Interview of Virginia Scutillo by Andy Ciccolini (2004)

Earlier you mentioned your uncle had fought in World War I. Obviously he fought in the trenches in Europe.

Yeah, he was gassed in World War I.

Did he ever talk about it?

Not too much, I don’t think it was very pleasant. He never was very healthy after that. He got sent home after that, he was over in…Hmmm? Where was he in World War I? -France? Yeah, I think he was in France. They sent him home.

You know back then they took somebody from every family, ya know in World War I, I think they did in World War II as well, but they took him. Of course, he wasn’t married and he came from a big family so they took him.

How long was he there?

A couple of years I think? That thing lasted quite a while. Yeah, you know those trenches were full of water and mud. -Rats-  Yeah, it was terrible…terrible.

It’s too bad he never talked about it, I would have liked to known more.

Yeah, it was hard for him. He never did get married. He was like a father, we had more fun with uncle Marty! (chuckles) We followed him everywhere. He use to help my mother a lot. At the time during the depression we lived on a farm, and ahh, he use to help my mother quite a bit. Whenever we weren’t tagging after him of course. He bought me, I don’t know that this is relavent, but he bought me a pony, a little Shetland pony.

Oh yeah, that sounds like fun?

Well, he was mean and my mother was afraid I was going to get hurt on him so my mother made him take it back and get me a bigger one, that one I could ride….I liked that pony.

What was it like living in the depression?

Well I’ll tell ya, I lived through it and I was a little kid at the time. I never knew how poor we were until I grew up, mother never let us know how poor we were. We had a garden, and mother fed half the neighborhood! They could of grown their own stuff, but some of them were too lazy to do their own. You know how that goes!(getting slightly antsy as she says it)

I sure do.

She worked hard. We canned. And we had pigs and cows and chickens and so forth.  And our churned butter…we had no money! But we ate, and we ate good!

Where did you live at the time?

Cataning, down below Butler, it’s in Pennsylvania.

So how did things change once the War started?

OHHH!!! THE WAR! Well, I remember that election when Roosevelt was running for the first time. My father was a democrat and my mother was a republican and it was hilarious. (we both laugh) But anyway, so everybody was for Roosevelt, he brought in that New Deal act, and of course he won. He stayed on an other term because the war was on and they didn’t want to change presidents in the middle of the stream. So he had no problem the second time but I sure remember that first time he ran, it’s the first time I ever took any interest in an election. (giggles) Let’s see, what was the rest of the question?

Just how things changed once the war started?

Oh, ya had to have ration cards. Ya had a ration card for gasoline cause you couldn’t but gasoline and you only got so much. Then ya had another ration book for meat, and ahhh, different things like that… sugar was scarce, I do remember those two, that was quite some time ago. But ya had to have a ration card for that. NYLONS! Nylons were almost impossible to find. Things were scarce. Of course that’s when all the women started going to the factories to work because the men were all taken for the service.

Did you or your mother go into the plants?

No, I was too young, but my mother never worked out like that

What about close relatives?

Wellll, I can’t think of any of them that went into the plants.

How old were you when the war started?

Well, I was born in 30, so lets see here I would have been in my early teens, barely.

Did you have any friends from school that had been drafted?

No, they weren’t old enough.

How long after the war did you meet Grandpa?

Oh, well I graduated from high school and I went off to bible school at New York State and I kept getting letters from my friends back home about all the cute guys that were joining our church, Sooo, when I came home there was several of them. One of thems name was Walter…I cant remember his last name, my mother liked Walter, but I didn’t. And Tony(my grandpa), and there was a couple other ones but I don’t remember them too well. Anyway, he started going to the same church that I went to and that’s how I met him.

How long after the war was that?

Well, when he got out he put in for a new car, he bought a new Oldsmobile in 1946 soon as he could get it. It must have been in about 1945 I met him, cause we got married in 47.

I can’t remember, did you say he was in the airforce?

Anti-aircraft.  They were in a pit, with this big gun and that’s what they used to shoot the planes down.

So was he in the European theatre or Pacific?

Europe.

Did he say where he was stationed?

Yeah, he was in France too I think.

Did he say much about his experience?

No, not too much.

Nothing? Not even about his friends and stuff in the war?

No, ya know I noticed that when I was working there was quite a few guys that worked there off and on that had been in the Korean war and such, they didn’t want to talk about it either. They just, I don’t know, there was something about it, they just didn’t want to talk about it. I don’t think Tony actually ever killed anyone.

When you were with him, did he ever watch war movies and get passionate about them and comment about the accuracy or anything of that nature?

Well, he watched them but he didn’t really say much. It wasn’t like those guys that got  mad at Kerry (chuckles). Before he went into the service he went into the C.C. camp.

What’s that?

Ohh, that’s where they take like high school boys and they go and work and cut down trees, stuff like that. He came from a big family, a big Italian family.

So he got drafted?

Yeah, he got drafted and had to go.

What about his brothers?

Ohh, Mike, his brother Mike was in the Nave. Ralph was too young. Dan, I don’t think was in. I think it was just Tony and Mike. They were like you and  Michael, close in ages.

So since Mike was in the Navy he was probably in the Pacific?

Yeah, he was in the Pacific, he didn’t talk much about it either, unless you got a few in him. Then, you couldn’t shut him up.

Ha, I know how that goes. Do you remember anything about the propaganda from the war?

Ha, oh yeah I remember from the pacific theatre that use to make all those broadcasts trying to get the boys, oh what was her name, that’s where it gets me I cant remember names. She would get on the air and try to distract the boys so the japs could come in and get them. Ohh, I cant think of her name. I’m sorry! Yeah, the propaganda, there was a lot of it.

Did you notice the racism in it?

Well, yeah…(hesitates) it seems to me that the blacks were in a unit of their own.

For a while they weren’t allowed to fight.

I think eventually they had their own unit, isn’t that sad? And then when they did get into service they were treated terribley. I do remember that, they were treated horrible. Isn’t that horrible?

Do you remember Japanese propaganda that made them look like monsters?

Yup, um huh, I do, you know there is something I do remember now that you mention that. I remember that ship, full of Jews came out of here from Hitler because they would have been killed and they got all the way to New York and Roosevelt wouldn’t let them dock and they had to go back. I do remember that, and it was terrible, that was just unjust!

What was the American public’s reaction to that?

Well there was outcry, to some extent because you know the jew’s weren’t well loved here. Another thing I remember that wasn’t very fair was that in California there was a lot of Japanese Americans that had been there for years, and their families and they owned property. They took all that property away and put them in, oh it wasn’t concentration camps…

Internment camps?

Yeah, and I don’t think they ever gave them their property back, and I don’t think that was fair.

Was there much news about that?

Oh yeah, plenty, the news wasn’t as slanted back then, not like it is now.

Through out the whole war was there ever images from the war that got sent back home and stuff like that?

I don’t remember much, just about the ship.

Nothing really on the fighting or anything like that?

No, no. The world wasn’t as violent then as it is now. It’s violent now.

Do you remember what public opinion was like during the war?

Well, they wanted it to be over, just like now. They were sad at all the losses and the holidays were sad cause so many people were missing. And we use to have pen pals, and you could write to soliders.

Did you do that?

No, I didn’t do that. And there were a lot of war movies made. And that song came out about the white cliffs of dover. You ever hear that?

No, I didn’t.

Oh, well I cant remember how it went. Ohh, I’m getting old! What else?

Do you remember Roosevelt’s speech before the invasion of Normandy?

I remember hearing it, he ensured us we would win. You know Eleanor Roosevelt, she wanst a very pretty woman but she was a very hard working, for someone who came from a family with a lot of money she was very human. She did a lot of good in her lifetime.

What did she do during the war?

Oh she use to help in the hospitals, all kinds of relief stuff. She use to sell bombs. She was an incredible lady. You had to admire her.

Did your dad fight in any of the wars?

My dad? Welll… he missed them all, he was to… he missed them all.(chuckles) Well, he came up her during the war and got a job at Sharon steel, you know they made war material. That’s how he paid to get up here and he worked there for 25 years.

Did he ever feel disappointed or remorse that he wasn’t in a war.

(While laughing) OH NO! Oh NO! not my dad! Nope, and one time Sharon steel, and right after the war Sharon steel went out on strike and everyone was suppose to picket and he said “OH no! I don’t believe in this, unions are going to ruin this country! I’m not going out there!” and he didn’t!

Sounds like my kind of guy!

You didn’t know grandpa, he was very intelligent man, he read a lot and retained what he read. He was very interesting, I miss him.

Did he lose a lot of friends in the war?

I don’t think any of his family went, isn’t that strange?

I know that, he was from Georgia, I know that during the war between the states his Grandfather had a cotton plantation or whatever, and he didn’t believe in slaves, he had no slaves and he fought on the side of the North. And my dad lived on a watermelon plantation. He moved out when he was young, and went to Iowa… I’m getting away from the war.

What was the war like for you? How did you feel about it?

Well  I felt bad about everyone dying in it, especially they jews, although I was pretty young to get the full story of it. But, it was sad, it was a sad time… Of course Ill tell ya, patriotism was very high at that time, people were very patriotic.

So you do believe in the saying it’s the last good war?

Is war ever good? You know there have been wars since the beginning of time. No, uh, the Korean war, nobody won that thing. Since the second world war it dosnt seem like anybody wins. We just kill each other off and nobody wins. At least in the Civil War you knew one side won. But after the second world war, who won those? I don’t know, nobody.

How were things different between the Korean war and the second world war? At least for you?

Well, there wasn’t too much patriotism, and a lot of guys went to Canada to escape the draft, everybody was mostly against it as I remember of it.

Now was that the Korean war or the Vietnam war?

Both of them, as I recall.

Do you know anyone that fought in those wars?

Oh I used to, but I couldn’t tell you their names. I worked with them, but they did not want to talk about it. There was this one guy, but he…he was a nice guy but there was something not quite right about him. He was telling about how they had to wear their socks so long, and their feet got full of sores and stuff, but he didn’t say much else about it. I never knew anyone in those wars that was the same when they came out. He was kinda odd. He did talk about that.

So how do you feel about what’s going on now?

What’s going on now, the only thing with that is the Muslims hate us. Especially Christians, they hate us, they wanta get rid of us. And if we don’t stop um,(makes slashing motion across her throat) were gonna be gone

So you believe this war is right?

Yeah I do. I think we have to stop them.

What about Osama Bin Laden’s tape that said if we stopped interfering in the Middle East they would stop attacking us.

I don’t believe a word he says. I don’t like war, I don’t really like it at all, but I know one thing their…and then…uh, that mess over in Israel, Jerusalem was given to the Jews, you can’t take it away from them because God isn’t going to let you.

You know I forgot to ask you, you said Grandpa found his faith during the war.

Ohhh, he did, I told you they use to have pen pals during the war and this girl from one of the churches in Sharon wrote to Tony, and in the letter she sent a little book of John. So in that gun pit he read that book of John and..you know it says “If you believe in the lord Jesus Christ he will forgive your sins and save you” you know John 3:16 for God so loved the world, and Tony was in that pit with nobody with him and he asked God to come into his heart and changed his whole life. Because in his family, his mother… as I say…well Tony kinda got left out and it was always Mike, it was always Mike. But it changed his whole life it really did.

Do you think it was partly just because of his situation that he was so affected?

No, I think the word convicted him.

But it definitely helped him through the war.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. And when he come home. Of course when he came home and told his family they about put him in a boobey hatch, they thought he was crazy, had lost his mind.

Did he have a hard time with work or any other place when he returned from the war?

No, just with his family, he went to…uh…Sharon steel or the sawmill, one of the two I can’t remember. But Tony didn’t like to work for other people. Of course, the bible says that if you believe in the lord jesus Christ he will save you, and your household. Your family. So most of Tony’s family has found the Lord. They have. You have a pretty good heritage, don’t you let it down.

Analysis

As the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan unfolds, we see a bloody display of the gruesome aspects of war. Bodies are drowned, shot, dismembered, huddled in crevices crying.  It attempts to show a true representation of the old saying: war is hell. It certainly does a good job, but the real story is what unfolds afterwards: the lives of the soldiers and their trials, expectations, losses and hardships. This is the typical war story we see in literature, innocent young men get sent off to war and go through such hardships that they are forced to grow up instantly.  However, in war more than just the soldiers experience a fall from innocence, but their families and friends at home as well.

In my interview, I learned much about the history of our family and their experiences with war. Right from the get go it was clear that my family was going to be a unique one. My great, great Grandfather owned a cotton plantation in Georgia during the time of the civil war. However, he did not own a single slave because he simply did not believe in them. When the war broke out, he fought on the side of the North, despite living in Georgia. This is quite the noble feat when you consider the history of people not standing up against injustices, especially when it would put them in immediate danger. My Grandmother’s Uncle fought during World War I in the trenches of France. He even was gassed during the war and sent home, bringing up images of  Wilfred Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est as he describes the man being engulfed by the gas, still yelling out “and stumbling, and flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.” Lucky for my Grandma’s Uncle he was not killed but certainly affected. I cannot imagine what something like that would do to your body; much more exposure and he probably would not of made it. Lastly, my Grandfather fought in the anti-aircraft gun pits in France during the Second World War. My Grandfather, like the rest of my family and friends my Grandmother knew that fought in wars, would never talk about it. There was just something so horrifying and real about it that they could not speak of it. They were left to re-live it in their own silence.

All three of these men experienced their own war story. They were young men, everything going for them at home and their whole lives were uprooted and taken from them. Unfortunately, their stories have died with them because of their silence. I have only a little insight into my Grandfather’s story because I know that it was in the gun pits that he found God. His pen pal wrote him and sent a book of John and when reading the famous 3:16 passage he found his faith. My Grandmother did not believe in the saying that there is no such thing as an Atheist in a foxhole; she felt that the word convicted Tony and saved him. I believe this to be true to a certain extent, but considering his situation I think the war affected him in such a way that he was searching for something to hold on to, and in that way God was able to reach him.

At home, my Grandma experienced the war in a completely different way. She was younger, in her teens and had not yet met my future Grandfather. Having lived through the depression you would think one would be prepared for almost anything, but as a young kid she was unaware of the hard times, especially because of her mother’s dedication to the family.  When the war started, she began to feel the impact immediately. All resources were rationed, gasoline, meats, sugar. Nylon, something on every corner today, was near impossible to find.  Things began to become so scarce that women began to go work in the factories. My Grandmother was too young to have worked anywhere and her father was not in the war so there was not need for her mother to work the factories.  Regardless, she began to come of age as she actually paid attention to the Presidential election before the war started and then had to mature and recognize what was going on around her as everything changed.

One thing that was impossible to avoid was propaganda. Luckily, my Grandmother was old enough to recognize what it was. It was interesting to see the different reactions she had to the different type of propaganda. For instance, the first thing she mentioned was Japanese propaganda. This stuck out more during the war because it was much more targeted. It was hard to make German’s look different from us because of the W.A.S.P. image, but Japanese were made into monsters. However, she seemed to have no problem with calling them Japs or even with any of the horrible portrays we had of them. She did, however, mention the Japanese internment camps and she was quite upset about it and felt it was a black mark on her society. To have thought this back then was a big deal but it seems that she felt this way for two reasons, first because of her faith, second because she was in the Midwest, far away from the Japanese threat.

Interestingly, when I asked her about the racism in propaganda she changed topics on me. She got passionately angry about the treatment of African American soldiers during the war. I was surprised she even had much knowledge about what went on.  I have read about it in Witter Bynner’s Defeat, and Gwendolyn Brooks’ Negro Hero. Learning about how P.O.W.’s were treated better than fellow African American service men and how the blood had to be separated. It is truly a black mark for us that when fighting such a “noble” war, we ourselves were not so noble. My Grandmother very much felt the same way and was disgusted at the fact it took us so long to treat blacks fairly.

The news coverage of the time was very extensive and as my Grandmother put it, “it wasn’t slanted.” She recalls the account of a ship of Jewish refugee’s fleeing Hitler and trying to dock at New York but they were not allowed because of immigration laws that only allowed a certain number of immigrants based on their current percentage in the population. My Grandmother felt much sadness and remorse over the fact that we could of saved so many Jews from slaughter, and it is here that I could see the full weight of the war hitting her. There was no playful little 74-year-old girl talking about her childhood, she was talking about a disaster, one that we could have done our part to save lives. An event that next to no one did his or her part to help stop. The Catholic bishops and the Pope could have spoke up against Hitler and his treatment of the Jews but they chose to tip toe around him because they felt they would endanger more Catholics, but they were also being persecuted anyway. Pope Pius the XI seemed on track to do something, but when he passed away Pius XII did little to curb the catastrophe. Had the church placed pressure upon Hitler, they may have been able to curb the Holocaust. It worked earlier in the war when the church spoke out about Hitler’s T-4 Euthanasia program and afterwards they were stopped, at least publicly.

When asked if she believed WWII was the last good war my Grandmother responded with a rant about how no war is good, but there have always been war and that the problem today is that no body wins them. Every war before and including WWII you knew who won, now we just kill each other and nobody ever wins. There was a lot of hostility towards the Korean and Vietnam wars and she even said the public opinion was completely different, that there was no patriotism during those wars. So inevitable I asked her about the current war, the answer is not what I expected. She fully supports the war, because the Muslims hate us and if we do not kill them, they will kill us. With all her experience with war, my hope was that she would see that nothing is ever accomplished through it. Perhaps with a lifetime surrounded with conflicts it becomes engrained in our system. Her love first mentality was lost, and the desire to protect one self kicked in. As a Christian she feels threatened by Muslims so what other way than to fight a war? I mean, they started it…did they not?

The news coverage of the time was very extensive and as my Grandmother put it, “it wasn’t slanted.” She recalls the account of a ship of Jewish refugee’s fleeing Hitler and trying to dock at New York but they were not allowed because of immigration laws that only allowed a certain number of immigrants based on their current percentage in the population. My Grandmother felt much sadness and remorse over the fact that we could of saved so many Jews from slaughter, and it is here that I could see the full weight of the war hitting her. There was no playful little 74-year-old girl talking about her childhood, she was talking about a disaster, one that we could have done our part to save lives. An event that next to no one did his or her part to help stop. The Catholic bishops and the Pope could have spoke up against Hitler and his treatment of the Jews but they chose to tip toe around him because they felt they would endanger more Catholics, but they were also being persecuted anyway. Pope Pius the XI seemed on track to do something, but when he passed away Pius XII did little to curb the catastrophe. Had the church placed pressure upon Hitler, they may have been able to curb the Holocaust. It worked earlier in the war when the church spoke out about Hitler’s T-4 Euthanasia program and afterwards they were stopped, at least publicly.

When asked if she believed WWII was the last good war my Grandmother responded with a rant about how no war is good, but there have always been war and that the problem today is that no body wins them. Every war before and including WWII you knew who won, now we just kill each other and nobody ever wins. There was a lot of hostility towards the Korean and Vietnam wars and she even said the public opinion was completely different, that there was no patriotism during those wars. So inevitable I asked her about the current war, the answer is not what I expected. She fully supports the war, because the Muslims hate us and if we do not kill them, they will kill us. With all her experience with war, my hope was that she would see that nothing is ever accomplished through it. Perhaps with a lifetime surrounded with conflicts it becomes engrained in our system. Her love first mentality was lost, and the desire to protect one self kicked in. As a Christian she feels threatened by Muslims so what other way than to fight a war? I mean, they started it…did they not?