Narrative for Sebastian LaBella
Sebastian LaBella was born in Middletown, Connecticut on June 11, 1923. The child of Italian immigrants, he "grew up like most immigrant's children in the tenements." He helped his family during the Depression by working in the summer and caddying during the school year. He considers himself lucky to have finished high school, since the majority of his peers quit in order to work. He is very interested in history and credits his high school history teacher with making him aware of what was happening in the world in the 1930s and accurately predicting Hitler's early victories. After graduation he "had to go to work" and found a job at a silver company and then later worked with his father on bridge construction.
Pearl Harbor came as a shock, and although he was already old enough to enlist, he chose not to. "Some of the guys wanted to volunteer and I said, 'No, we're going to go soon enough. We'll go when we are called.' Which to me is the best decision I ever made ... I got to go with my buddies." Drafted in December of 1942, he contracted pneumonia soon after his physical examination which raised fears that he might be declared unfit for service. At this time too, a colonel who happened to be friends with his uncle, offered to get him excused from military service. "'You know, I'm giving you a chance to go home. I owe that to your uncle.'" But Sebastian could not do it. "No one I knew would be at home; I'd be alone. All my friends were in the service and I didn't want to be the only one ... I would have gotten into the Merchant Marines or something because they were all gone." Plus, as he told the colonel, he wanted "to see how the movie ended."
In March of 1943, he was sent with his induction group to Camp Shelby in Mississippi, where the Connecticut-based 43rd 'Red Wing' Division had trained earlier. Shelby "had every rotten thing you could think of, including the water ... It had all the snakes and bugs so we thought we were training for the Pacific because it had all the elements of jungle training." So it was a surprise to many when the unit was shipped to England instead. There they had further training as combat engineers and became the 296th Combat Engineer Battalion, an all-New England outfit and one of the first of the experimental combat engineer units formed. Slated They landed in Normandy on June 12, the day after Sebastian's 21st birthday. Sebastian and the 296th "jumped around" from unit to unit as they were needed. At times they were attached to the 1st Army, the 9th Army and the 5th Corps, among others. They fought through the hedgerows in Normandy, were one of the first units hit during the Battle of the Bulge and among the first soldiers to enter Berlin. "The first ones in and the last ones out," Sebastian remained in combat until the end of the war in Europe. After some final duty in Berlin - including the blowing of safes - he was discharged in December of 1945.
"I really didn't want to come home. I was in Berlin." Around this time an Air Corps major "said to me, 'What do you want to go home for? I'll help you get transferred ... to the Air Corps ... The Air Corps is going to be a separate unit. It's going to be wide open for promotion.'" Sebastian was "almost convinced" by him, but a "We miss you" letter from home changed his mind. After a couple months back in Connecticut he had a change of heart and went to reenlist in February. However, the day he chose to go turned out to be a holiday. Then "I met a buddy of mine ... and he wanted to know what I was doing. I said, 'I came to reenlist.' [laughs] 'Are you crazy?' So, we went out to have lunch and a few drinks, and, of course, in the meantime I had met Mary and here I am."
Being active in veteran's organizations and returning to Europe for the 50th anniversary of D-Day has done "a lot to make us face up to what happened ... The ghosts pretty much are gone" now. He laments that many veterans have never shared their experiences. While having served during the Second World War was not the most important experience in his life, it caused him to grow up. "Of course, when you are given responsibility you have to grow up. It changed my life, it changed my way of thinking. It changed the way I think about life, how important, how precious it is. You know, you are talking to someone one minute and the next minute they are gone. You've got to believe that."
He also feels the engineers have not been given the credit they deserve. "We'd go through and clear mines. We'd build bridges. Tanks and trucks don't float. Like Sergeant Major Trevor Millett ... said 'If it wasn't for these men, and all the men like them, the [supplies] would still be on the beach. They never would have moved out." And that's who we are. Am I bragging? Yeah. Am I proud of it? Yeah. And I wish to hell somebody would give us a little more credit than we received.
Excerpts from the Sebastian LaBella Interview
We were at the Middlesex Theater in town which no longer exists and they stopped the movie and the manager Ernie Doran came out and announced that the Japs had just attacked Pearl Harbor. And I can remember a woman screaming, "Oh my god, my son's there!" I'll never forget it. And you can hear people saying, "Where's Pearl Harbor? Where's Pearl Harbor?"
We were afraid of going to the South Pacific. Nobody wanted to go to the South Pacific. We knew what it was like. It was tough.
And he asked me, "Do you want to go home?" And I said, "No." He said, "You know, I'm giving you a chance to go home. I owe that to your uncle." I said, "No." And then, of course, I'm a bundle of nerves. He's a colonel and I'm just a rookie and I said something like, "I never leave in the middle of a movie. I've got to see how it ends." He said, "It could end with you getting killed." And I remember during the Battle of the Bulge when we were freezing I kept calling myself all kinds of stupid. [laughs]
[The thing that I remember, there was a fellow sitting on a chair and as we went through he asked me, "What time is it?" And I said, "I don't have a watch." And he said, "Hearing is okay." That's how they checked your hearing. [laughs]
As a combat engineer] there was no specialty. You were everything. You were a carpenter. You were a .. whatever you were needed. You walked in water up to your waist carrying Bailey bridge equipment. You did whatever had to be done.
And I'd like to say something about the Battle of the Bulge. We knew it was coming. We had enough civilians, we had recon[naissance] people that saw them. Ted Knight of television, Teddy Konopka his real name, had seen them. I mean, everybody knew they were coming except Ike [Eisenhower], Brad [Bradley] and Monty [Montgomery]. Larry, Curly and Moe.
I think Ike and Zhukov had a lot in common, they thought men were the answer to everything. But that's World War I tactics.
Rumors are coming from everywhere. All the important people, the latrine orderly, the cooks, all the people in the know. And our company commander, Captain Leonard Supp had us fall in and he gave a chewing out. "No more rumors. No one knows a thing. You understand? No one knows. Group doesn't know, Battalion doesn't know, Division doesn't know. Any questions?" And ... Mateo, he says, "Sir, when we get to Camp Miles Standish next week are we getting passes?" And he was dumbfounded. He couldn't speak ... And he finally said, "What do you mean?" [Mateo] said, "My mother wrote and said we're going to be up at Camp Miles Standish. Are we going to get passes?" "Your mother? When did she send you this letter?" "A week and a half ago." And [Supp] said, "We just found out today."
To this day they can't convince me [the friction between the Americans and British] wasn’t started by the German propaganda, agents because they wanted to divide the troops ... And it worked. There was constant mistrust. And because of this they were frankly jealous of what we earned. I mean I didn't think it was right that I should earn as a sergeant as much as a captain in the British Army. That's kind of ridiculous. But that wedge was started ...
And we went to Devizes, England by convoy. And at Devizes is Prince Maurice Barracks. And our first meal was boiled mutton. Boiled cabbage. And boiled potatoes. And no one ate. I mean the smell was terrible ... We learned later on. We would have given anything to have that meal.
And on June 10th 1944, the day before my birthday, one of the women said, "Sit here." I sat with her a while and she was teary-eyed. And finally, she took my hand and said, "We'll never see you again." I said, "Oh, sure. Tomorrow's my birthday. We have to celebrate my birthday." She said, "No, you're going to celebrate your birthday on a ship going to France." I said, "No, no, no, no." And not much after that we hear the MPs saying, "Everyone back." And that night we were on way to Southampton, on the LSTs and off we went. And on June 12th, we landed on Omaha Beach.
On the 25th [of July] they came and did it the right way. They waited for the markers to go in, and for the pathfinders to go in and 3500 bombers came in. Unbelievable. I will never, ever see anything that will match that. It raised a layer of dust over a hundred feet high. Solid. And the Germans came out staggering, I mean, without anything. Some had clothes blown off of them.
In Sedan there is a bridge that had been knocked out by the Germans. 262 feet long and it has to be built now. A Company put that bridge up in 72 hours, working around the clock being shot at. And they still put it up because the 2nd Armored, 3rd Armored and 1st Division were literally crawling up our backs.
I heard from a pretty good source that we were supposed to go in first, and then we didn't. I always think of, we had a fellow in our battalion headquarters during basic training named Eddie, and he was brilliant. He went overseas before we did and he worked in Eisenhower's headquarters and we still think he changed us. I will believe that till the day I die. He probably saved our lives.