Replies

News from the past war
Brothers in arms
An Italian-American family in North Texas sent five sons to World War II, who became known as the Fighting Fenoglios
By Chris Vaughn
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

FORT WORTH - The postman who walked the route near the convent on the city's south side used to look out for the letters from the Fenoglio boys.
He knew that when he got one he'd better linger with Marietta Fenoglio for a few extra minutes, knew she'd get weak and shed a lot of tears.
"He would stand there with her until she got under control," said Marietta's daughter Sylvia Fenoglio Webb, who lived at home at the time. "My daddy told the boys to be sure they wrote letters to their mama, and they did what Daddy told them."
The last world war tapped five Fenoglio sons, an Italian-American family that was profiled in the Star-Telegram in 1944 for its sacrifices. The paper called them the Fighting Fenoglios, and every one of them came home.
The youngest of the bunch is Melvin, now 77 and living with a son near Bryan. Henry, 79, is the only son left in the Fort Worth area. Frank died in 1991, Charley in 1993, James in '99.
At a time when hundreds of thousands of American families are again separated by military service in far-off countries, there are a few people who understand, none better than the Fenoglios.
B.J. and Marietta Fenoglio raised their nine children on a cotton farm three miles east of Montague, an unlikely place for northern Italians to settle. But in the late 1800s, they did, coming from little towns in the Piedmont region.
They grew every vegetable they ate, slaughtered hogs and chickens, canned fruit from the peach orchards and produced their own wine, which the local lawmen politely ignored.
"You could always tell the Italian kids because we had purple feet," Henry Fenoglio said.
Marietta Fenoglio spoke Italian to her children, but most of them learned only the comprehension end of the language.
Charley went into the service first, in 1939, because finding steady work was still tough during the tail end of the Depression. Charley became an electrician aboard the battleship USS Pennsylvania, which was docked at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked.
He served on the USS Mount Vernon, USS Breton and USS Casablanca before becoming chief electrician on the USS Bismarck Sea, a light aircraft carrier. That carrier was sunk by Japanese kamikaze planes on Feb. 21, 1945, off the coast of Iwo Jima; Charley was dumped into the sea for about four hours.
Charley was rescued and taken to Saipan, where he had a hunch that his youngest brother, Melvin, was stationed. In letters to each other, the Fenoglio brothers had a code for locations that they didn't think the censors could figure out.
"I was working in the maintenance office," said Melvin Fenoglio, who served with an air rescue squadron. "I seen him coming across the ramp. He was wearing someone else's clothes because he had lost everything. I told the chief, 'Well, here comes my brother.' "
By then, the Fenoglio parents had sold their farm in Montague County and moved south to Fort Worth, buying a three-bedroom house on College Avenue south of Berry Street.
B.J. Fenoglio became a steelworker at the steel plant on Hemphill Street, and Sylvia went to work as an electrician at the Convair bomber plant on the west side, a Rosie the Riveter.
"They'd never had indoor toilets or running water or electricity," Henry Fenoglio said. "So Mama kind of liked it when she got down here."
Henry was inducted into the Army in 1943 and soon ended up in North Africa at the headquarters of the Allied army. He asked if he could join the 36th Infantry Division and see some combat, but his superiors shook their heads.
They made him a messenger for a general.
"I had gone to business school in Wichita Falls and learned how to keep books" after high school, he said. "That's what kept me off the front lines, I suspect."
Frank, the fun-loving Fenoglio, was spared overseas duty, undoubtedly because of his weak eyesight, and served as a training soldier at Fort Bliss and Camp Maxey.
It was James, the second-oldest son, who saw the most action, ironically in the country where his mother was born.
James belonged to Texas' legendary 36th Infantry, and he fought in Italy, including the bloody battles of San Pietro, Cassino and the Rapido River.
He became a sergeant and earned two Purple Hearts. The war ended for him near Rome. It wasn't the physical injuries that sent him back to the United States but mental and emotional injuries.
"He wasn't acclimated to that kind of violence," Henry Fenoglio said. "He was a quiet guy who never seemed to feel pressure. But after he came back, he was pretty nervous."
The war weighed perhaps most heavily on Marietta Fenoglio.
"Honey, that little lady went through a lot," Sylvia Webb said. "I would hear her crying all night through the wall."
By 1947, though, Marietta Fenoglio had all her children back from the military, four of them even living at home.
"She was a happy woman until 1950," Henry Fenoglio said.
Charley was recalled to the Navy at the beginning of the Korean War and was sent to an aircraft carrier.
On Nov. 29, 1950, the Fenoglios gathered around the radio to listen to the news. The newscaster reported that hordes of Chinese soldiers swept across the border and were scattering the U.S. military.
"Mama collapsed," Henry Fenoglio said. "She never regained consciousness and died the next day. Those were the last words she heard. In her mind, we were all going back for another war, and we had all just gotten back together.
"Our mama was the family's only casualty."