Going in there, we didn’t have any opposition. Nobody expected us to be there, or something. But once we got there, then other things opened
up. I graduated in 1940, and then I worked in
a machine shop. I wanted to be a machinist, and that was my
trade. I didn’t try to dodge the draft, but I didn’t own a gun, I never shot a gun.
I didn’t know anything. And the last thing I would want to do is be
in the infantry. I was drafted when I was 20 years old. I got on a train and started heading south. Didn’t know where we were going or what
was going to happen. So, I saw this big sign that said, “Camp
Wheeler, Replacement Infantry Battalion”. I said, “Oh my, this is the last place I
want to be!” Once that happens and you get in the service,
they kind of own you. You have to do what they want you to do. All the training that I had, I had it on all
different kinds of weapons. We had the 03 Springfield Rifle, we had the
M1 Rifle. But my job was a B.A.R. man. Browning Automatic
Rifle is what it stands for. I was one of the smallest guys in the company,
and they gave me the heaviest rifle to carry. You had a team. A B.A.R. team. You had the gunner, my assistant gunner was
Roy Zuber, and then the ammo carrier was Clarence McKay. Though reluctant to join the infantry, Guy
Prestia fell in with the U.S. Army’s 45th Infantry Division, and in June of 1943, headed out to sea. We were on the way to North Africa. We had a convoy of five ships and we were
going in there before the invasion. They were getting ready to invade Sicily. And that would have been our first place of
battle. The British troops were there, and the Navy
and the Air Force. Everybody was in on that invasion. Then the Navy opened up with their big guns. Then we had to get into those landing crafts,
and then go to the beach. Things happened fast after that. The next day, we had orders to go up to Comiso. When we went up there, we went to the airfield. And at that time, we were fighting with the
Germans and Italians, because they were together. But that one day we were up there, we captured
a whole bunch of people. Italians and Germans. And we captured 110 airplanes that were on
the field. We went from one town to another, to another. Some of them got bombed out bad, some of them
got shelled bad. We saw some of them getting evacuated. But that was the first place in my life that
I ever saw people starving. All the food that they had went to the German
Army. So they didn’t have any food that they could
buy. Everything was rationed. There was a little boy there, about seven
years old. I went over and looked at that little boy,
and I said, “Hey, Paisan, come stai?” And do you know what he told me? He said,
“My stomach is empty.” Yeah, it was a shame that people had to suffer
a lot. During the war, it’s not only the soldiers
and people in the military that have hard times. But it’s the civilians too. My outfit was in four different invasions
during the war. We went into Salerno and there were a lot
of battles around the harbor there. A lot of the German military were up in the
hills, all around the harbor. We got strafed there a lot by airplanes, and
lots of them too. Anzio. That was another place we had to go
to. Going in there, we didn’t have any opposition. Nobody expected us to be there, or something. But once we got there, then other things opened
up. While we were there at Anzio, that’s where
I lost my assistant gunner, Roy Zuber. One morning, he got out of the ditch where
he was laying, and he got hit by a sniper. Now, if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet,
that bullet probably would’ve gone over his head. But he was wearing a helmet. And the steel from the helmet ricocheted down
his left side, Came down his face and pulled out his left
eye. The only way we had to help him was to take
his undershirt and bandage him up. That poor guy needed something for pain. The artillery was so heavy against us that
we couldn’t get him out of there for three days. And Roy just suffered with that thing for
three days, Until the artillery eased up and we were able
to get him out of there and get him to a medic, Get him on an ambulance, and take him back
to a field hospital. But after that, I got a replacement. That’s what they do in the service. They
send somebody up. Some of them, it’s sad what happens. I saw this fella. He was about nineteen years
old. And he had an M1 rifle. I said, “Do you know how to clean it?”
Because you have to know how to take care of it. “No.” He said, “I never fired a rifle.” He said, “All my time in the Service, I
worked in the orderly room in the office.” He said, “I did typing.” I said, “I’m sorry to hear you say that,
because this is a combat outfit that we’re in." So that night, while we were there, on the
side of a hill, there was one shot that was fired. And it sounded to me like it was pretty close. So I walked back, and I saw that soldier - nineteen
years old - he killed himself. One bullet. He put it in his head. He just couldn’t take it. He was probably
fearful of what would happen. Now, you wonder what would happen in a case
like that. Well, my company commander would probably
get the information about him, Get his dog tags and send the information
back to the States. And then a couple of guys from the government
would go to his house, See the parents, and say that on such-and-such
a date in Italy, That their son was killed in action. They won’t say he committed suicide. That would be too hard with them. In June of 1944, the 45th Infantry was pulled
back from the front lines to prepare for yet another invasion. But this time, Guy would not be returning
to the shores of Italy, but southern France. August 15th began Operation Dragoon, and the
final push toward Germany. But there we saw things, in France, that we
hadn’t seen before. They had a six-barrel mortar, and they’d
fire those six in the air, one after the other. They had their big tanks. And we saw, one day, where they knocked out
five of our Sherman tanks. They were firing those 88’s and they were
accurate. In the beginning, the weapons that they had
were better than ours.
But they had many years to prepare. When we went in there, we had to do things
in a hurry. So, you had to have everyone in this country
working on the war effort. But Germany had a lot of stuff, until they
got hit so hard that their factories had to go underground. Those were good weapons that they had. But we had more of them, and our supply lines
were never cut off. We always had all the supplies we needed. But they lacked a lot of those things. They
ran out. And that wasn’t the only thing. Hitler was
even running out of men. Toward the end of the war, in 1945, we captured
a lot of soldiers that were fourteen and fifteen years old - teenagers! We captured a lot of men that were 79 years
old. But they were tired of Hitler by that time,
and they were all surrendering. They surrendered by the thousands. By the end of March, 1945, Guy and the
45th had crossed the Rhine River, finally setting foot in Germany. But on the 29th of April, the 45th infantry
was instructed to deviate to a town called Dachau, where Guy would experience just how grim war
could be. So, we went down there and it was a bad place
to be. There were some railroad cars there. And we saw, from a distance, they looked
like logs laying on there. And here, they were dead bodies of men, women,
and children. And when we got inside, we saw the effects
of what happened. We saw a lot of people dead that were in that
camp. And you could hardly stand the stench that
was going on in there. We saw the cremator, where they cremated a
lot of bodies. And then we saw the gas chamber where they
put a lot of people. None of us were prepared for anything like
that. We never saw anything like that in our lives. Lots of the soldiers there had been through
a lot. They were hardened soldiers. But to see anything that was going on in that
camp was really bad. I saw a lot of soldiers just cry. They just
cried. Some of them vomited. Some of us just did
both. We got 31,000 people out of there, alive. They were all turned over to different hospitals
so they could get them back to nourished - Get them back to life, because they were so… They were just like walking dead people. Following Dachau, the 45th captured the city
of Munich, and within a week, the war in Europe was over. Following the post-war occupation of Italy,
Guy finally returned to the US and reunited with an old friend. My wife and I took a camping trip. We went
down to West Virginia. And I looked on the map, and I told my wife,
“We’re not too far from Petersburg.” I said, “I wonder if Zuber is still alive,
or still around.” So we went down there and found the house
number. So I went up to the porch and I knocked on
the door. And he came to the door - Zuber did. He said, “May I help you?” And I said, “Zuber, you old son of a gun.
You don’t remember me.” As soon as I started talking, he said, “Presty!” And he grabbed me and hugged me and said,
“Come on in!” And he was right - they fixed him up good.
Now he had two brown eyes. But he had that scar down the side of his
face where it ricocheted down there. But at least he looked presentable. At one of my talks that I do - I was down
at Ambridge - and one little girl asked me a question. She said, “How did you feel the first time
you killed an enemy soldier?” I said, “It made me sick. Next question.” I don’t blame the little girl, because they’re
curious. Whatever comes to their minds, they’ll ask
you that. There was another girl that was sitting in
the front row. The question she asked was, “Are you married?” I said, “Yeah, I’m married.” I said,
“I have a wife, I have eight children.” At that time, I don’t know what it was,
so many grandchildren, so many great-grandchildren. And I asked her, “Why do you ask me that
question - if I’m married or not.” She said, “Well, I just wondered. Because,
if you weren’t married…” She said, “I would like to introduce you
to my grandma.”
