WWII VET LOOKS BACK AT 101 YEARS
Salvatore Philip Mattracion, a decorated veteran, would lose his son in Vietnam and see his grandson become Ellenville’s police chief
Salvatore Philip Mattracion, the grandfather of Ellenville Police Chief Philip S. Mattracion, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, earning the Bronze Star Ribbon for service in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater of Operations.
On Sunday, Dec. 22, the elder Mattracion will celebrate his 101st birthday. He said he’s the last living member of his Navy unit.
On a recent afternoon at the Gateway Diner on U.S.
Route 9W in Highland, Mattracion, accompanied by his grandson, shared stories from his service during the war.
Born in 1918, Mattracion grew up on the banks of the Hudson River in the town of Wappinger hamlet of Chelsea in Dutchess County. He was 22 years old when he joined the Navy. He said he just knew he didn’t want to go into the Army.
“I lived by the water; my house was at the edge of the water,” Mattracion said.
After completing boot camp and spending time in Chicago, the Great Lakes and Rhode Island, Mattracion shipped out of the U.S. from Norfolk, Va. He and his shipmates were headed to Sicily.
“I was involved in the Battle of Sicily,” Mattracion said.
Aboard ship, the sailors slept on hammocks before they got bunks.
Mattracion later served in the Pacific Theater, where he saw no shortage of action.
Taking a break from eating a hot dog with a side order of onion rings, he recalled an engagement with Japanese planes.
“The Japanese planes attacked us one night,” Mattracion said. “We shot down six, but one got through.”
That plane managed to attack the ship he was serving on, putting a big hole in it, he said.
Mattracion said they ended up having to put a hole in the top deck so the water that rushed through the hole from waves could escape through the top. The vessel had to return to Pearl Harbor to be patched up with new plates to cover the hole.
Mattracion later served about the aircraft carrier USS Makassar, joining in operations that resulted in victory and occupation following the Battle of Iwo Jima Feb. 15-17, 1945, and the Battle of Okinawa. He’d earn the Bronze Star Ribbon as a result of those battles.
Among the operations in which he was involved was ferrying planes on the carrier, Mattracion said. Another task was the repair the ship’s busy flight deck after it suffered damage from a rough landing by a fighter plane stationed on the carrier.
“The planes were always coming in; some crashed and hit the deck,” he said. “Sometimes when the planes (landed) they would tip up so the propeller would go right through the deck. That’s when we had to make repairs.
“Sometimes the planes were damaged so badly we just pushed them into the ocean,” he said.
Mattracion said he and his shipmates would make a quick repair using plates so the next plane could come in. “We’d make a more permanent repair when time allowed,” he said.
That time could be tough to find, between missions carried out mostly during the day and pilot training exercises at other times.
Mattracion said he was assigned to a number of details aboard the carrier, like loading the planes with bombs to be dropped on enemy targets.
Mattracion said he learned the war had ended on a long journey back across the Pacific toward the U.S. in 1945.
After the war ended, he worked in Chelsea, at one of the many brickyards that lined the Hudson River, until 1960.
“You could walk clear from Chelsea to Beacon in the rain without getting wet because of all the brickyards,” he said.
He later worked for IBM in Fishkill.
While Mattracion made it home safe from the war, his son, Philip R. Mattracion, was not so lucky. Assigned to Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 9th U.S. Marines, the younger Mattracion was killed in support of Operation Big Horn in Vietnam on April 5, 1967. He was 23. His own son, Philip S. Mattracion, was just 5 years old when his father died.
The younger Mattracion, who said said his father had volunteered to serve in Vietnam, ended up being raised by his grandparents. He noted that his uncle, Mike Seeley, was also a World War II veteran who had served in the Battle of Normandy. Seeley died last month on Veterans Day, he said.
“He got a Silver Star,” the younger Mattracion said.
As grandfather and grandson left the diner, people eating at another table wished the elder Mattracion a happy birthday.