WWII veterans reflect on Memorial Day
On Memorial Day 1945, Lou Cinfici was an adventurous 17-year-old aboard a tugboat ferrying ammunition to U.S. troops on remote islands in the South Pacific.
The Reading youth had five brothers serving in World War II. He also wanted to serve, but Uncle Sam said he was too young to don a uniform.
Undeterred, he lied about his age and ended up in the Merchant Marine, attached to the Army Transportation Corps, in the final weeks of the war in the Pacific.
Seventy-five years, Cinfici acknowledges, have dimmed the memory of that Memorial Day.
“I was more concerned about the Japanese than the holiday,” confides Cinfici, 92, a resident of The Heritage of Green Hills in Cumru Township.
On Monday, the nation will observe the 75th Memorial Day since 1945, a landmark year in the na
tion’s history.
Originally known as Decoration Day, the holiday honored the dead of the Civil War.
It was not until after World War I, however, that the day was expanded to honor those who have died in all American wars. In 1971, Memorial Day was declared a national holiday by an act of Congress and placed on the last Monday in May, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
In 1945, it was a time of jubilation and lament.
A war-weary nation celebrated only weeks earlier when, on May 8, Germany and the Axis powers unconditionally surrendered to Allied forces under the command of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, ending the war in Europe.
It would become known as V-E Day, or Victory in Europe Day, and millions poured into the streets in the U.S. and Europe.
Yet, in addition to mourning the loss of about 105,000 personnel in the European theater, the nation grieved for the passing of the beloved president who led the nation through its darkest hours, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died six weeks earlier on April 12.
Moreover, World War II was far from over.
Some of the bloodiest fighting of the war was still to come in far-off places like
Okinawa, only 350 miles from mainland Japan.
Berks veterans of World War II, including Cinfici, recently reflected on Memorial Day 1945.
Their memories are clouded by time, but they retained the spirit of a generation that rose in defense of its country and made no apologies for it.
Joseph Pinder was a 20-year-old Army private with a medical unit in Luxembourg on that holiday.
Despite jubilation in Europe, the war was not yet over for Pinder, who grew up in Stowe, Montgomery County.
After serving in hospitals in England and Europe, he was transferred to the South Pacific after V-E Day.
The emotional scars inflicted by the sight of hundreds of wounded and dying soldiers linger seven decades after the war ended.
“I’ll tell you what I did in the war, but not what I’ve seen,” insisted Pinder, 95, who lives at Birdsboro Lodge personal care home in Exeter Township. “What I saw, I never will forget in my whole life.”
Dr. Cedric Jimerson, too, was witness to the horrors of war as a 25-year-old surgeon with the 663rd Medical Clearing Co. in Europe.
Jimerson was treating refugees at a hospital in Germany on Memorial Day 1945.
For two years, he’d treated troops wounded in some of the major battles in Europe. But with the war over, he was treating refugees at a dusting station near Aachen.
Cholera, not shrapnel, was the culprit in postWorld War II Germany. In Aachen, refugees were deloused with DDT, the long since banned insecticide, to eradicate the wave of infection.
“I was too busy to celebrate,” recalls Jimerson, 100, who went on to spend 36 years as chief surgeon in Community General Hospital in Reading.
Elmer Davidheiser was a 20-year-old serving with the 301 Signal Corps in Europe on May 30, 1945.
The cook had not seen direct action. He had, however, prepared meals for enlisted troops who’d seen combat in the Battle of the Bulge and other encounters as the war wound down in Europe.
He spent Memorial Day 1945 dreaming of returning home after three years in the service.
“I didn’t do anything special,” recalls Davidheiser, 95, who lives at Birdsboro Lodge. “I was just glad it was over.”