True heroes - tested in war - gather at a diner

Natalie Pompilio

is a writer in Philadelphia

We were talking about Vietnam. He was a squad leader, Second Battalion, First Marines. The company became separated on patrol.

"The overgrowth of trees in the mountain area there, you would be going down into a riverbed, trying to go from point A to point B, and at 12 o'clock in the afternoon, it would be like 7 o'clock at night," Alex DiGiacomo told me, looking away at something I could not see. "We got ambushed there one night . . ."

Then he paused. He was silent for 13 seconds. I know because I recorded the conversation, and I later watched the timer count down. Thirteen seconds is a long time when you're watching someone in pain. DiGiacomo sat across from me, his lips twisting and his eyes filling with water.

"We lost . . . ," he started, then stopped, then started again. "We lost about five or six guys killed, four or five wounded. We lost the L.T. and the radio man and the other guys, killed and wounded. It took us all night to go 200 yards to hook up with the rest of our company."

He remembered how the weight of his friends' bodies felt as he and the other survivors carried and dragged them away. He remembered the smells. "Certain aftershave lotions, certain times of year, I go right back," said DiGiacomo, 68. "The images you live with when you're in combat . . . you never get over it."

On Veterans Day, I joined 70 men for breakfast at Country Club Restaurant and Pastry Shop in the Northeast. They were members of what they call "The Old Neighborhood Breakfast Club." Their shared bond: having grown up in the Swampoodle neighborhood, a largely Italian enclave in North Philadelphia, around 21st Street and Indiana Avenue. The oldest men in the group are in their 90s; the youngest in their 60s. Many are veterans, of World War II, Korea, or Vietnam.

Vince Pongia, an Army veteran who served in Korea, began organizing these gatherings in the late 1990s, with five or six guys. Now, as many as 120 men have met in the rear of the diner.

Since this was a Veterans Day gathering, many of those who had served wore their ribbons or medals or clothing that identified their military branch. They brought photos of their younger selves in uniform and yellowed newspaper clippings about their deployments or homecomings. Romeo Battilana, 91, showed me a drawing of himself in colored pencil done by an artist he met in Germany in 1945. The cost? Two packs of cigarettes, "and I didn't even smoke. I was working at the PX," he said, the Army store.

Battilana fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He dragged a finger across a map of Europe to show me how his company - Company B, 49th Armored Infantry Battalion, Eighth Armored Division - had traveled across the continent.

Next to him, Americo "Mertz" Vasso, 89, pulled out a list: the names of 32 men from Swampoodle killed in combat during World War II. "They lived in an area one-quarter of a mile square," he said. "So much death in such a small place. You see how tight-knit this group is."

During World War II, Vasso spent 25 months stateside training to be an aviation navigator. Then the war ended and he was discharged. He now spends his time researching the lives and deaths of these men, his former neighbors. These men left lives and loved ones behind; they're more than names on a list.

He pointed out a few: "Frank Balestrucci, he was a neighbor of Romeo's on Taylor Street. He married a girl I went to school with - she sat in front of me." Balestrucci died in Belgium in February 1945 and was buried in Europe.

"There's John Dambra. He died over Wake Island, and his body wasn't recovered until 10 years later. They were doing construction and found his body and the bodies of the 10 other men on the plane with him." He was buried in 1954 in St. Louis.

Even those who didn't serve know the losses of war. Mario Gregorio, now 84, was the youngest of five children. His two brothers died during World War II: Johnny at the Battle of the Bulge, Sam at Iwo Jima. "I was the only son left," he said. "We were a close neighborhood, like family. When kids were drafted, going into the service, we'd have a goodbye party because most likely we wouldn't see them again. That's how serious it was."

Albert Torcini, 67, told me how he and his best buddy, Alex DiGiacomo, always said they would join the Marines right out of high school. They did. That was the early 1960s, when there was little talk of Vietnam. Both men were sent overseas. Torcini went first and was stationed in Da Nang.

"We had to qualify for combat pay. Six days under hostile fire out of 30," he said. "I qualified every month."

One day, he said, he got a letter from his mother: Frankie from down the block got hurt and his mother wants to know what happened. Can you find out?

Torcini was with the Third Marines. Frank was with the Ninth, on the opposite side of the city.

So Torcini crossed Da Nang - "our mothers were best friends. I had to. Angie wanted to know," he said. He got to the right base, bounced around trying to find the unit, then finally found someone who told him that yes, his friend had been injured and was in Japan, expected back in two weeks.

"I said, 'Where'd he get hurt? 'Cause I gotta write home.' They said, 'He almost lost his credentials,' " Torcini recounted, gesturing toward his groin. "A mine went off, hit him in the upper thigh, and he almost died."

The story drew guffaws. It was OK. Frank made it home.

DiGiacomo followed Torcini overseas. His stint was bloodier. He saw more loss and more death. After the day of the ambush, DiGiacomo's company moved around a few times before ending up on a hilltop where "we were basically bait to draw out the buildup of the North Vietnamese regulars that were there." Did they know they were bait? "We kind of felt it. The closest Americans to us were about 30 miles away."

When DiGiacomo's tour ended, he came home to no fanfare. He didn't necessarily want a celebration, he said, but he would have liked some appreciation. Still, he moved on. He had a wife, a job, and children to raise. Then he retired and had more time to think, and those painful memories filled the silence. He is now being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder through Veterans Affairs.

"We weren't wounded, so we came back and we thought we were doing OK, but the scars were there," he said. "Our loved ones saw it, but we didn't."

We started to talk about what it means to be a hero. It's sad, DiGiacomo said, that the generations that followed don't seem to have peers to look up to. "The heroes today, they're rock stars? What kind of hero is that?" he asked.

I think hero is a word used too loosely today. To me, heroes are those who act even though they know the risks. They're hard to find. Yet on Tuesday, I was lucky enough to be in a room filled with them.