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Veterans remember World War II

The veterans were in their late teens and early 20s when they fought in places that most people now know only from history books: Normandy, the Ardennes, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

WWII vet Albert Moss, who ran a landing craft that took soldiers at Normandy, Iwo Jima and Okinawa holds a Japanese rifle and wears a sailor's hat he kept as souvenirs after the war. November 8, 2013 (RON TARVER/Staff Photographer)
WWII vet Albert Moss, who ran a landing craft that took soldiers at Normandy, Iwo Jima and Okinawa holds a Japanese rifle and wears a sailor's hat he kept as souvenirs after the war. November 8, 2013 (RON TARVER/Staff Photographer)Read more

The veterans were in their late teens and early 20s when they fought in places that most people now know only from history books: Normandy, the Ardennes, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

But as the nation marks Veterans Day, 70 years later, their memories of World War II remain vivid, as if the physical and mental wounds of their service had been much more recent.

Sam Laskin, 93, of Lower Providence Township, clearly recalls piloting a B-24 bomber, dubbed "Mean Kid," over a German target in France in 1944 when flak passed through his plane, seat, and right leg before exiting the fuselage.

He managed to save his crew and heavily damaged aircraft and was awarded the Silver Star for "conspicuous gallantry."

Stanley Wojtusik, 88, of Philadelphia's Torresdale section, graphically describes horrendous conditions in POW camps where he was held after the Battle of the Bulge and the deadly aftermath of the Allies' bombing of Dresden.

And Joe Diamond, 93, of Cherry Hill, remembers the night he was wounded by shrapnel along the Rhine, the joyous link-up with Russian allies on the Elbe, and scores of Nazi concentration camp laborers whose bodies were left in an eight-foot pyramid outside Leipzig.

More than 16 million served in the United States armed forces during World War II, officials said. About a million remain, and they are dying at the rate of more than 600 a day, according to estimates by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"A day hasn't gone by that I don't think about the war," said Diamond, an Army combat medic and Camden native. "It's not something you can shake off.

"I've been married 65 years, and my wife lives in constant fear when I go to sleep because of my nightmares," he said. "She says I still moan and groan in my sleep."

For many American service members, D-Day, June 6, 1944, was the day they will never forget. After a massive naval bombardment, Albert Moss, 88, of Southampton, Bucks County, piloted a Higgins landing craft loaded with soldiers.

"The capacity was 36, and we had over 44," said Moss, who, as a youth, spent his summers on the Jersey Shore. "The machine-gun fire was all around us, like rain on the water.

"If you stuck your head up, it would get machine-gunned off," the former sailor said. "I put a cigarette in the mouth of a soldier next to me, I turned around to get a match, a mortar went off, and he was killed instantly."

"I was lucky," added Moss, who would later take part in several more landings, including Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

A little more than a week later, Lt. Sam Laskin's bomber joined dozens of others heading to Cambrai-Epinoy, France, to attack a German Luftwaffe airfield. Enemy flak wounded Laskin and so heavily damaged his aircraft that it went into a tailspin, dropping from 22,000 to 10,000 feet before it could be leveled off.

Making matters worse, the crippled bomber was swarmed by German fighters as it limped back to England. The enemy was eventually driven off by American P-47 Thunderbolts.

But Laskin was unsure his plane would make it. He was bleeding profusely and ordered his crew to bail out. Two engines were inoperable, and only one landing wheel could be deployed.

"I told them if they didn't leave, 'I'll court-martial all of you' " he said. "But they stayed with me."

Laskin landed safely and was carried to a school-turned-hospital for surgery. "I was fortuntate," he said. "I guess the Good Lord was helping me."

As the Allies pushed toward Germany, Nazis made a last-ditch effort to throw them back. It turned into the Battle of the Bulge.

Army Cpl. Benjamin Berry was a member of a quartermaster unit not usually involved in combat. But in December 1944, everybody had to pick up a rifle to stop the German onslaught.

"We were in the Ardennes forest, and the shrapnel and bombs were coming in," said Berry, 90, of Philadelphia's Germantown section. "We never saw the enemy; we saw his fire and naturally took cover the best we could."

Commanders "wanted us to offer resistance, give them something to think about," he said. "When [the fighting] was over, I saw a lot of corpses - not a pretty sight."

Wojtusik was less fortunate. The Germans surrounded his unit and "all hell broke loose" on Dec. 16, said the Torresdale man, who uses a cane and walker today, in part because of frostbite damage on his feet. "We held them off" but eventually had to surrender.

Wojtusik was marched to a train depot, which was strafed by a British fighter pilot who did not realize the freight cars were loaded with American POWs. Many were killed.

Over the next several months, he was held in lice-infested camps with little food and joined others who were ordered to remove the German dead after the Allies' bombing of Dresden.

"We took them on horse-drawn wagons to a massive grave outside of town," said Wojtusik, who also once saw an American-German dog fight over his POW camp. "When the American was victorious, the whole camp was cheering like the Eagles had just scored."

His camp was later liberated by Russian soldiers who executed at least two German prison guards who had mistreated the Americans.

The war was coming to an end. Joe Diamond had seen more than enough of it. As a member of the 104th Infantry Division, the so-called Timberwolves, he had crossed France and Belgium, then headed into Germany.

Along the way, he helped a German woman deliver a baby in the cellar of a farm house. She named the boy after Diamond: Hans Joseph Wolfgang.

He also came under heavy fire along the Rhine. "The air was filled with shrapnel one night" in March 1945, he said. "There were 500 shells in an hour. I was hit in my left instep, and the shrapnel is still there."

The war's final days offered a mix of joy and horror. Diamond recalled rushing out into the Elbe to embrace Russian soldiers, and sharing vodka with them.

He also saw the bodies of laborers who died while building a tunnel near Leipzig to store V-2 rockets that were to be fired on London.

"In World War II, we had combat fatigue; now it's PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)," Diamond said. "I was a victim of that.

"You lived with death everyday of the week," he said. "I still haven't gotten it out of my system."