Iwo Jima Day stirs painful memories

By Sally Applegate/ Correspondent

Thursday, February 17, 2005

When he allows himself to remember intense moments from his service during WWII, 78-year-old Georgetown resident Arthur Rauseo's eyes mist over. Only 17years old and already a veteran of the invasions of Tarawa and Saipan, Rauseo found himself at Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945 aboard the U.S.S. Lowndes, an 11,180-ton battleship.

The enormous troop and supply carrier backed up Marines being sent in landing craft to the beach, where many of them died in bloody fighting. Landing craft would then return to the beach to pick up the dead and wounded. The Lowndes, like the other large ships at Iwo Jima, would tend to the wounded and attempt to transport the most serious cases to a hospital ship. The dead were wrapped in heavy canvas and given military funerals before being put over the side into a watery grave. Sometimes the wounded died while being transported to a hospital ship.

"The only time I cried was when we had to put men over the side," said Rauseo. "When they go off into the water it really gets to you."

Under heavy fire from the beach, and with Japanese suicide kamikaze pilots constantly circling overhead, small landing vessels made their way back and forth to the landing site 24 hours a day.

"How do you think we felt taking these guys to the beach and bringing them back?" asked Rauseo.

When Rauseo wasn't in the electrical room he was upstairs bringing in bodies from the ships returning from the beach.

"Everyone in my division looked up to me, even though I was the youngest one, because I had already been in two battles," Rauseo said.

Rauseo's records show the casualty toll at Iwo Jima after the four-day invasion was 4,189 killed, 441 missing, and 15,308 wounded.

Iwo Jima Day is Feb. 19 in Massachusetts, the only state to recognize the day. It will be honored at a State House ceremony in Boston on Saturday morning. Rauseo and his wife Marjorie have attended reunions for the crew of the U.S.S. Lowndes, off and on, for 13 years, and he still proudly wears his service cap.

Rauseo was only 16 when he left high school, determined to join his four brothers in fighting WWII. Angelo Rauseo, the oldest, served in the Merchant Marine, Joseph was a Marine, Michael was in the Air Force, and George was in the Army.

Rauseo says boys as young as 14 would show up offering to fight, "but they were sent home."

Expecting to receive six months of training, Rauseo was sent to war after four weeks.

From bad to worse

Bad as Iwo Jima was, Rauseo considers his first battle, at Tarawa, much worse. Rauseo was 16 at the time of his first battle.

He was on board the U.S.S. Deede, a small, agile destroyer escort. In an unpublished column, the late journalist Ernie Pyle once described these little ships as "baby destroyers."

"They are rough and tumble little ships," wrote Pyle. "They roll and they plunge, they buck and they twist, they shudder and fall through space."

Rauseo says everyone on the U.S.S. Deede was new to warfare.

"We were greenhorns. The whole ship's crew was greenhorns," said Rauseo. "The U.S. was in trouble. We were sound asleep on this one. It's a wonder we won the war."

As the invasion of Tarawa turned into a disaster, the Deede deliberately jammed itself onto a reef to add support.

"Our guys were in trouble," said Rauseo. "We put the Deede right up onto the reef. We were pulling guys out of the water."

Sailors from these little destroyer escorts were fiercely proud of their ships, and often fought over whose ship was the best. There were also organized fights, "just for fun," and Rauseo regularly boxed in these. He still has his boxing gloves.

Following his service at Tarawa and Saipan on the Deede, and at Iwo Jima on the Lowndes, Rauseo was involved in the invasion of Okinawa on the Lowndes. Okinawa is considered the battle during which the most damage was done by kamikaze strikes. As many as 300 suicide kamikaze pilots dove their planes onto the allied fleet, and the destroyer Laffe was attacked by 20 kamikazes. Gunners on the Laffe took down nine planes, but six more hit the ship all at once. By the end of WWI, 300 U.S. ships had been sunk or damaged by kamikaze attacks.

Another terrifying memory for Rauseo is the day the Lowndes weathered a large typhoon steering into the wind, dipping so sharply from side to side it seemed it might capsize. He shared this petrifying adventure with fellow sailor Leo O'Brien, who served as a motor machinist mate on the Lowndes.

Rauseo was at the bottom of the pecking order for people to be sent home, being young and unmarried. During the war his mother Marian was fighting for her life in a hospital, and although the officers knew about this, Rauseo was never told, because there was no way he was going to be allowed home to see her. Fortunately, in a story that was widely reported, some of his brothers were sent back and saw her before she died. By the time Rauseo finally learned of his mother's illness, thanks to a Boston Herald sent to him by O'Brien, she had been dead and buried for months.

Rauseo came out of WWII with the WWII Victory Medal, the American Theater Medal and the Asiatic-Pacific Four-Star Medal, and having logged 61,391.5 miles on the U.S.S. Lowndes.

In Rauseo's civilian life following the war he worked for a local Malden electrical contractor, later returning to work at Converse Rubber in Malden, as a floor manager. He and his brother-in-law held dances in Malden at a hired hall. Rauseo describes himself as not the most upstanding citizen in those days, but says meeting his wife was a blessing.

"Thank God I met Margie," said Rauseo. "She straightened me out." They were married when Rauseo was 23 and Margie was 18.

During his many years in Georgetown, Rauseo may just be the longest-serving town official, having served as a firefighter at Central Fire Company with every one of the town's fire chiefs during a 50-year stint, once serving as acting chief. He served for 20 years on the Water Board, and has been an Electric Light Board Commissioner for 15 years. He figures he has 55 years total time in service to the town.

"I think I beat (Selectman) Paul Thompson by five years, " said Rauseo.

Rauseo is looking fit after having survived a heart attack 10 months ago, and he's hardly finished with town service.

"I'm going to run for the Light Board again this year," he promised.

THe 159th trained at Camp Rucker. moved into europe by way of north Ireland. Got into action just after 6 june D-day 44 Supported units like the 4th ID around to the west to Brest then Eat ward across Frnace into Belgium was in the Bulge on the south flank protecting Luxembourg city.

My brother Ken made it till 19 Dec. 44 when he was WIA. He is one of 3 other brothers. All 4 were in WW II and came home.

Correspondents Report - Sunday, 13 February , 2005

Reporter: Philip Williams

HAMISH ROBERTSON: Exactly 60-years ago one of the world's most exquisite cities, a jewel of art and architecture that had come to symbolise the cultural and intellectual achievements of European civilisation, was destroyed in just two successive days of bombing by British, Canadian and American aircraft.

Whether it was morally right to reduce Dresden to rubble, leaving tens of thousands of its residents as charred corpses, is still debated today.

It's a question that exposes some uncomfortable issues.

Is it even appropriate to regret the loss of so many fine buildings and priceless artefacts in the face of such immeasurable human suffering? And why focus so much attention on Dresden, when other German cities suffered equal destruction and loss of life?

Did the German people bring this catastrophe upon themselves by supporting an evil neo-pagan cult, or were they also the victims of the Nazis, who never won a majority of votes in the last free elections before civil liberties were abolished in 1933, and who manipulated their way into power, effectively staging a legal coup?

So should Britain and its allies officially express regret or is there, as some maintain, nothing to apologise for?

Well, currently in Dresden to take part in the commemoration of the anniversary is Canon Paul Oesterreicher, who's devoted his life to the cause of reconciliation.

He spoke to our Europe Correspondent Phil Williams.

PAUL OESTEIRREICHER: I'm here in a dual capacity, both as representative of the city and the church in Coventry, which is a twin city of Dresden, but I'm also a trustee of the Dresden Trust, which is a group of British citizens who got together in order to make a contribution to the rebuilding of Dresden's Protestant cathedral, the Frauenkirche.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: Why is that the name Dresden brings up so much emotion when a number of cities were bombed on all sides? What's special about Dresden?

PAUL OESTEIRREICHER: It's not an easy question to answer because I've often asked myself that question. I think the main thing is Dresden was a world centre of culture, music and art, to a degree that probably no other German city is. So people thought it was a kind of vandalism to destroy this jewel of architecture and of art and of culture.

As you say, Hamburg, for instance, was just as badly destroyed, and probably just as many people were killed. But, for some strange reason, some places take on iconic symbolism. How these symbolic things happen, it's a bit of a mystery, but I think it's the international significance of Dresden, and the fact that it was destroyed when the war was almost over, that it was packed with refugees, and that most intelligent people could see no military reason for destroying it.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: Was there any justification that you can think of?

PAUL OESTEIRREICHER: None whatever. I don't think morally, or in terms of military strategy, there was any excuse for what was done to Dresden. We have to face it. Total war creates a mood of total revenge, and that's what it was.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: Does it call now, 60 years later, for a heartfelt apology from the governments involved?

PAUL OESTEIRREICHER: Apology is something that certainly the British find very difficult, but there are different ways of apologising.

And if you consciously say, "We want to make a contribution to the rebuilding of your city, we know we are to blame for its destruction, we know this was great tragedy in the midst of war."

When the Royal Family itself as well as very simple people, poor people often, families of those who bombed the place, make a financial contribution to its rebuilding, it's a practical way of saying we're sorry even if the government doesn't make formal declarations.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: There was of course a visit recently by the Queen, there was some hope, locally, that she might say at least some comment of regret. That didn't happen. Was that an opportunity missed?

PAUL OESTEIRREICHER: I think it was and I was involved behind the scenes. The reason is, the British establishment were dead scared of Britain's gutter press, that there would be headlines, "Queen Licks The Arse Of The Huns."

PHILIP WILLIAMS: What of the German people, the people of Dresden, there seems and extraordinary lack of bitterness?

PAUL OESTEIRREICHER: Germans who have some kind of historical memory, knowing what Germans did, which let's face it, the holocaust was something infinitely worse, it really was an attempt to wipe out a whole people, and who started this war? It wasn't Britain, it was Hitler invading one country after another to conquer Europe.

When you put that into the balance, then it's not surprising that intelligent Germans say we brought this on ourselves.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: When you look at how the deaths of soldiers, for example, in Iraq are covered in the press, huge amounts of publicity over a handful of people killed, can we really relate to the tens of thousands that were killed in one night, now, when we're horrified by the deaths of a couple of individuals.

PAUL OESTEIRREICHER: Well, some people might say we've become a little more sensitive; that the war in Iraq, which I personally, and most British people find wrong, and in fact immoral, but nevertheless no one, now, no government would dare to say, "We're going to kill as many Iraqis as possible."

At least, there is some kind of attempt to say we have to limit the damage to other people. It's a small advance, but the kind of attitude of killing as many people as possible that was part of the psychology of the Second World War, I think, and I hope that that has gone. I'm not trying to belittle the tragedy of Iraq, but it is different.

PHILIP WILLIAMS: Do you think that the people of Dresden will get to the point where they no longer feel the need to commemorate what happened?

PAUL OESTEIRREICHER: I hope so, and I hope that they will recognise they're not a special case and I'm going to say that publicly in a speech I'm going to make here.

There were many, many Dresdens and this one has become symbolically important, but I hope the people of Dresden will sometimes think of what happened in Nagasaki and Hiroshima and what happened in Fallujah only a few weeks ago.

That's perhaps more important.

HAMISH ROBERTSON: Canon Paul Oesterreicher was speaking to our Europe Correspondent Philip Williams, in Dresden.

Music Files on the Patriot Site

papa

Got this letter last night. Isn't this great? Another family member of a 540th Combat Engineer.

Great website.  My father was Lt. Col. Jack O'Brien, CO of the 2832.  I have his copy of Overseas with the 540th Engineers.  I remember looking at it when I was a child.  My father passed away Feb. 17, 2004 after a lengthy illness.  I believe that he was instrumental in organizing the reunions, I believe the first was in Florida. 

 

I was trying to find out some information on the 540th when I came upon your website.  The 540th was attached to the 5th and 7th armies.  Africa and Italy with the 5th and when did they change to the 7th army?  I remember the patches of both armies, but did not ask my father about them. 

 

Best regards,

 

John C. O'Brien, Jr.

Dallas, Texas

Here is my answer to him:

Hi John:

 

What a nice surprise.  I have heard from a number of vets this week and/or their families.  Must be in the air!

 

The 540th was detached from the 5th Army shortly after the fall of Rome along with several other units including the 36th and 48th Engineers, the 3rd, 36th and 45th Infantry Divisions and the 1st Armored Division.  They all became a part of 7th Army for the invasion of southern France in August of 1944.  The 39th Engineers and the 34th Infantry Division remainder in Italy for the duration.

 

I will forward his name to a few of my 540th buddies and see if they recognize the name.  I can put you in touch with them too if you so desire.

 

Let me know if I can be of any further assistance.  I'd love to include a page for your dad on the site too.  My eventual goal is to write a book on the VI Corps Engineers.  They deserve to be remembered.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

He also wrote back and said "Mr. Kenneth Kleinbach called my father just before he died." Ken's name has been mentioned on this site several times. I've talked to him on the phone, but don't have a page for him yet. He was also a member of the 540th Combat Engineers.