A couple weeks before Veterans Day to
introduce Sergeant Vincenzo Speranza.
He goes by Vincent, but in the
battlefield, he went by "Curse and
Traverse" Speranza. Vincent fought with
the first of the 5-0 first Paris
parachute infantry regiment with the
101st Airborne Division
during World War II. I want to read some
excerpts from his book. It's called "Nuts,"
and I think it accurately describes the
World War II scenario that Sergeant
Speranza was in. Vincent grew up in Staten Island. In his late 20s and 30s, he
graduated high school and joined the
army at 18. There was a war on, and
Vince wanted to defend his beloved country.
As an infantryman, he became a paratrooper
and joined the 101st just
before the Battle of the Bulge.
Dug in on the outskirts of Bastogne
during the bitterly cold and seemingly
interminable period of continuous tank
in artillery bombardment, Vincent and his
fellow paratroopers held their ground
and stopped Adolf Hitler's last violent
attempt to delay or reverse his
inevitable defeat before it reached a
town. He describes his clear and accurate
recollections of his unit's
action against an overwhelmingly
numerical superior force during the
battle for Bastogne and recalls modestly
his role in founding of a very special
Belgian lager, now known throughout
Belgium and Luxembourg as Airborne Beer.
A role that has made him a modern-day
legend and celebrity of pub owners and
beer drinkers across the region. He
describes recuperation from wounds
received in direct contact with the
retreating enemy in Belgium, the kindness
and compassion showed by the hospital
staff and ordinary citizens of England
in the circumstances, and the route he
took to ensure that he would rejoin his
old unit upon his return to duty. Then
there is his fight across the Rhine
River, the liberation of concentration
camps, the search and clearing of the
Eagle's Nest, which was Hitler's famous
mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden, and
the stand-down of the 101st
and a period of occupation duty before
along the way to return home and
discharge to begin a completely
different set of adventures.
Sergeant Speranza spent a 100, his
unit spent 144 days in combat of which
Sergeant Speranza missed 11 days, because
he spent six days in the hospital
recovering from his wounds, and then he
spent five days again getting back to
his unit. He now goes to
the Fort Campbell Kentucky with the
101st Airborne
Division to talk to young paratroopers.
He actually goes up in the airplanes
themselves while they are about to jump
to remind him that it's not that bad,
just jump out of the airplane, and
Vincent told me that when he was jumping
out of airplanes there was a gentle
reminder of the gentleman there with his
boot up in the air ready to kick him out
of the airplane. They're a lot nicer now
in the army he told me, but he also goes
up to West Point, and he speaks to cadets
about leadership, especially in times of
combat, and his story is truly remarkable.
His story during the war is truly nuts.
But if you just look at what that man
has on his chest, that tells a story of a
warrior. Oone of America's warriors, and
I'm just so darn proud that he's here
spending his time with us before
Veterans Day.
