave my sick read rational to the French winter.
He would give me a loaf of bread. And then
as we were walking along, if there was no Germans
the fight that we're just walking, we find them on
the road standing with cornak in her hand. Then we
(18:12):
would dump the water or whatever he had in our
canteen and put the cornak in here so it's saved
it till the next time. And then my aunts would
say us food too. They send us cake and candy
and everything there. What was happening at home? What was
happening to my dog? My father was still working pretty hard.
(18:39):
The food my mother used to make did not roll
it kbasi saucage. That's one of our favorite Croatian foods,
colossi and blood sausage. We were never hungry, that's for sure. M.
(19:02):
October forty four. Okay, everything was fallen down on I
mean the slag pile. I was awful of slag. I
couldn't hear ammunition that they're firing from their guns a loudness.
(19:22):
I guess when they picked me up, they were talking
to me and I couldn't understand them. I was losing
my hearing and they were making noise. I ended up
back in England and I wanted to go back, and
they wouldn't let me. M h calling away. I went
(19:50):
over or It took fifteen days. The Queen Mary took
five days to come home. I come home on a
train five days before Christmas. When I came to the door,
I knocked and the dog woke up. It's a Croatian
name Auchi. Nobody was home. Then I had to go
(20:10):
look for him. Where my mother was so I went
up the next street and she was up to neighbor's house.
When we come home, she unlocked the door. The dog
jumped on me, right up to my shoulders, and he
would never let me go because three years he hadn't
seen me. I went down on Front Street. It was
really something. We had box cars down there full of
(20:33):
Christmas trees. That was the first time I did since
I left the service. We had a special dinner and
I went to midnight Mass. How many of my friends
aren't going to be here this Christmas. I got killed
the Normandy. There's not many of us left. Of over
(21:10):
fifteen million surviving American World War Two veterans. We can
estimate that maybe three hundred and fifty thousand are living today.
We're thankful to have John Bastricca with us as one
of them. John was wounded in late October of nineteen.
He returned to Youngstown, got married to his childhood sweetheart
and Marie, and they had four children. He lives in
(21:31):
Youngstown to this day. Of course, there's a lot more
to John's story. You can hear him explaining details about
hedgerows and foxholes in our short supporting episode for the
Mechanically Minded, and you can see photos of letters he
wrote to Anne Marie during the war. Here a clip
of him sharing his run in with the Andrew Sisters
and more at Service podcast dot org and on Facebook
(21:52):
and Instagram. Where at Service Podcast, I always invite you
to invite your loved ones to the table, and if
so inclined, you can share raised back with us too,
or leave notes will pass along to our veterans. There's
a form for that on our website. Next time, we
move into Italy with George Hardy of the U. S.
Army Air Corps as one of the prestigious Tuskegee airmen
(22:12):
the segregated African American Fighter Pilot Squadron. We'll find that
George's food stories are less about what he ate and
more around when he couldn't eat service. As a production
of I Heart Radio, this episode was produced and edited
by me Jacqueline Proposo. Junny Ramikin was our excellent on
site engineer with John. Diana McGovern did our vocals from
(22:33):
a West Gabrielle Collins is our supervising producer. Our executive
producer is Christopher hasiotis. Our art is by a Girl Friday.
Thank you to John soun Joe for all of his help,
Thank you for listening, and thank you those who are
serving and those who have served
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