America's Greatest Generation

Thank you for your service, Cpl. Pavese, his amazing memory

Fort Myers resident Frank Pavese couldn’t have known on the afternoon of Dec. 7, 1941, that three years later he would be a U.S. Army corporal stationed in Italy facing down what seemed like the entire German army. The 17-year-old Fort Myers High student sure as heck couldn’t have predicted that one day a German colonel would want to surrender to Americans. Just not to lowly Cpl. Pavese. But first came Dec. 7. “… I was watering my lawn and Muscles McNabb―he didn’t weigh 100 pounds soaking wet,” says Pavese, the 93-year-old founder of a Fort Myers law firm. “I was watering the lawn on 1118 South Jackson Street and Muscles came over. ‘Did you hear the news?’ I said what news? He said, ‘Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese.’” Everything changed that day for Pavese, the day that propelled America into World War II. A year later he enlisted in the Army; found himself after training on a Liberty ship with about 2,000 other soldiers bound for North Africa. His boat was part of a six-ship convoy escorted across the Atlantic, destroyers on either side. Pavese knew German U-boats were lurking, eager to sink American troopships. He recalled it took 12 days to cross the ocean. They reached Oran, Algeria, where he was stationed for two months, training intensively and preparing for battle. Moving north, Cpl. Pavese’s job in Italy was keeping his company supplied with food. Every day he and a truck driver would go to a nearby “food dump” and return with meals that kept the Army going. And then one memorable trip he and the driver encountered Germans. Lots of them. Pavese and the driver, a private named Kowalski, would hit an S curve above a valley. “I said, ‘This doesn’t look good, Kowalski,’” Pavese says, recalling the moment. “We went around the corner and there was the whole German army.” Of course it wasn’t the entire army. But there were many Germans around that corner and it looked like an entire army to Pavese. “Kowalski said, ‘What are you going to do, corporal?’” Pavese recalls, adding that he replied, “We’re going to park this vehicle and stand out in front of it and hope they don’t kill us.”