started to handwrite my war story,” DeFazio
notes in the preface of the book. “I gave it to
the gentleman to send in, he made a copy of it
and handed me the original back. It sat in my
drawer for years.”
Years later, DeFazio began attending vet-
erans breakfasts around the Pittsburgh area,
where he met a young man who asked him
to share his story. DeFazio repeatedly de-
clined, instead preferring to listen to other
veterans talk about their experiences in
different battles. The Italian Campaign,
however, was never once mentioned. Finally,
he decided to speak at the breakfast and then,
at the age of 89, decided it was time to make
his story public.
“Once he learned that 2,000 World War II
vets are dying each day, he decided that the
time was right to share his story,” Vacula says.
“He didn’t want it to be forgotten.”
The book, which Vacula drafted using her
father’s handwritten memoirs, details De-
Fazio’s life from his upbringing in Verona to
his return home after the war.
DeFazio and his four siblings were all born
in a one-bedroom house in Verona. He quit
school at age 16 and went to work to help his
family, but was drafted into the Army a short
time later.
In December 1943, DeFazio’s unit arrived
in Algiers and then the Port of Naples—the
same port that his mother and father had
left to come to America. He was 18
years old.
In Italy, DeFazio was assigned
to the 36th Infantry Division, in
the Fifth Army under General Mark
Clark. Their objective was to capture
Monte Cassino from the Germans.
What follows is DeFazio’s heart-
wrenching account of one of the war’s
bloodiest battles. The fight along the
Rapido River—which he later deemed
“the River of Hell”—would cause him
to suffer nightmares for years to come.
He watched as bodies, including that of
his best friend, were blown up and ripped
apart right next to him. He saw soldiers
falling into the river and drowning in its
swift current. Then, seconds after DeFazio’s
lieutenant ordered his troops to move
forward, a shell hit the ground behind him.
The force pushed him into a drainage ditch
full of water.
“I was stunned and for a minute I didn’t
know where I was, but I felt a pain behind me.
I stuck my hand back there and my finger felt
a hole; I was bleeding,” DeFazio recalls in the
book. “I put my hand back there again and
I felt another hole. I was hit in two places. I
looked over at my look-alike [his best friend].
His whole back was shot out. He probably
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