All year round, thousands of visitors to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt National Historic Site and Presidential Library experience the sights and sounds of World War II in the form of documentary films, historic photographs, museum exhibits and the evocative descriptions of tour guides. Yet every Memorial Day weekend, that major conflict really comes alive as historical interpreters and re-enactors armed with a full panoply of equipment ranging from eating utensils to Browning machine guns turn the estate of the man who led us to victory over fascism into a fascinating and stirring recreation of a military encampment from that era.
This year’s bivouac, which was held on May 24 and 25, was extremely impressive in terms of the heavy armaments on display, the colorful authenticity and variety of the participants’ uniforms and the gripping stories of that war that the public was regaled with. Jeeps, halftracks, troop trucks and staff cars, some of WW I vintage, scurried back and forth across the grounds as visitors ogled carefully set-up displays of heavy and light mortars, large and small machine guns, canteens and regimental tents. But by far the greatest attraction was the presence of one of the last operational Sherman tanks that remains in the United States.
“Out of 50,000 which were built during World War II, only 20 remain in full working order in the whole country – and the Army has not one of them,” said Bud Walker of Ulster County, the proud owner of this piece of history, which he has named “Country Boy” – complete with a drawing of a bumpkin on the side. “This one was made by Chrysler in January 1943, and saw action in France and Germany, where it would have been used by British Commonwealth forces – British, Canadian or Australian. We can tell all of this from the serial number. A lot of people don’t realize how many of our tanks were used by our allies, though they were all painted dark green and bore the same identifying white star that ours had. It was in fact the British who started naming different types of tanks after great American generals from the past, starting with the Civil War. They wouldn’t go back to the Revolution or the War of 1812, because they obviously were not comfortable naming things after generals who had defeated them.”
Back through the ages
Raymond DeVoe, a WW II enthusiast and collector from Walden, displayed his own impressive arsenal nearby, consisting of a 1940s Browning .50 caliber heavy barrel machine gun, a Browning .306 caliber air-cooled machine gun and a Browning model 1917 .306 caliber water-cooled machine gun. He explained to passersby that the first two fired ammunition with metal belts, while the bullets on the older model were fed into the gun by a much more perishable cloth belt. Yet the WW I era gun continued to be produced into the later era as a supplement to the more up-to-date models.
DeVoe was interpreting the role of a master sergeant whose duty it was to guard a nurses’ station on the Baatan Peninsula in the Philippines before it was overrun by the Japanese in early 1942. That led to the infamous Bataan Death March, in which thousands of American and Filippino troops perished under the most revolting and bestial circumstances, atrocities which DeVoe does not shrink from describing.
“Instead of destroying our trucks so that they could not be used by the enemy, the American commanders kept some on hand, figuring that they would be used to transport our men to the prisoner-of-war camps by the Japanese,” he explained. “Instead, the enemy commandeered them for their own use, and forced our men and their Filippino allies, to march dozens of miles without food or water, beating, kicking, stabbing and shooting them at will. There were only a few thousand survivors, and a joint force of American commandos and Filippino guerillas made a great raid to rescue them as the war was ending, because it was feared that the Japanese would kill them all before the army’s regular advance could reach them.”
The less grim and contrastingly more mundane side of life at war was represented at the bivouac by a re-created British army canteen, which would have dispensed cigarettes – in five, 10, and 20 size packs or large tins of 50 and 100 – as well as notepads, stamps, Nescafe, canned fruit, butter, boot polish, razors, tea and different varieties of ale and gin to British and allied soldiers, if they were in the area.
“A canteen represented not sustenance, but extras,” said “Sgt. Paul Clammer,” an historic interpreter who preferred to be identified by his character’s name.
A command tent pitched on one end of the encampment represented the headquarters of the 121st Cavalry’s Reconnaissance Squadron, a “Living History” group that perpetuates the memory of the actual WW II-era 121st Cavalry. Alexander F. Contini, who has the role of a captain in the group, says the activities of people like him are aimed at honoring and keeping alive the achievements of soldiers like his father, who was an Army medic in the real 121st Cavalry.
“We need to keep the sacrifices that were made in people’s minds,” Contini said. “Back then, it was a matter of a very real and very dangerous threat to freedom from the Axis powers. The soldiers who fought WW II – those who died, those who are veterans, and the veterans who have passed away over years – saved the world, and we need to remember that.”
Such remembering is always more vivid when there is an actual veteran around, and on Sunday afternoon Joe Paganelli of the 106th Cavalry, who was standing next to the same type of Jeep he drove as a sergeant in charge of a point squad – one that spearheaded an attack – provided that living link to the past.
“Our Jeeps weren’t armored like the ones in Iraq today – a BB gun would go through one of these,” he said. “If someone got killed, they were immediately replaced – we were expendable. It’s that sort of courage and sacrifice that needs to be recognized – the men who fought WW II under such extreme conditions deserve credit for what they did.”