Chapter 12
Profiles: Writing about Others

Web-Only Readings
"History's Baggage"
Katie Ruggeri

The following profile, about a World War II veteran reveals an event kept secret by the U. S. military, and also gives us a look at another veiled phenomenon: post-traumatic stress syndrome among World War II veterans. The writer, Katie Ruggeri, uses her uncle's story, his 'oral history,' as her primary source for this historical profile, but she interweaves information from a television documentary and other sources to give the details authority. Patsy Giacchi's story has real credence because of the writer's attention to historical detail.

Ruggeri's story can be seen as both a profile of her uncle and, secondarily, an issue piece on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It also is an instance where the writer could have used much more first-person perspective than she did. Note how seldom "I" (representing Ruggeri) appears, and also how she uses personal experience without having to insert the "I" point of view.

KATIE RUGGIERI: "History's Baggage"

The year was 1998; it was a rainy and dreary afternoon in Paramus, New Jersey, and that can mean only one thing: movie day. The sound of tickets ripping and the smell of the butter that dripped from the freshly popped kernels filled the air of the CO Route 4 Cinema as Emily and Patsy Giacchi settled into their seats. As the previews ended, Emily reached over and laid her hand on top of Pat's. 'You ready for this?' she whispered in his ear. Pat took a deep breath, and with a shaking voice muttered 'I sure hope so.'

Then the opening credits flashed and music played as Saving Private Ryan began. Pat's breaths started getting faster and faster until, finally, he jumped up and crashed through the theatre doors. Emily quickly followed to find Pat in the lobby of the theater, weeping. On this day, the side of Pat that one rarely sees peered through his normal, easy-going exterior and revealed the one thing that haunts his every thought: the 54-year-old secret he keeps locked in the far back corner of his memory, where no one can find it.

He has the looks and comedic impulses of Bob Uecker and will do anything to make someone laugh. Yes, Patsy J. Giacchi, at 80, has the life that any man would love to have: an adoring wife, wonderful children, and a familial support system that would have left General Eisenhower drooling. His booming voice alone can fill any crowded room with laughter and happiness. However, behind this fun-loving exterior brews an ocean full of memories, sounds, and pictures that will send chills down the spine of anyone who happens to catch a glimpse of them.

Such is the life of a World War II veteran. Patsy Giacchi, like other soldiers from other wars, has a dark secret, a riveting story that is rarely retold. Patsy's story is of one of the best-concealed disasters of World War II. It is an ordeal that was kept completely under wraps due to the US Government's belief that it would destroy soldier's morale heading into D-Day and their fear that casualty information would warn the Germans of the impending Normandy attacks. In fact, few who participated in the tragic training session lived to see its details revealed to the general public. Though the government released information about Exercise Tiger immediately following World War II, the full story remained untold until a '20/20' special aired in 1984 (Naval Historical Center 1). The secrecy leading up to that air date forced numerous Exercise Tiger survivors to confine their painful stories to the darkest corner of their memory, thrusting them into advanced stages of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Patsy Giacchi was no exception. In this little gray-haired, 80-year-old man once lived a kid who defined, for all who know his compelling story, what it truly means to be a hero and a man who has silently suffered through the aftermath of all his heroics.

Patsy Giacchi was a giving man. As a young boy, he dropped out of high school so he could go to work and help support his family. Then something happened that would forever change his life: in 1942, he turned 18 and Patsy Giacchi was one of the 67% of soldiers drafted into World War II, most of them young and inexperienced. The average age of soldiers in World War II was 22.8-years (Burkett 1). He was shipped all over the Northeast for basic training and eventually landed in New York where he and other young men boarded the Mauritania and headed for England.

These men were joining the war effort less than a year after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. As they boarded ships to head to England, the war was very much in full force all around them. Only a few months prior, in June of 1942, the Japanese Navy had been defeated at the Battle of Midway in what was deemed the turning point of the war in the Pacific; things seemed to be looking up. In mid-January of 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill held a conference in Casablanca that ended with President Roosevelt's declaration that the war would end only when the Germans surrendered unconditionally. Less than a month later the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad, signaling the first big loss for Hitler's army, and the United States thought the war was taking a turn for the better, but things would only get worse. On March 16, 1943, as Pat and the other men were starting their training in Liverpool, England, the Battle of the Atlantic reached its climax. By the end of the day, German U-boats had sunk 27 merchant ships (The History Place 1). The war was quickly escalating and soon Pat and many other young men were thrust into their first experience with fighting a war.

After rigorous training, a group of men, including Pat, were herded to a marshaling area, examined, then sent to Brixham, a small fishing town in Devon, England whose port was often used during war time (Morton 1). The commanding officer could give the men few details but did tell them that they were participating in a training mission called Exercise Tiger. As told in the 1994 Nightline special: Exercise Tiger?-Day rehearsal, 'We were setting off on what we thought was a routine training mission. We were supposed to hit this practice beach: Slapton Sands,' explains Eugene Ekstam an Exercise Tiger survivor (Nightline 3). But all the soldiers boarding the landing ship tank, LST, 507 that day sensed the ever-present element of danger.

'They tell us it's a dry run, but on the ship, they load us up with tanks, we got the Ducks [landing vehicles] and everything else, as though it was a real invasion.' Pat hesitantly explains; the pain still so much alive that, at 80, he is still reluctant to speak of his experiences and pass his tragedies onto others. In fact, the phone was the only way in which he would allow the interview to be conducted; he didn't want me, his niece, to see the pain and anguish on his face. Even his wife, Emily, was banished to the other room. Though this is only the second time she herself has heard the story, she picks up the phone extension to take over in the event that a scene from his past reduces Pat to tears.

Four other companies of men joined Pat and the 557th Quartermaster Railhead Company on the LST 507 that fateful day, plus swarms of men inhabiting the countless other LSTs that took off from Brixham, England on April 20, 1944. Seven hundred and forty-nine of them would never return; the events that led up to their deaths were shrouded in silence for 50 years. The general public remaining completely unaware of the events that led to the second-highest number of US fatalities in a single day of the war, topped only by Pearl Harbor (Navy Medicine 1).

Everyone has heard the horrors of D-Day. Pat Giacchi is a man who lived through the tragedy of its rehearsal. It was meant to be a routine training mission, designed to thoroughly simulate what was to happen the day the United States sailors and soldiers headed for Normandy. The whole mission, under the direction of Admiral Don P. Moon, was meticulously planned out. Even the beach the LSTs were to land on that day was chosen because the sand and terrain resembled that on Omaha Beach where US troops would land on D-Day. The army had been deploying these training missions for months already, by the time Exercise Tiger began, the men leading the mission were experts. As with all the other missions, the convoy was being escorted by British ships in case anything went wrong; it seemed everything had been accounted for (Naval Historical Center 1).

The boats soon left England headed for Slapton Sands in Start Bay. After pushing off, the soldiers -- most under the age of 22 -- retreated to the lower deck to claim their sleeping arrangements.

'There were soldiers everywhere,' Pat recalls as he describes the bed that he chose, a stretcher sitting in the corner of the crowded deck. He would never sleep there.

'And I said, 'Let me see now, the steps are over there, just in case.'' He pauses a moment as he recalls how his buddy Patty Moreno was just beginning to tell him that he was being paranoid when he says, his voice gradually picking up speed 'boom-boom-boom. I said, 'I'm going.' Other men tried to talk me out of it, they said it was just a dry run, but I started to go up the stairs. As I got to the top,' he takes a deep breath and slowly exhales. Just as Emily is about to cut in, he continues, his voice much slower and softer.

'I couldn't believe it. I saw the ocean was on fire. It was the real thing . . . then we got a direct hit. BOOM! And I knew that for whoever was down there, it was over. Forget it. . . . I knew right away because I, myself, flew up ten, fifteen feet before I came down.' When Pat landed, his head hit a corner on the upper deck of the ship, cracking it open. Blood poured from the open wound but Pat remained calm, took the hand of another one of his buddies -- Bradshaw -- and leaped off the ship into the burning ocean. Pat and Bradshaw clung to each other as they frantically drifted away from the wreckage towards the open ocean. They turned to look at the ship. It was split in half, and Pat knew that if he hadn't rushed up those steps he would be down with the rest of the forgotten dead in their watery grave.

That day German E Boats -- sleek, black surface craft -- discovered the Exercise Tiger convoy. By the end of the ambush, two were sunk and one was severely damaged. The eight LST convoy was an easy target. They were sitting ducks. The British identified the German boats an hour and a half before they were torpedoed, but because they were on a different radio frequency, the Americans never heard their warnings (Nightline 5).

The men who went into the water that day, including Pat and Bradshaw, were in no way safe, however. The water was frigid and they had to fight off other soldiers, frantically trying to stay alive. In a Nightline special, Jim Sizemore tells of one of his buddies whom he desperately tried to lift into the life raft. His friend was later picked up by another boat and upon their reunion, Sizemore inquired, ''Earl, why couldn't I get you out of the water there that night?' He said, 'Well, I had a couple of soldiers who had tried to take my lifebelt away from me. I just pushed their heads under the water and they got a death grip around my legs. You were trying to lift three men out of the water.' He had one man on each leg who had tried to take his lifebelt away from him' (Nightline 5).

Meanwhile, Pat and Bradshaw drifted, Pat trying desperately to keep his fellow soldier afloat. But that wasn't the main horror that Pat remembers from his time in the water. 'We start to drift away,' he starts, his voice uncontrollably shaking. 'And as we're pulling away, we clung to each other, and we could see other guys in the water. The water was on fire, there was a gasoline smell, but the worst thing was the death cry of the sailors and soldiers, 'Hellllp! Hellllp! Helllp!' And there's nobody to help.' His voice becomes muffled, as he chokes back his emotions.

'Okay,' Emily, his protective wife, chimes in, 'Let's take a short intermission.' It is at this moment that Pat's illness becomes most apparent. For years, he told my brother and me about his battle with 'combat fatigue,' or as it was renamed after the Vietnam War, post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. After a short pause, Pat continues his story. Pat remembers how he and Bradshaw floated helplessly for four or five hours until they saw lights coming towards them. It was a British Corvette, a rescue boat. The two men, along with others still clinging to life in that frigid water, were lifted on to the boat. As it pulled away, Pat recalls the sound of the bow hitting the dead bodies strewn all throughout the ocean. He makes a disturbing thumping noise and soon grows silent. Emily, once again, asks for a break. Ten minutes later Pat again resumes the story as he recalls the site when other LSTs, sent to retrieve more bodies, returned.

'They sent an LST out to pick up some bodies, and they came back and opened up the two big doors. You looked in and you could see piles of soldiers and sailors, dead. They closed the door right away because the port was loaded with English police and civilians, and they didn't want everybody to see what was going on because it was supposed to be hush-hush. This was a tragedy. It never should have happened, especially with D-Day five or six weeks away.'

For Pat, as with most other men who survived Exercise Tiger, the thing that disturbed them most was the army's desire to keep the whole thing under wraps. They told the men not to say a word; they didn't want to hurt the soldiers' morale so close to D-Day. The doctors who treated survivors were told not to take names and were threatened with a court martial if they spoke of the incident to anyone. Finally, in 1984, 20/20 aired its special detailing what really happened that night. In the later Nightline special, Bob Morris, a signalman on the British destroyer, explained, 'The captain cleared the lower deck, which meant there was an assembly of everyone who wasn't on duty, and we were told that what we had witnessed on that day, we would [erase] from our memory, not just for the period of hostilities, but for the remainder of our lives' (Nightline 6).

And, indeed, the disaster was concealed by all involved. This secrecy is what R. J. Bonwick, a psychologist with the National Center for PTSD, believes is the cause of Pat's, and countless other Exercise Tiger Survivors', more elevated case of post-traumatic stress disorder. 'Many studies have shown that the more prolonged, extensive, and horrifying a soldier's or sailor's exposure to war trauma, the more likely it is that she or he will become emotionally worn down and exhausted. This happens to even the strongest and healthiest of individuals, and often it is precisely these soldiers who are the most psychologically disturbed by war because they endure so much of the trauma.' He adds that because these men were forced to lock their memories inside, they were deprived of the opportunity to seek psychiatric help, which for most other World War II veterans, eliminated any chance of developing elevated stages of the disorder.

Despite all the secrecy, Pat explains that he wasn't worried about the praise that he was lacking but more about the family and friends of the forgotten dead. 'Their parents never knew. Many of the guys who died, their parents passed away without knowing how their sons really died.'

Pat survived that day treading in freezing cold water for over four hours, fighting off death and the panic of other soldiers, clinging to the ones he could. He saw what, today, we only see in movies. He had lived through enough, or so he thought.

'They didn't say anything to us, so we thought we were coming home. . . . Then a few days later, a buck sergeant came and said, 'Survivors of the 507, follow me.' We follow him. We're waiting for him to tell us we're going home. We get into a truck. We ride and we ride; before you know it, we're back in the area of Brixham.' Pat continues, the surprise still evident in his voice.

'I said, 'I can smell the gas! I can smell the oil! I can smell the water! What is this?' The sergeant said, 'Sorry, boys. My orders were to deliver you here. You're going on an LST. You're going back.'' Pat and the others were put back on an LST to invade the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

Pat survived D-Day as well and remained overseas fighting, moving from country to country. It was when he was in Germany that the long-awaited announcement came over the loudspeaker; the war was over. Three years after he left Hackensack, New Jersey, he was finally discharged and sent home. He rarely speaks of the memories he has of those years; he doesn't want to pass the horrors of what he experienced on to everyone else. He politely refuses invitations to Exercise Tiger reunions and all other functions specifically honoring survivors of the D-Day rehearsal.

'We were just doing our jobs,' he concludes, never once asking for praise or bragging about what he endured, locking all of his painful memories inside. R. J. Bonwick explains, 'When the men returned from World War II, society expected them to put it all behind them, forget the war, and get on with their lives. These men were forced to keep their emotions inside. But as they grew older and went through changes in the patterns of their lives -- retirement, the death of spouse and friends, deteriorating health, and declining physical vigor -- many experienced more difficulty with war memories or stress reactions and the truth started to come out.' In fact, Pat didn't fully explain to Emily what happened until a couple years ago when Saving Private Ryan hit theatres. So Emily and Pat just stood in the lobby of the CO Route 4 Cinemas on that dreary Paramus day. Pat wiped the tears from his eyes and the pain from his face as he had done all those years prior, looked up at Emily and smiled. Then they walked out of the theater hand-in-hand. As they tell me this story, I ask Pat if he thinks he is worthy of being called a hero. He shrugs the question off, 'I was just a scared kid,' he replies.

Emily quickly interjects, 'A coward gets scared and quits. A hero gets scared but still goes on; he went on.'

Works Cited

Bonwick, R. J. E-mail Interview. 1 December 2003.

Burkett, B. J. & Whitley, Glenna. 'Chapters: Behind the Myths of Vietnam.' The Idler. 10 May 2001
<http://www.geocities.com/dcjarviks/Idler/vIIIn96.html>.

Elson, Aaron. 9 Lives. New Jersey: Chi Chi Press, 1999.

'Exercise Tiger: D-Day Rehearsal.' Nightline. Host Ted Koppel. 1994. Videocassette. ABC News.

'First-hand Accounts of Operation Tiger.' Slapton Village Community Website.
<http://www.slapton.org/indextiger.htm>.

Giacchi, Patsy J. Telephone Interview. 27 November 2003.

Morton, Tony. 'An Outline History of Brixham.' Local History
<http://home.freeuk.com/mortz/brixham.htm>.

Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center. 'Exercise Tiger.' Naval Historical Center
<http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq20-1.htm>.

'Timeline for World War Two in Europe.' The History Place.
<http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/ww2time.htm>.

'The Tragedy of Exercise Tiger.' Navy Medicine 85, no. 3 (May-Jun 1994): 5?.

Critical Reading Questions

Questions for Writing and Discussion

Web Links

Naval Historical Center
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq20-1.htm
The U. S. Navy maintains history websites on events like Exercise Tiger, the central event in Ruggeri's story. The page includes the following links:

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq87-3g.htm A medical officer offers his own oral history of Exercise Tiger.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq20-2.htm A former deputy chief historian at the Army's Center of Military History disputes that there was a cover-up of Exercise Tiger.