For 101-year-old Rockford WWII veteran, holiday is about remembering friends lost in war
ROCKFORD — According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, there are just over 167,000 World War II veterans still alive today of the 16 million Americans who served.
Among them is Sam Caruana, a 101-year-old lifelong Rockford resident.
Caruana was 21 when Uncle Sam called his name.
"It was Friday the 13th," he said of his Nov. 13, 1942, draft date.
"We all took our basic training up in the state of Oregon, and we were scheduled to go to North Africa. During our training period, the Germans gave up in Africa. So, they had to retrain us, and they made a special unit. We were the first unit in the country to be trained for night fighting."
That specialty did little to protect Caruana from what he'd see in the daylight across the blood-soaked battlefields and war-torn cities of Europe.
Seated at the kitchen table in his Rockford home, Caruana pulled out three black-and-white pictures, smaller than his hand. The images showed thousands of corpses of Jewish prisoners scattered on the ground.
"You couldn't believe it," he said. "There were whole families, old men, ladies, babies, everything.
"And in the crematorium, they were down to just bones."
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'What's an A-bomb?'
Caruana was a member of the U.S. Army's 104th Infantry Division — nicknamed the Timberwolves. He served as a forward field observer in the artillery unit. He's a first cousin of Winnebago County Sheriff Gary Caruana.
"In my day," he said, "if you had a cousin who is a generation younger than you like Gary is, you were called his uncle and he would be my nephew."
From the ages of 21 to 24, Sam Caruana would fight in the European theater, including the Battle of the Bulge, the Battle of Hurtgen Forest (the Siegfried Line), Operation Grenade, Operation Queen, Operation Pheasant and the Battle of Aachen.
He witnessed the horrors of war firsthand when his company came upon Dora-Mittelbau, a concentration camp near Nordhausen, Germany.
The sight and smell of death were tempered only by the fact that somehow some survived. U.S. soldiers were able to liberate an unspecified number of starving and barely alive Jewish prisoners.
After Europe was liberated, Caruana returned to the States on a 30-day leave before preparing to go to Japan.
"On my last Sunday at home, I remember going out to the porch and picking up the paper and reading a big headline. It said, 'U.S. drops A-bomb.' And I said, 'What's an A-bomb?' Who knew what an A-bomb was?"
It was Aug. 6, 1945, and the United States had just dropped an atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima in Japan. Some 80,000 people were immediately killed and tens of thousands more died from radiation. A second atomic bomb was dropped three days later over Nagasaki.
Less than a week later, Japan agreed to an unconditional surrender, and the war was declared over on Sept. 2.
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'There's no one left'
Caruana does not have copies of the newspaper announcing the bombings of Japan or the ending of the war, but in his basement are numerous keepsakes or reminders of what he endured, what he survived and pictures of friends he lost.
After all these years, he still has his Army-issued duffle bag and combat boots, which he explained were originally shoes that he made into boots.
"They didn't have any combat boots that fit me," he said. "So, I took a pair of boots and cut the tops off and sewed them on to my shoes."
"These things walked all over Europe. The soles and the heels are gone."
Today, Caruana's Army buddies are gone, as well.
"We used to have an Army reunion every year in a different part of the country" he said. "We even had a general who used to come to our reunions. He was a good guy. He was a soldier's general.
"Now, there's no one left to go."
On Friday, people across the United States will honor those who served and those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Caruana, who can still drive, play golf and remember names and faces of the friends he lost in the war, will do the same.
"We have to remember them," he said. "We mustn't ever forget. I pray for all those who didn't make it back, and I pray for their families."
Chris Green: 815-987-1241; cgreen@rrstar.comp; @chrisfgreen
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: For 101-year-old Rockford WWII veteran, holiday is about remembering friends lost in war
