Toward the middle of the last century, Saugus started to empty its bedrooms — the ones in the attic, in the space out over the garage, on the third floor, second door on the left, the bedrooms facing the pond or the cemetery or those looking broadly down on the wide marshes or on quiet Cliftondale Square. The bedrooms where boys cruised into manhood, almost overnight at that.
Saugus did this, just as all of sleepy America did, in the days beginning our most persistent glory. She gave up her men, and soon her women.
Saugus and all of America sent from those bedrooms our sons, our fathers, our brothers, our uncles, our nephews, our cousins. Saugus and all of America stripped themselves of their young blood and sent their youngsters off to war. Saugonians, in swift journeys, many whose measure we will never know, found themselves on the beaches of Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, on the shores and sands of North Africa, on the edge of Europe on D-Day, in the heart of the Italian Alps coming onto Mount Casino, crossing the Rhine at Remagen, bursting across France and Germany with the Third Armored Division and other units. Saugus blood soaked into those foreign soils, consecrated dim ground, hardpan and glacier-slugged rock, Asian limestone and Pacific sands.
The guitars and fiddles and drums in their empty bedrooms went silent, gathered dust.
Their baseball cards went into shoeboxes in the attic, the cellar, the barn.
Their Little Big Books.
Their pin collections and jackknifes and merit badges.
Their keepsakes became their families’ keepsakes.
Some of them left us at the railroad station at Essex and Eustis Streets or at Depot Square in Saugus Center, as they started the journey to save Saugus, America, and the world. They congregated, they gabbed, they kissed girlfriends and shook hands as diversions came upon their partings. Mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and neighbors came to say bon voyage, good luck, “Give ’em hell!”
One young man asked his parents not to go to the railroad station, to say goodbye at home. Clutching his bag, he walked down their driveway, down their street, down Main Street. The father, shaken by the request, hustled the mother out the side door, into the car, drove down side streets on the sly. They lovingly and proudly watched their son an extra 10 minutes or so as he strode to the train station along with a few friends from high school.
They never saw him again.
Arthur DeFranzo, his name and deeds to be carved forever in the stone of heroes, left early, left first, driven by what was happening in Europe. Suddenly, half a world away, he’s lighting up Europe, his courage, his bravery, his devotion to God, family, town, country, becoming benchmarks forever. Saugonian, Saugus High boy, neighbor, young man with a vision. Hero for all time to come.
One of ours.
He fought. He died. He slept in France.
Now he sleeps here.
The Kasabuski brothers fought and died and slept in Italy, falling mere days apart in the torrid uphill battle in the Italian Alps, fighting the German army in a savage campaign.
John and Walter Kasabuski were born and raised in Saugus, graduated from Saugus High. Each was president of the ski club, and they arranged, upon entering the service, to be assigned to Company E of the US Army’s 87th Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division, an elite mountain fighting troop, which excelled in winter operations. They served in the Kiska invasion when the Japanese brought the war closest to home, in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. In the spring of 1945, they were sent to northern Italy to help drive the Germans out of the Alps. John was fatally wounded by a grenade on April 15 and lived long enough for Walter, two years the elder, to get to his side. Twelve days later, Sergeant Walter Kasabuski was killed by a sniper’s bullet. The hockey rink at the entrance to Breakheart Reservation is named in their honor.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars post is named for Sergeant Arthur DeFranzo, upon whom was bestowed the nation’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor.
They are remembered.
As are the sons of other Saugonians who served: The five sons of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ward of Lincoln Avenue — Robie, Kenneth, Seldon, Russell, and Charles Jr., two Navy, three Army. The five sons of Mr. and Mrs. Rene Field of Ballard Street — Robert, Jack, Rene Jr., Gordon, and Richard, five Army. The five sailors from the home of Elgin Ludwig on Jackson Street — Samuel, John, James, Herbert, and Arthur MacDonald. Six Vatchers — Walter, Warren, Helen, Gertrude, Harriet, and Calvin. The eight Buckless brothers from Baker Hill — Alexander, Willard, Gordon, Roy, Kenneth, George, Raymond, and Lloyd. Seven Nagle brothers from Baker Hill. Five Tura Brothers — George, Pete, Joe, Lennie, Charlie. Not all died in battle, but each is listed here as an example of our involvement. The list goes on and on.
Marine Platoon Sergeant Billy McCarthy, former high school cheerleader, who had fought at Bougainville and Guam before he was killed on Iwo Jima. (“A natural leader,” reports said of him. “Mac had one of the most vital personalities I’ve ever seen,” wrote his first sergeant. “You didn’t have to worry about the men’s morale when he was around.”)
Master Sergeant Thomas “Pop” Virnelli, flying veteran of two wars, killed in France. Private Harold Turner, an Army medic who died on June 19, 1944, shortly after the invasion of Europe began. Saugus men declared missing in action in Europe in one combat engineers outfit included Tec 5 Walter French, of Sunnyside Avenue; Sergeant Walter Wetmore, of Main Street; Sergeant Irving Cameron, of Central Street; Harry Woodland, of Cottage Street; and Harold Maribella, of Western Avenue. News came later that some had become prisoners of war and would return home. Boyhood playmates and chums Private First Class Vitold Glinski, of Atherton Street, and Marine Corporal Alexander Chojnowski, of Rhodes Street, died within a month of each other, fighting on Pacific islands.
More empty rooms.
Many other Saugus families sent off two and three and four sons into the long war, and many sent their daughters to places all over the world.
As peace came out of Europe, out of the Pacific, we thought all that hell was over and done with.
Then, suddenly, youngsters Eddie McCarthy and Hughie Menzies were killed in Korea, in a new onslaught. They lie a grave apart at Riverside Cemetery. They died like so many others of our young men did, sooner or later, from this cause or that cause. Laurence Daniels, Fiore Sacco, the Ludwig brothers, Soupie Campbell, Richard Gabry, the endless circle widening, the empty rooms gathering up more silence.
To walk through the veterans’ section of Riverside Cemetery, to read the names on the flat stones, to remember the faces of those who bailed out of their bedrooms when the whole earth itself was in trouble, is more than a simple exercise in memory. Whether they left us then or later is no great divider, for they went in harm’s way for all our good. See their names inscribed on our war memorial, those who stood and were counted.
Tom Sheehan is in his 95th year and is the author of 53 or 54 books. He lives in Saugus.