Vince Speranza Visits the ALPLM on Veteran's Day

to prove that i love you i swear i don't know how you'll never know if you don't know good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome to the abraham lincoln presidential library and museum in springfield illinois for a very special facebook live event it is veterans day of course we can't express enough our gratitude and appreciation for the men and women who have served in our military over the years and tonight we celebrate veterans especially those from the greatest generation a program i think you're going to really enjoy if you've seen our special guest in the past here at the abraham lincoln presidential library and museum of course if you're watching from around the state around the country even around the world please let us know in the comments section where you're watching from tonight and uh be sure to uh comment in the comments section below for that uh and of course if you have some questions we will have some time for a little q a at the end of the conversation tonight so let's go ahead and get it underway on this very special veterans day edition of facebook live we welcome in to the abraham lincoln presidential library and museum our very own director of the oral history program dr mark deputy good evening mark thank you joe and thank you all for checking in with us this evening and as he already said i think this is going to be a special night i've got seen it across from me vincent spironza good evening vince good evening so let's a very quick introduction for you vince and then we'll get right to the program vince an italian family grew up in staten island was born in hell's kitchen fence i think that's where you were born did i ever tell you that i was mugged in hell's kitchen okay but it's all about you tonight so anyway we'll get to that later vince decided that the beginning of world war ii he needed to get into it he joined the infantry and then he saw an airborne presentation some paratroopers jumped and i believe that was 1943. you can correct me if i got that wrong and decided that's what you wanted to do a little bit extra pay but all those boots and that uniform they are wearing ends up being sent overseas and arrived in europe in november of 1944 so you missed d-day you missed the market garden campaign but you were there soon enough to get into bastogne and that's where the 101st airborne made its uh glory if you will you were assigned as a machine gunner i know to h company 501st parachute infantry regiment 101st airborne division and you trucked into bastogne is that right after five weeks of airborne training i made my first jump out of the back of a truck there you go okay vince's story about his world war ii experiences is very very well known and we'll get into some other ways you can find out more about it but vince we wanted to pick up the story tonight in 2009 65 years after the battle and i believe it was in florida you encountered somebody there who convinced you that you should go back to bastogne and i'm going to hand it over to you and kind of tell that story and how you ended up going back in 2009 okay first let me say this when i came home from the war i was 20 years old i'd been through the will but as a young boy i remember reading about the world war one guys who when they came home from the war shell shock and nightmares and personality changes have beaten up their wives and so on and i said to myself i looked at the mirror at my mother's house when i came home from the war and i said listen you are not going to be one of those guys who comes home and beats up his kids and you're going to take all that stuff of cutting people on half of the machine gun and sticking bayonets and people and you can put it in the back of your head lock the door you can't forget it but you can suspend it and i want to tell you mark that i was very successful at it i met a nice woman got married kids i became a school teacher and all of that stuff the war i buried i said you're no longer a soldier you're an educator now it was in 1965 19 2009 that uh that changed a woman uh was uh weighing on on serving on beyond the store and she had an accent and i said madame do i denote a french accent and she said no belgique i said oh belgium she said yes do you know belgium and i said uh yeah bombs bullets and snow that's what i know about belgium and she said oh you were there during the war i said yeah she said with the 101st airborne division i said yeah she said michoud you haven't been back i said no she said you must go back the people of bastogne have never forgotten the 101st airborne division there are monuments to all over town there there are streaches every year all the men and women in the town put on american uniforms with a screaming eagle patch they reenact the battle there are ceremonies she said you must go back and my first reaction was what for i spent 65 years trying to forget that stuff why do i want to go back and my daughter said pop the one thing if nothing else we should go back and visit the cemetery where your guys are and and i said yeah yeah yes i i should go back one time and you know my wife had been taken away put permanently in a nursing home i was an 85 year old man sitting around waiting to die but i decided okay let's do this one thing and it changed my life from an 85 year old man sitting around waiting to die i'm now a playboy [Laughter] meeting all kinds of people and my brass and all kinds of adventures and and stuff that i i went back with the intention of just spending three days my daughter and i were going to spend three days there you know we knew nobody we had no contacts i was just gonna rent a taxi and drive out of town and see if maybe i recognized anything and uh and come home and that'd be the end of it and i put everything back here it was not to be the first morning uh we were on our way to the bank of in bastogne to exchange our money to euros and we my daughter sees a mannequin in a window of a 101st airborne guy in uniform with the the airborne patch can we get the next slide please i said yeah so she said let's go look at now here's i'm telling you my life from there on in one series of accidental meetings coincidental events it just it just seemed like an unrelated great event all organized to get me to do something that i had not wanted to do the i said okay i could have insisted you know i'm the boss in my house i could have insisted no let's go to the bank and forget about that but i didn't i gave in we went in there and it was like a big museum with all kinds of uh world war ii artifacts and stuff and i said um uh okay we've seen let's go on the way out i stopped to look at uh at a counter with some german belt buckles and helms and this big i later found out dutch paratroop officer comes over he shows them perfect english my officer i said no i'm just looking on my way out here i was here during the war he said you were here during the war i said yeah he said with the hundred first airborne division i said yeah he came around the counter i thought he was going to attack me i went to a defense mode he picked me up off the floor sir where have you been there are so few of you left we we want to honor you we want you know we studied the war where everybody in the hundred first airborne division he said who are you with i said h company 501 uh partial infantry regiment he said you know he said we studied the war we know where everybody was where the battle was i can take you and show you where each company was dug in on both sides of the road i said really he said yeah he said you and your daughter get in the car so we got in the car and a friend of his johnny boner belgian tight commander came out and uh he drove now i recognize nothing during the war of course everything was covered with snow and so on and 75 years of growth i recognize absolutely nothing but it takes us out to this place and he says now each company was dug in here here here here and here on the other side the road now you know they were filled in but you could see they were foxholes they were fossils and then he looks at me and he says and that was your foxhole i said get out of here i can understand you knowing where each company will dug in here but how the hell do you know that was my fault though he said because your company commander kevin stanley when he turned in his after-action reports he had on a piece of cardboard from a k ration he had a little diagram of where he had put the automatic weapons you were the only machine gun in the third platoon right yes sir the other guy got killed okay mg you well at that moment all the all that stuff that i had put back here hit me in the face i even heard the artillery again i got emotional and my daughter pulled me aside she said marco listen my father's singing enough let's go back we'll come back tomorrow but let's let's go back to town now and i said yeah on the way back to town i asked the two guys if i could take them to lunch they said sure at lunch i ordered three bottles of wine i said i don't like the way i'm feeling it now we got to change the mood and uh well you put three bottles of wine and three old soldiers together and you know we started getting noisy in there we embarrassed the hell out of my daughter we start telling and they start telling stories johnny bono tells us about belgium tanks and and then marco tells us about fighting in bosnia and afghanistan are these marco and yeah that's marco and that's johnny bonner okay go ahead and the little one in the middle is me but when it came my turn i told them this story i said you know i said the first day of the battle in bastogne we knocked the hell out of them no matter what they threw at us frontal attacks we stopped them so the second day they surrounded us captured the field hospital with all the blankets beds medicine muffin equipment they shot the medical personnel they they kept the five or five of our doctors to serve and their armies one doctor and one belgian nurse escaped and was in the town for that whole battle that was our medical team one doctor one belgian nurse and only his personal equipment and and uh they laid siege to replace and we had by the way the temperature had dropped to zero below zero later on we don't know it then but eight below ten below one night eighteen below it was the worst winter that europe had had in twenty years and we had no summer club we had no winter clothes no gloves no hats no nothing but at any rate uh the second day uh my buddy got hit his name was joe willis and they they brought them back we had no place to put the wounded the church and and the seminary across the street from the church were the only two places that still had walls and the town had been flattened the lucha fed coming and and the the uh wounded was just thrown on on on the floor of the church you know the movies show you nice carts and there's this the floor and we went through the houses and pulled the drapes and curtains and bed spreads whatever we could find to wrap the wounded in those of us that had two blankets uh donated one to the wounded and my sergeant sent me back to the town uh we would dug in right outside of town to look for batteries for the radios the walkie-talkies while i was there i went to look for my friend and i see him laying on the floor to church by the way you know in the movie they show you all these guys groaning monet nay there wasn't a sound in that church all those guys were all beat up nobody's paying attention to them because there's only one doctor but you didn't hear any whimpering any moaning any nothing they were just sitting there quiet some of them laying with curtains wrapped around their neck it was a bad scene it was a bad thing but i uh you know hey joe how you doing you said ah i'm not in a couple shrapnel in my leg i'll be out of here tomorrow i said well that's a great job i got to go i got to go back anything i can do for you before i leave he says yeah go find me something to drink where the hell am i gonna find you something to drink we're surrounded and cut off there's no supplies nothing coming in here he said go look at the taverns joe the turbines are all flat and bumpy said go look anyway you might get lucky i step out it's snowing hard not the gentle it kind of hits you cuts your face and and uh artillery is dropping in all around the church there and i'm slopping down the road they're looking for a tavern the first time i went in this story by the way has over 2 million trillion hits on the internet the first time i went in all broken glass nothing i could walk down the road a little further the second i went in they had a bar and when i pulled the the beer handle beer came out i said ooh uh i looked around for a bottle or a cup or something to put the beer in there was nothing i took with my helmet the same helmet you use in the foxhole you know i switched a little snow in it i filled it up with beer i went back to the church joe i got some beer he said oh you know he he sits up and i'm pouring beer hey give me some of that hey give me some of that hey give me some of that give me some of that i was like a little mother cow there feeding all these guys a mouthful of beer i ran out joe says go get some more go get some more i could down the road again fill up the helmet this time when i stepped out the door the the cabin a shell landed nearby concussion knocked me down i spilled half of the beer but i wasn't hurt so i got up i went back to the church only this time standing in the doorway like this is the regimental surgeon major walkman you know i'm a pr pfc you say what the hell you think you're doing soldier sir bringing aid and comfort to the wounded he said you stupid jackass don't you know i got chest cases and stomach casing that you give him b you'll kill him get out of here before i have you shut yes sir yes sir and put that helmet on i was not only freezing now i was wet and freezing but i ran like hell back to the foxhole before he said this might not be shut and i i uh dismissed it one of the incidents happened during the war you know how many incidents happened during the war i forgot all about it while i was telling this story johnny and marco are going like this you you were the gi who brought beer in the helmet to the i said yeah you you went to the helmet full of being in the church to the wounded guys laying on the floor i said yeah they said man don't you know you're famous in europe i said what the hell are you talking about they said wait to come here bring us four bottles of airborne beer and the waiter comes back and he's got a tray with four bottles of beer like this and four little ceramic helmets in the shape of a gi helmet so they're burning and the label on the bottle of beer shows an american paratrooper with a helmet full of beer going like this they said nobody thought that was a true story everybody thought that was just a myth that's okay we can't believe it they got it really true and the guy is sitting right in front of us i said yeah maybe i should get a cut on the beer right no well uh vince until we it's a model it's a marvel when i went home they gave me six bottles of beer that other slide you had up there yeah they gave me six bottles of beer to take home and the general register called me and said hey we heard a story about you could we come and interview you and i said yeah so they come to my house in auburn and they had a photographer too and they wanted the story i told them the story and then the photographer took a picture of me with the beer the one that you saw when when you first came in and and they put it in the newspaper somebody from the newspaper took it and put it on the internet today although i have two purple hearts two bronze stars the legion of honor the medal up 15 million medals i am more famous for what i did with a helmet full of beer than what i did with my machine gun the whole war that story just went crazy and and uh every place i go i got to tell it i was i was at the pentagon invited by a general friend of mine and and then when you given me the tour they said we'll start with the secretary of the army and then the chief of staff and the assistant chief of staff and sergeant agent the commander all the way down the line you'll get to shake hands with all of all the officers i said great i was in a wheelchair they they wheeled me into the secretary of the army murphy he was just appointed by trump at that time and uh he's outside of his office when i when when when i get wheeled in and he says you come in here he said i heard about you i said sir he said i heard it from other people but i want to hear from you tell me the beer story the secretary of the army tell me the beer story okay and then you know when i started traveling around i like to sing and fool around something but everybody hey vince tell it to be a story after a while i said you know listen uh i'm not an entertainer i i'm here as a veteran of the battles and so on i i didn't do any singing they said yes you did you brought beer to the wounded in the middle of a fight and and raised the morale of the moon and anyway uh it's it's uh the story take it off and it's all over the place now and so on and i um was on my way to a new career i started visiting going to the reunions on hunter first airborne association at the 82nd and and uh visiting fort campbell and swanson and everywhere i went oh yes a decorated veteran tell us the beer story okay before we get to that though vince i'm going to jump in here because i want to lay a little bit more of the background down how you and i've met you came out after this trip and after you'd gone out to the world war ii memorial in washington dc and it was in 2010 and you came to our optimist meeting and that's where i first found out about you and then talking to you and as i recall vince it took quite a while for me to convince you to actually sit down and tell your story but since that time we've had five sessions in the original interview back in 2010 and then another session in 2012. you promised me a two-hour session well but i'm glad that i violated that rule when you first asked me about him i said yeah okay you said two-hour session i said yeah okay two hours and uh but then as a skilled interrogator there you asked the questions that you brought every damn thing out of it by the end of the first session i hadn't even gotten out of high school and uh they said you got to come back for two more and there's two more i i had just barely gotten into combat and more and more and so with the rest of it but uh marcus responsible for launching my career but after that then you got a flooded invitations i know just all over the place and i know that in 2010 must been after we did our interview you went back to europe and i wanted to give you a chance to tell a couple of stories that a lot of people i don't think have heard about and this one for pictures going to brighton england can you lay out the background for that story because i think that's every bit as fascinating as is the beer story we went overseas in the queen mary it had been converted to a troop ship and got to england in november and flown to france uh near the end of november as the 101st airborne division was coming out of market garden out of holland and the division was supposed to get 90 days of arrest recuperation replacements ammunition food replenish all the supplies and half of the weapons that they were supposed to that they had to leave in holland when the germans almost took them over and so i you know when you're a replacement in a experienced outfit you are nothing nobody talks to you we expected that we were told they said listen what do you expect when a comeback guy whose buddy just got killed and he sees you you you're going to take his friend's place you're going to be as good as louis was inside you know they they look at you as nothing and in fact in the beginning you're a cannon father they send you out where they save one of their own but you we didn't blame them we understood it until you prove yourself in combat you are nothing once you do then you can't find the the envelope that you're in now with all these guys and so on i must have done very well in my first combat because they they nicknamed me curse and traverse speranza uh they said you know i wasn't aware of it they said all you did we never heard such cursing in our whole lives we think you invented some new ones but you lit those three second bursts just right you were mowing them down there's a snow turn red and and uh you know you're one of the boys as soon as you proved yourself in combat then you can't find better buddies and and um i i went back a couple of times to visit the museum there and so on and there was a young singer her name was kellyanne sproul that's leading up to the story she is the one before that and and she she was known as the the sweetheart of the british armed forces and she signed the the world war ii song the also she was very nice and um her mother was her manager and so on and i'm sitting here with him and unbeknown to me her the line from her microphone was under my chair as it went up and uh so she sent a belt in the song and i get up and without realizing it i unplugged her microphone so that she is saying in a way and nobody hears everything of course afterward i apologized and so on and i took her and my mother to dinner and so on and they invited me to come to england so i went to i did i went to visit and uh they were driving me around showing me the old places that uh i mentioned while i was in england i was here there in the other place and we went by this one place that i sort of got some kind of recognition i said was that a tavern there she says yes it still is she said it's a very old tavern it's from world war ii so i looked a little closer and i said you know i said i think this is the tavern where my buddies and i are in town they're you know what we're looking for and uh people said uh not the pub the pubs the old men go to if you want to meet the ladies you got to go to the dance halls so we went down to the dancehalls and oh yes there was plenty of ladies there but we ended up tonight three guys and only two women so i magnanimously said go ahead boys i'll go back to the tab and have a drink and wait for you well i went back to the tavern but they never came back we need to see the picture of the tavern we were roaring drinking and appeasing the british with drinking their ale with a hot poker in it and so on and and the the story the the the stories came out later that uh i was leading them in songs that i knew it's a long way to temper it and uh about four o'clock in the morning i i i felt pretty good but as soon as you step outside into the cold now you're really you keep staggering you can't even walk and i got jumped on by three four guys they called them young tufts in england they beat the hell out of me they took my watch and my pass and my my wallet and that had my pass in it and um left me laying in the alley there and i i woke up a little bit later i guess and i didn't know where i was or what i was going to do and so on it's getting daylight and and uh i walked out the path of least resistance was downhill i walked downhill to a bench and i sat down on the bench and i just sit there you know i don't have a pass now as soon as the mps come around i'm going to be awol they're going to prick me in put me in the jail and i'm just shaking my head and here comes this whole englishman walking around with a dog as he walks by and he looks at me and then he looks again he says i saw yank are you all right i said no considering your guys beat the hell out of me took my money my passing and my watch and so on and i don't know how i'm going to get back to the camp he was horrified oh he said i'm so sorry i feel bad he said please come to me my i live right up there come to my house my wife will clean your uniform and rest you up and we'll and i'll get you back to the camp so i said anything to get off the road i went to the house and i'm telling you those people must have saved up what the views they have saved up rations for a month they put a dinner on with what do you call that flaming uh whatever it is it's a flaming dessert with uh they put a whiskey on the side and she cleaned my uniform and everything else and he took me back in his car to where the trucks picked us up to bring us back to camp so i didn't get into any trouble and i thanked them the next day i got decided to give me a whole bunch of tea and stuff and brought it to their house and so on and we stayed in touch for a while but in 2010 i went back and kellyanne's problem took me to these places again where i could see the the bench and where i sat and the the um uh tavern which was still there and still operating you had a picture didn't you and and um well then she and i were friends for a long time after that we met at other times but uh that was my reinduction to england and i reminded them that one day i saw the best they had over and the worst those guys that uh took on an american gi now what you've got up there now uh mark is something different are you talking about the governors during the yeah dr gover the next slide here you know these stories have to be a little disjointed i try to give a little background to how they fit together but uh i can't do it uh they're different episodes the this one there was a uh a bombing attack uh probably the third day of the battle there and they really finished flattening everything and i'm i'm walking through the town there uh and and i see these uh four people standing on the sidewalk the two men and and two women and a child five they're crying and they're standing there looking and i went up to them and they said look this was my house you know with all my flats i said well i said you know a lot of the civilians tried to get out of town before it was surrounded but they couldn't get out so they were stuck in there in their basements and so on and so he said uh he was a doctor and i said well i said listen i said um i'll help you get some of the brain debris out of the way you better get down that basement this artillery is going to go on all day and so they sort of revived a little bit we went down we pulled some of the debris out of the way so they could get in the basement and i uh i gave the men a cigarette and so on and let and and uh i had a piece of the chocolate d-bar we used to have a gave to the kid and i said don't worry about it they said the germans are coming back aren't they i said no this is the 101st airborne division they will not come back into this town he said and they said vincent uh where do we go for can we get water or food will the army i said i don't know about that you go and go talk to somebody else but i said to the doctor i said listen we could use you he said i don't have any instrument i said well you go up there i'm sure that they'll be able to use you so he went to the uh to the church there where our doctor was and he helped out for the after the war and each day that i was i would go back and if i had talked to sergeant out of a can of beans or something and one time a can of fruit and some dried peas and i'd give them what i could what i could find and uh a pack of cigarettes which they wanted more than almost the food and so um i i uh you know befriended them and they they were very grateful about it and uh at the end of that battle i never saw them again and oh no the the one incident that that is christmas christmas day i found some stuff in one of the stores like necklaces and things there and and i took two pieces of parachute cloth yellow parachute cloth i wrapped the two packs of cigarettes each for the two men i found a necklace and the bracelet and thing there for the women and a coloring book and crayons for the the child anne-marie she was 12. and they never got over it christmas the middle battle here comes this gi with his helmet he's got presents for christmas i wish them a merry christmas and i went and i never saw them again this is the museum in bastogne and i'm in the museum there it's uh what twenty twelve twenty twelve thirteen somewhere in there and while i'm talking to the johnny boner there in the museum and so on this guy walks in and he says to me are you vincent i said yeah he said vincent who was here during the battle i said yeah he said i'm dr gover junior he said my father and mother do you have the other pic that's them my father and mother were here in bethel during the war and they and suddenly he starts crying and he says my father passed away 11 years ago he said but before he died he told me go get the blue bag out of the closet drawer here and he i bring him the blue bag and he said you see these two pieces of parachute clothes they say merry christmas from vincent he said you must find vincent he said he all the stories i told you about during the war that's gi that helped us and so on this is who it was he said i have not been able to locate him uh to thank him once again for our family that we made it through the war but he said i want you to be sure to do it and i know i'm overcome already and and then he pulls out the two pieces of yellow parachute let's say merry christmas from from vincent and he hugs me and you know i'm an old man now emotionalism is getting too much but it was an episode that it touches the heart you know and and and you can't believe that one of the reasons i started going back to all these things the sincerity of the people there when they when they look at you and thank you for what you did you know maybe the governments didn't get along well but the people there have never forgotten the americans and what the american soldiers did during world war ii to preserve some semblance of civilization there when the war was over and i i i kept going back for more when i realized how much it meant to them they and you know and everyone will take a picture with you and so what have you got there now well i know that you've always gone back for d-day and market garden in the battle of the bulge every single year right let me read you a poem that i wrote about the battle of the bulge my first day in combat i said by the way i've never written a poll in my life just one day when i'm getting ready to make a speech is i was thinking about it the night before some of the things phrases started rhyming in my head and i just said well yeah i sat down at the thing then it was december of 1944 the 18th to be exact when the hungry tired soldiers did pour from off the trucks with their packs and told to dig a hole in the frozen ground and it was cold cold cold the wind blew through their summer clothes and feet froze through and through but these were paratroopers all and given a job to do no weather was going to stop these boys and we waited and waited and waited we checked and checked and checked our guns our fingers were stiff and sore the enemy was near we knew get ready sight that bore put around in the chamber and click it home and we stamped and stamped and stamped our feed the experience calmly lit a butt and cupped it in their hand the young kid with the machine gun just hoped that he could stand they all gave him the thumbs up you'll make it little man and you force a smile while your mouth runs dry the fog and the mist begin to rise daylight comes at last stirrings from the other side and artillery comes whizzing past not yet not yet not yet said the lieutenant and our fingers were sticking to the triggers and then the sound we dreaded most the clank of treads and wheel the 88 grinds to a halt and the tanks belch red hot steel and fear begins to clutch the heart and you shiver but you blame the the enemy starts across the field white snow capes frustrate our aim lieutenant god damn it they're coming on are we just playing a game not yet not yet not yet says he and the wind blow swirls and swirls of snow the machine gun kid hears not the din waiting only for word or plan his thoughts exploding again and again would the kid become a man he sets his sights at 400 yards and squints through the peephole and the figures get larger as they come on and on now now now the command hoarsely through the noise my gun erupts i grin and shout and curse traverse and curse my fear is gone replaced by joy as i watch the figures fall joy i don't know the snow turns red with blood and the enemy falters stops and turns back no victory cries or shouts of glee as we all turn around and view the bodies of our boys lying upon the ground or the cost the cost of that day's work lies heavily on the brow the mighty airborne 101 is less in numbers now but we stopped them cold though odds of seven to one no nazi boot ever entered bastogne and the machine gun kid had indeed become a man we the living seek not the glory only realization of our terrible losses save your honored prayers and praise for brave men in these rows of crosses respectfully submitted vince i suspect that put all this out of your mind until 2009 and then your comrades would be so proud of the way you're carrying on their tradition and bringing their memories to life again uh unfortunately when you're an old man you you don't have the control you used to have you know i uh there we go but they asked me about memorial day veterans day today and well what are your feelings in fact it's supposed to be on i did a clip for martin mccallum over there well what do you what do you think about on very happy it's a happy veteran day i don't know veteran's day brings on a sadness to me a sadness that that always brings me back to those views those scenes of so much death and destruction and and it doesn't seem to be going any better today and and that we thought at the end of world war ii man we've finally done it now we've stopped the dictators the world is uniting in the united nations the the united states is big and powerful and ready to help the whole world get back on its feet which it did and and maybe really there's going to be a little peace on earth and of course another year afterwards the communists started and it's all going down and and you wonder i wonder today is it ever going to change or as uh jefferson said the tree of liberty needs to be watered by blood every generation i uh i hope not but you know we've had some wars but they're not really big he was but uh if the big one comes i uh i hope somebody's still around to celebrate veteran's day let me uh let me turn the direction being invited to the army camps yeah and i wanted to give you an opportunity because we're gonna run out of time here even though it's nobody's ready to kick you off that's the stage for sure but i wanted you to tell your efforts to make a solo parachute jump and how that has worked out for you i was 80 years old and i said yeah i can't live much longer than any my parents died in their seventies i said you know before i die i would like to make a one more jump and i started thinking about it and asking around and thinking about it but and then one day at a 100 first airborne association meeting there's a sign that there'll be a jump today and i said for anybody they said i don't know it doesn't say anything special you go look so i went down and talked to the the guys in charge i said can anybody send they said yeah but you have to pass the test i said what are the tests they said can you do three push-ups i did ten can you climb a rope l-shaped with at least five feet i climbed ten can you do a plf you know parachute landing fall i said get out of the way all the young kids you know they were all gathered around waiting for the old gray head to make a fool of himself i did a plf that everybody had a clap they all clapped the jump master that this man's ready to jump my dream was coming true i'm gonna make a static line jump just like i did when i was a 18 year old kid and we get to the airport i have my parachute i have my jump position and we're all sitting there waiting the loudspeaker no jump today the ceiling is too low oh god but come back tomorrow tomorrow morning everything is going to be okay the weather's right there will be a jump tomorrow morning that night my junk master gets a phone call everybody can jump tomorrow except spiranza he's over 80. i i just was flabbergasted where the hell do you come up with a figure like i passed all the tests better than the young kids and i wasn't much over 80. i was 89. but that that should not make any difference you know the tests are designed to see can you make a job well to make a long story short they cut me out i could not jump they offered me a tandem jump i said get out of here that's not a jump i said a tandem jump you're a message on a passenger pigeon's leg going out the door and they said well that's all that's all again you know i had to eat those words because that's all i could get later on that i got a tandem jump but i want to read you a poem that i wrote after i got turned down out of that jump it's called and all paratroopers lament and i i smiled and laughed at myself they were insane what what has come of the american paratrooper when he gets even with somebody by writing a [Laughter] poem maybe i thought i had it no that's not that's not the one maybe i don't have it i guess not so you're not able to find that vince huh you're not able to find that do you have another one you can read or oh no it's not in the book there's only the first three in the book um well you know what this means if you can't find events you're going to have to come back another time well at any rate tell us about this picture that we see over here and there right i i am claiming the world's first selfie because there was no such thing and yet that is in 1945. what happened well um at the end of the war they broke up the hundred first day one division right the war was over in may in june don't ask me what the politics or the world all of a sudden they said the 101st airborne division is now being abolished and they took all the high point men from the 82nd and the 101st they sent them home they put the young kids in the 82nd airborne and they said that we are going to have a practice jump we said practice what the hell thought it was over with fulfilled equipment what they had decided to do was they were going to fly us from france to panama to saipan for the invasion of japan you know that wall looked like it was going to last another three years the closer we pushed the japanese back to their home island the tougher they got and and and we just we just couldn't believe it we'd never survive another combat we said don't you have enough guys there already with well you can take us from here and bring us over there to fight and uh i realized my mother really didn't have any pictures of me since i've been overseas so i decided i would i would take some pictures to send her so that she'd have something i'm sure i'm gonna get killed in the pacific and and uh i had you know the little box cameras the kind you have to roll the the film and um you know against the rules of course i jumped with the camera and as soon as i got out of the plane and the shoot opened i took a picture of the guys above me pictured the guys below me and then just for the hell of it i turned the camera like this and i went that's me in the air coming down [Music] and i don't know of anybody who has taken a selfie like that since then so i claim the world's first trophy in 1945. how many tandem jumps have you made since you got started three i i made one in holland with the round canopy uh parachute unit and i made one with mike elliot who was a former golden knights out of fort bragg and uh the last one i made with the golden knights you saw well that one that that that's the fort bragg one but in each case i hate my words about a tandem jump it is a thrilling thing it's the same you know except that instead of jumping at 900 feet and as soon as you shoot them you hit the ground you're up 10 12 000 feet and you sail down and you can see the ground and everything and and and uh of course you come in cushioned by the guy the other guy who's jumping with you and he takes all the shots and for you it's just one pleasant thrill and i i will make one every chance i get well that sure looks like you had fun after you landed on the ground and i was watching the whole uh the the video of you coming down it looked like you had a beautiful view oh man it was beautiful a tandem jump is a very nice thing and uh they asked me um how do you feel it's always the same you don't get used to parachute jumping you don't get used to it everyone is a wonderful thrill they said to me which part of the jump do you like the best i said going out the door when you're going out the door if you go out the door well you've met the first and most important challenge only one of two things can happen you're going to smash yourself into a million pieces or your shoot's going to open and you're going to have a nice descent once you're willing to do that hey man everything else is uh fun and and uh i feel the same way when when you experience it for the first time it's just as good the the tenth time it was the 12th time then it's uh well since you uh we're there in 2009 i think you will agree that your life has transformed in ways you couldn't even imagine and you become something of celebrity so i've got it this next picture right here i got to tell you that last year for the 75th anniversary of d-day i personally was not surprised when i got my wall street journal in the morning on the 7th and look to see your picture right on the front page yeah yeah well you know i thank god that i'm still able to move around enough to you can't know about what this virus has done to me all my things are cancelled i can't go here i can't go there two in october three in november my december ones are all cancelled i may not even get the best one this year and i've been the best one every year since 2009. but uh yeah i think what i'd like to do here then vince is play a video and the video illustrates just how much you are now embraced by the military community across the world and then we're going to open up to the audience and let them ask you some questions and you know what video i'm going to go here so let's go ahead and bring that on up you're gonna have to click it again there we go is everybody happy cried the sergeant looking up our hero bravely answered yes and then they stood him up he jumped right out into the blasted static line on hope he ain't gonna jump no more glory glory what a hell of a way to die glory glory what a hell of a way to die glory glory what a hell of a way to die he ain't gonna jump no more now there was blood upon the risers there were brains upon the chute intestines were a hanging from his paratrooper shoe they picked him up still in the chute and poured him from his boots he ain't gonna jump no more glory glory what a hell of a way to die [Music] his wife and baby son madam we regret to say your truth was life is done but hold your head up high his name is written in the sky he ain't gonna jump no more glory glory what a hell of a way to die [Music] now the baby son grew up and said a trooper's life for me a jumper like my daddy was is all i wanna be i only hope that i can jump just half as well as he he ain't gonna jump no more glory glory what a hell of a way to die glory glory what a hell of a way to die glory glory what a hell of a way to die he ain't gonna jump no more now they sent him to afghanistan and then into iraq the bullet that came speeding out went deep into his back he hit the ground but his grenade found enemy on track he ain't gonna jump no more [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] vince is pretty obvious going through there just say one thing about that song i don't know when i started singing it uh you know it was after i started going back to europe and so on but uh i only remembered the first two stanzas now i was too stupid to know that you could get on the internet and find the lyrics to anything but uh i so i just made up three of my own i made i added three stanzas to it now i'm not singing it for [Music] my buddies and i will be sitting around talking fool around i i sing this song and uh people take a video clip it they put it on on youtube now i don't know that they're doing that but at any rate it starts to go around and uh about a year later i'm in normandy with a bunch of guys and so and so on and these people said they said you know you're not singing that song right that's not that's not the uh uh the the blood on the risers song i said i know i said i uh i couldn't remember more than the first two stanzas so i made up three of my own they said yes i said oh well you know i'll start singing the official version all my friends said no we like your version better the original blood on the risers makes the guy a damn fool you make him a hero like you so i started singing now i don't know if i've broken any rules or anything but you know i'm not selling the song or but it's just when people and i get together they love to hear that so we sing my version of it and i guess someday i'll get arrested for plagiarism or something but no one is going to have the guts to arrest your vents i i meant no harm to anybody and i certainly am not trying to commercialize it but this video what it shows to me at least is that everywhere you go you are bringing a little bit of joy and an awful lot of pride to these young men and women who are wearing the uniform today and that's something to be proud of and i think as we get ready to turn over to the audience can you hold up a copy of your book so you can talk about that a little bit oh i was i was telling this gentleman here for years my family was after me pop you should write a book you should write a book i said get out of here well it makes you think i can write a book you've got to have talent to write a book there are people that go to college for four years to learn how to write a book and i said i don't have it and i put them all for years that way finally one year when i was 89 years old my daughter said listen paul when you talk to people you tell them stories they all sit there fascinated they really listen to what you have to say just tell the story well i clicked in here immediately of course i don't have to invent anything or make up anything i just sit down and talk tell my story and at that time there was a new computer application that that called dragon naturally speaking you talk and the computer types it out you know if i had to type it it would have never got done but all i had to do was sit there tell my story and the computer printed it all out divided into chapters how long did you struggle with rewrites and editing in this three weeks wrote this book in three weeks five five five days no six days a week i took sundays off four hours every morning uh monday through saturday and three weeks later i had a book and i divided it into chapters and uh just went over it one time i by the way no editing no changing really whatever the first thing was that was it and that that's what came out and and uh and i used to laugh at myself who the hell you think you're gonna write read a book like that and uh i said it to a publisher they said how long did you pound the pavement looking for a publisher to be a first time out unknown author an old man 89 year old man the first publisher i sent it to deeds publishing company out of atlanta i got a phone call said mr sperenza yes i want to publish your book but i've only read the first two chapters wait i finished reading the rest of the book and i'll send you a contract he did he said no he said you know you could expect to sell 180 200 books a year that can first year we sold 1500. the second year 1400 third year 1600 and right now it's on uh you know amazon.com and these other people and so on and so on and i sell them out of my home too as well and it won a prize the indie book awards out of new york the uh harvard book club so an 89 year old can still write a book okay let's turn it over to the audience and joe i sure i'm sure you got a couple questions that have been sent in some questions at this point uh those of you watching if you have a question for vince uh please uh post them in the comments but we've had more than a number of uh of comments as opposed to questions uh basically vince thanking you for your service thanking you for bringing history to life in fact one of the best comments that we got uh earlier tonight as you were telling some of the stories from susan in sherman said vince is amazing he makes some of the scenes in band of brothers even more vivid and that is quite a statement do we have any questions from the small group we got here let me give a moment or two for some folks if they have a question to chime in from our uh audience watching uh around the state around the country but again just lots of comments several people commenting on the uh great loving the beer story the uh fabulous and beautiful poem uh that you read uh so again thank you for that and we do have as you mentioned mark a uh a very small uh in-person audience of invited uh friends and family of uh vince and dr deputy uh is there anyone here in our audience that would like to ask a question of vince before we wrap it up well you know i make my living asking questions yes vince in 2009 when you first went back to bastogne would you could have imagined what has happened to your life after that absolutely not i i honestly saw myself as an 85 and 85 hell that's old enough and a lot of people don't make it to 75. and and i didn't expect to make it to 75. i said my wife is gone i'm i'm alone and nothing to do [Music] that's enough um i wouldn't do anything foolish but i was an old man sitting around downhill i i i done i'd done my thing by the way i was i i was not ashamed of my my life i felt successful and so on uh as a school teacher and so on and and the accidental meeting with that lady who told me about the celebrations in bastogne changed my life completely i am now you know 85 on the way down all of a sudden [Music] i'm 95 now i can't even wrap my head around that number 95 what the hell is that dude we do we do have a question for you vince uh patrick and rebecca want to uh know uh uh you had mentioned the different metals that you've received they wanted to know how did you earn your purple heart uh you know it's not a question of earning it do you uh uh january five we had broken out of barcelona and a uh uh january that was in december january one two january second the 501 had to go uh into the uh bojack's woods to clean out the germans there who were now retreating going back to germany and um the my company h company had to go across an open field there was snow all over the place of course and the snow slows you down you know if you make a dash across an open field you've got a chance but an open field that's uh open to them too uh on the way over a border attack and uh you know you hate motor attacks more than everything with an artillery you can hear it and you got a second or two to move mortars are silent you don't hear it until the first shell drops and then it's a pattern 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. a good german motor squad could keep 16 shells in the air at one time and you don't hear a thing until they start exploding in that pattern anybody in the area is going to get it and i was one of those i got it and and i uh i didn't think i got it bad you know pieces of shrapnel were on on on one side but a piece had gone uh under my eye and when they pulled me back they thought it might be touching their brain so they shipped me to uh they flew me to england to a british hospital and it wasn't it wasn't touching it they pulled it out no problem i only stayed in the hospital six days oh and then they gave us when if you're a wounded person uh during the hustle when you get out before you have to report to your unit they give you seven days recuperation leave any place in the united kingdom but oh and by the way am i going over too much now well i'm afraid you're going to tell that one joke all right i i i don't want you to go there i think that might be a little bit risque for this this audience my my uh the next day i'm in the hospital i'm ready to be discharged the next day and and uh the nurses there you know the british nurses were so good and uh we used to fool around pinch their bottoms on they'd move out of range and she smiled at me and she said listen she said you know there's another one of you naughty paratroopers on the second floor i said no kidding she said yeah i said do you know whose name she said joe said not joe willis she said yeah joe willis from florida said joe i said can i go see him she said no as soon as she went down the hall i went to see him joe what the hell he said the next day right after you got hit i got hit he said and he said hey he said you know he said when we get out of here they're going to give us seven days recuperation leave and you know the war's still on we're going back to the world we're gonna do it right man he said we're gonna we'll go to scotland i said oh that's great he said when do you get out i said tomorrow he said no i don't get out till thursday you go back and tell them you're still sick i would rather you keep my hips still if you the nurse started laughing she says i know you can't get after your buddy gets out thursday right and i said yeah she said don't worry the doctors will cooperate it's in the book i don't have time to tell it tonight i'd like to tell it but well i gotta give him a teaser to check out our website and to listen to the whole interview so okay well the the when we left scotland the the ladies were saying oh vincent scotland will never be the same without you naughty paratroopers we we we managed to get our hands but by the way you know only officers got a liquor ration when joe and i got to take our recuperation leave there we want to find something to drink you could not buy a bottle any place they'll sell you a drink at the bar but they won't sell your bottle we offer them double no we offer them triple no i will lose my license i'll never and so finally the last guy says to us listen ladies he says you know the johnny walker factory is right down on the river clyde and he said the johnny water factory scotch right he said yeah he said go at night with the night watchman you might get lucky well we put a whole bunch of cartons of cigarettes you know we've gotten a lot of cigarettes and on a leaf and we went down to the and here comes the old scott you know black watch with the skirt there and before we even got them he said lot as he said i know what you're after but i cannot help you they said it's all rationed we said oh we know but we we heard you were a combat man you in north africa and we just want to talk we put two kinds of cigarettes on the table he looked he said look he said you're tempting me he said but i cannot do it each box is numbered and it's on a manifest and we cannot sell it i said yeah but you know we put two more kinds of cigarettes on there and he says um we thought maybe you could find a broken box and he said uh no the last carton of cigarettes i put on the table were chesterfield and he looked at them he said just to the fields my favorite cigarette let me see what i could do and he goes in and he comes out with a whole box of johnny walker 12 bottles and he opens the bath to take a battle out we say oh you don't have to bother we'll we'll open it we put the rest of our cigarettes on the table took the box and took off we were the kings of scotland for the next five days everywhere we went all we had to do is put a bottle of johnny walker on the table and all eyes the ladies too they come running and then there's a story of a young scott who i looked under his skirt and we we uh we had a great time and uh when we when we left the hospital we were supposed to go to a replacement depot and you know replacement depot does not have to send you back to your own outfit they can send you any place the doctors that could say no you're too bad shape come home and we said we're not having any of that we're not going to any replacement depot we hitched a ride with the 8th air force from london to france and uh we asked about where the 101st airborne was and they said well they're on the czech border there so we uh found a jeep nobody wanted and we took and drove out and rejoined our outfit in time for the rest of the war but uh our sojourn in scotland gave us weeks to talk about it to the guys we had we had such fun and and uh we were well the whole story's in the yeah and then i have a we have a couple more quick questions or comments uh uh one person in particular here hugh says i understand vince often has a general as an aide can this be true i guess they appreciate that enlisted man has a general as an aide that apparently when you go to all these different functions and events there's a general who's acting as your aide oh i was a schoolteacher i taught history in new york city high school and and um i got an email one time this was 2004. you know i'm already retired i'm in illinois instead of new york miss friends and we're having your history class of 1964 is is having a reunion and we want you to come we'll buy you i said no i got family there i'll buy my own ticket i'll take care of it yes i would like very much to come now here are these kids that i knew at age 18 that's when i left them they are now all 58 years old it was the 40th reunion the senior citizens and i go to there now and uh these kids are ah miss friends remember me i was in nuclear i said yeah give me a hint you know it's been 40 years but one guy that comes up to me says miss friends remember me buzz out schuler i was in your history class i said remind me buzz he said you said you remember when you did world war ii in the history course you brought in that big army trunk with all the german gas masks and helmets and nazi banners and so on i said oh yeah i did that in all the classes he said well man he said you inspired me he said when i graduated i went to west point he said i graduated lieutenant and then i joined your old outfit the 101st airborne division in vietnam said i did two tours and it got hit in the head and approached the captain you know i said oh well that's great buzz i said uh what are you doing now he said i'm still in and i could have 58 years i said where are you he's at fort bragg i said what do you do there he said i'm the commanding general and i want you to come out and talk to my young troopers and so on and so on i did i went out there and made we talked to our little kids and so and stuff when i got finished he said uh he still calls me mr sparing miss friends uh uh are you going to boston i said yeah he said um may i accompany you as your aid the camp [Laughter] i said a private with a general for his aid to camp i said we're going to be the odd couple and he did we went to bust him he came i eat the camp everybody i i i tried to get him to wear his general stars but he wouldn't do it or uh he didn't have with himself but whatever the story was we were really the odd couple the private with the general as as an aid decamp and uh by the way what a wonderful guy is general al schuler saying we've visited you know he came to my 90th birthday party and uh he and his wife are fans of mine on on facebook i have a facebook page and uh i got a letter from facebook a couple of well more than probably a year back uh miss franza you can't have anymore you know i used to anybody asked for a friendship i just said confirm yeah and and uh they said you can't have any more you got five thousand and that's the limit and i didn't know i had five thousand and i didn't know that there was any limit i said okay that's the story but some people drop off so every once in a while i can still put a friend on but there's a limitation and that that's the story of my former student general who came to bus stone with me as my aid to camp wow and one last uh question uh jeff wants to know did you end up going to this to the you had mentioned uh about doing your jump as they were getting ready to go to the pacific theater did you actually end up in in the pacific theater before the end of the war wants to know after that jump you made in france in 1945 did you and your unit get to the pacific no no that was in july that that that happened that jump and in august the atomic bomb hit and that was the end of the war and so they canceled the plans for sending us overseas to the japanese war and you and about 10 other 10 million other gis were overjoyed with the fact that the war was over ecstatic and vince i just have to ask one last question you didn't really you told the story of how the beer came about but is is the because you're probably like me a little bit you enjoy a good beer every now and then how is airborne beer is it pretty good yeah it's a lager a dark beer but uh i'm not really a beer drinker i'm a scotch drinker well you have to have something to chase uh chase the beer with i guess whenever i drink one other people who are friends of mine who are connoisseurs with the beer they say yeah it's a real good beer well i'll have to try that again again the book is uh nuts uh a 101st airborne division machine gunner at best stone it's available as uh vince mentioned in amazon and all the other usual places you can buy uh books and i from the comments vince i think we uh sold a few of them tonight for you so you're welcome uh but let's hear it again vince sporanza ladies and gentlemen for our in-house audience as always mark the few thank you for a wonderful job and vince again thank you for the wonderful stories and uh the wonderful opportunity to share them with our audience uh worldwide on facebook live i'm joe crane from the abraham lincoln presidential library and museum we thank you for tuning in a few people have also asked if this is available to watch afterwards in a few minutes facebook will uh put this out and be available to watch as often as you want what i will add there is that the first couple of minutes didn't uh get into the the storytelling but first couple of minutes there were a little audio glitch but uh we will have another version that is uh crisp and clean audio that will be available on our youtube page for the abraham lincoln presidential library and museum very shortly and before you turn it over yes mention our web page where you can find like 11 hours events telling these stories it is oral history.illinois.gov and i think we'll bring that up on screen to let everybody see that as we finish up again thank you to vince for joining us tonight and for all of you who have served in our military over the years we thank you again for your service hope to see you again here live on facebook from the abraham lincoln presidential library museum in springfield illinois you

Channel: Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

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Id: BrRg8lq4IQ0

Length: 88min 37sec (5317 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020