Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
2:12 | Machine gunner Leonard Dziabas reveals why the 88th Infantry Division was known as the Blue Devils.
When Leonard Dziabas went to basic training, equipment was so scarce that the draftees drilled with broomsticks and there were trucks marked "Tank" and "Airplane." It felt like playing cowboys and Indians to him. On a long hike in the hot Louisiana sun, the men were parched and drank from a stream, but when they rounded the bend, they regretted it.
The volunteers had to put a testy train conductor in his place on their way to Ft. Sam Houston. Once there, Leonard Dziabas was reclassified as a machine gunner, without any benefit of training on the weapon. After an absurd, meandering train journey across the Midwest and the South, he faced one last test before he could go overseas. It seems he was never qualified with his sidearm.
It was a miserable Atlantic crossing for Leonard Dziabas. Eleven inches between stacked bunks and fears of submarines were bad enough, but the chow was so bad that troops were eating out of the Officers Mess garbage cans. It seems the Merchant Marine cook had a little scheme.
There was no improvement in the chow when Leonard Dziabas got to North Africa. Even the C-rations were from World War I and what you could get from the street vendors was either outrageously expensive or sickening, sometimes both. Made acting squad leader, he was searching for some wayward men when he had a close encounter with a sleeping Chaplain.
In Algeria, a stray Russian led the Americans to a cafe full of French Legionnaires, complete with great pasta and bawdy waitresses. Leonard Dziabas enjoyed that but he was soon running through the streets, trying to get away from the begging civilians. He did score some great cognac, though, which caused his buddy to wind up in a garbage pit.
Soon after moving from North Africa to Italy, Leonard Dziabas was guarding the mess hall overnight when the Captain came in and said, "Wake up the cooks at four. We're going to the front." Struggling through rain and mud, his unit reached the front amid a lot of German fire. As they replaced the troops there, the sight of rigid corpses in the moonlight was eerie.
"Anybody speak French?" Machine gunner Leonard Dziabas only had some high school classes but he spoke up and was soon stumbling around in the dark looking for the French troops who were going to reinforce his unit's position. He spotted the right guns among the chain-smoking Allies and after he got them in place, he fell in the ever present mud face down into something terrible.
Leonard Dziabas enjoyed his time attached to the elite British Coldstream Guards, but his attempts to get in on the morning rum ration were unsuccessful. Back with his own unit, a hot hose off his own machine gun caused him to to panic momentarily, but he was much more poised than one of the young Lieutenants when the German rounds started flying.
The two main machine gun parts were the tripod and the receiver, which was the main body of the gun. As machine gunner Leonard Dziabas advanced in the assault on the Gustav Line, he and a friend became separated from the unit with only a receiver between them. Trying to find their unit, the two stragglers crawled right into the German lines. Eventually they discovered that their whole outfit had been captured in their absence.
Leonard Dziabas had trained on a different mortar but he jumped into the 81mm mortar pit and fired shells all night until he couldn't hear. His hearing returned in a few days as his unit advanced through Italy. During a lull, he spotted something shiny to which he would become attached for the rest of the war, and he intervened when his buddy began beating prisoners.
On loan to a French unit, Leonard Dziabas had to sit idle while an Italian village was brutalized, but not by whom you might think. When he got back to his unit, his platoon had not eaten for five days, but the rations brought to him by a friend proved to be a mixed blessing. Moving on, they employed an unusual tactic to fool Bed Check Charlie.
After a deadly friendly fire attack from their own planes, the unit got a small reward in the form of a hot shower and then joined a task force to move on Rome. Leonard Dziabas describes the rush to be the first Allies there, including a race with a German motorized column.
As he raced toward Rome, machine gunner Leonard Dziabas took out his machete to clear some corn stalks when he startled some German soldiers who cowered at the sight of cold steel. After that heroic capture, which earned him a Bronze Star, he was soon marveling at the sunset glow over the great city as he approached from the hills above.
One of the first American soldiers to enter Rome, Leonard Dziabas was on a quiet, dark street when a paisano tugged at his arm and asked if he was German. When he answered, the street came alive and the cry, "Americano" reverberated through the city. Soon he was swarmed with girls and offerings of food and drink. But the combat wasn't over.
Moving through Italy, Leonard Dziabas saw the Pope's summer palace on his way to the coast, where he threaded his way through minefields to take a swim in the ocean. Back on the march northward, it was mountains, snipers and, finally, a well planned and executed assault.
The machine gun squad was waiting on ammunition, but when they heard a noise coming from a cave, they pointed the unloaded weapon and soon Leonard Dziabas was accepting the surrender of an entire company of German soldiers.
Fleeing German bombardment in a small Italian town, Leonard Dziabas pulled a grate from a wall and his unit tumbled down into a catacomb full of frightened civilians. Moving on to the Arno River, he had difficulties with an inexperienced Lieutenant and a cow, before receiving yet another barrage.
The farmer needed to milk his cows so they let him through the lines, but when they did that, German artillery rained down on them. After taking care of that little problem, they went into Florence where Leonard Dziabas again caught a spectacular view of a historic Italian city from hills above. Then, for some reason, the American forces were split up, leaving his unit facing superior numbers.
After battling across rugged Italian mountains in a fierce rainstorm, the company commander lost his cool. Leonard Dziabas recalls how the Captain just left the company there, with no idea of orders or mission. Told by the Colonel to look for a wayward unit, they nearly ran into a German battalion before finding the lost company nearly annihilated.
He thought a grenade landed at his feet, but when Leonard Dziabas picked it up to throw it back, he realized the desperate Germans were throwing rocks at him. That night, he didn't take the bait as the enemy tried to trick him and the next day, the Sergeant who had given him a hard time all year was killed due to his own anger.
Their unit was relieved but before they could even get some sleep, H Company had to move out. Machine gunner Leonard Dziabas found himself babysitting two Air Corps Lieutenants who were attached as observers, but they disappeared when they tried to traverse a swamp in their Oxfords.
The pack mule was hit by shrapnel, and after a little mule stew, the unit was surprised with new uniforms and cold weather gear. Squad Leader Leonard Dziabas traded in his lucky jacket and watched as his men fought over it. He soon wished he still had it. In a ferocious assault at the Po Valley, he heard two artillery rounds with his name on them.
During a nerve wracking evacuation from a hot battlefield, Leonard Dziabas was less worried about his wound than making it out of the treacherous conditions. After surgery at a field hospital, he was placed with a large number of wounded at an airfield. Every time he tried to talk to one of those men, all he got was a blank stare.
He was on his way home after getting wounded at the Po Valley, but Leonard Dziabas wasn't out of danger yet. After a terrific storm near Bermuda, the hospital ship ran out of fuel and drifted onto the rocks. Once safely on American soil, he was moved by the tributes of grateful civilians.
