A Life Revisited
"Every day is Christmas"
Reflections by Joe Tedeschi on 87 years of a full and happy life
Remembering My Father—Veterans’ Day
I want to honor my father on this Veteran's Day. He served in the Navy in World War 1. This is a father I really did not know, and I guess I’ve always wanted desperately to know. Having lost him when I was seventeen, I have so little to hang on to that was really him. I have spent time trying to reconstruct my father’s life from his service record with the Navy during World War 1 and from the few letters and cards he wrote during that time.
My father enlisted in the US Navy on 12 April 1917 (22 going on 23). The US declared war on Germany on 5 April 1917. He “joined up” a week after war was declared. His service number was 199909. His service record reads:
My father enlisted in the US Navy on 12 April 1917 (22 going on 23). The US declared war on Germany on 5 April 1917. He “joined up” a week after war was declared. His service number was 199909. His service record reads:
Entered US Navy April 12, 1917 at Newport, RI as Seaman. Assigned to US Battleship New Hampshire. Transferred to oil tanker O.B. Jennings, Standard Oil Ship as a member of the Gunners Crew, which on 24 March 1918, on fourth trip was torpedoed by a German submarine and rammed by His Majesty’s Ship Man of War off the Isle of Wight in the English Channel. Was one of the crew picked up by the British Destroyer Garland. Was taken to the Victory Station at Portsmouth, England, and later transferred to the Bay Ridge Brooklyn Navy Yard and assigned to the Lake Harney at Montreal. Sailed to Rochefort, France, where ship was assigned to transportation service between Ireland, Wales, England and France. After serving for some time on this ship, was transferred to the USS Philippine transporting troops back to the US until date of discharge. Discharged from service Oct 20, 1919 at Newport, RI as Gunners Mate, Second Class.
In a very poignant letter to his sister after his rescue at sea, my father disclosed a side of him which I would have liked to have explored further. He concludes his letter:
“I have lots of letters to write tonight. I received quite a few letters yesterday and today (his mail was catching up to him), so you see I am feeling quite happy.”
I am thrilled even today as I write this to know of this point in time in my father’s life when he declared he was “quite happy.” How I wish I could have talked about it with him sometime, especially after my Vietnam experience, and we could have shared the same feelings. I, too, knew the joy of receiving overseas mail from home and how much it meant. In a post card from Paris, my father wrote to this same sister:
“Dear Sister, I am sending you this card because it looks so much like you. I thought you would like it.”
Again, this beautiful sentiment revealing a nature of my father I never saw. The picture on the reverse of the post card is classic beauty, and even today, I can see some of my Aunt Gina in it. My father concludes the short post card with:
“Every ship that’s making the last trip to France gets a leave in Paris, so that’s why I’m getting mine.” M.A. Tedeschi.
Once again, my curiosity of what’s not there. I have been to Paris numerous times. I wonder if my father and I visited the same places? This was his last voyage. How many voyages were there before this? What was it like ferrying US troops home after the war?
He must have had more experiences, more tales to relate. As a former professional soldier and military man, I would love to have learned the details first-hand from him. He never spoke to me about his war time experiences, and I rarely heard him talk to others about it either. I really regret this omission in my life and feel disappointed even today that I was denied this opportunity by his early death from cancer.
Brothers Worlds Apart in 1966
When the telegram informing my mother of the 4 October 1966 plane accident and my disposition arrived, other events were preoccupying her. The essential facts are that while I was crashing into a mountain in Vietnam, my brother was in the process of returning from Italy to the US with his new bride. At that time, my mother had been dealing with two very stressful situations. She had one son fighting in Vietnam and the older son in Italy courting and about to marry a girl she had never met. Trying to get my thirty-four-year-old brother hitched, my mother, along with my Uncle Tony, plotted to effect as close as was possible in 1966 an “arranged” marriage with a girl from their village, Fornelli, in the old country. Their plan worked, and Mike met and fell in love with Ersilia and asked her to marry him—and she accepted! However, the village priest was not about to bless this hasty marriage and allow my brother to take one of his village girls off to the US. After a lot of letter writing and scheming on how to accomplish the wedding civilly in Italy and have a church wedding back in the States, the village priest finally gave in and married them in Italy. After the marriage ceremony, my brother telephoned my mother with the happy news and said he would send her a telegram with the details of their arrival flight home into Logan Airport with his new bride. Now, I am in no position to judge, but I would say my mother’s focus on 6 October 1966 was on the news that her older son had just been married and was about to bring his new bride, whom she had never met, home from Italy to live in the US. My mother had several relatives and friends in her living room discussing the news of my brother’s marriage when the Western Union messenger rang the doorbell and handed her a telegram. I can only imagine the look on the Western Union messenger’s face as he passed the telegram to my mother, and she remarked, “Oh good. I’ve been expecting this. Thank you very much.” The messenger knew it was a telegram from the Department of Defense and that it usually meant sad news for the recipient, though if it had been a notification of death in combat, a US Army officer would have brought the news personally to the next of kin. (Although with the large number of deaths in Vietnam, I was told that even this courtesy was dispensed with at the height of the war.) The news of my being injured in the plane crash did not warrant direct notification, so delivery by Western Union messenger was proper and correct. The same was true for the notification provided to my wife Sue that was taking place just a few miles away. The Western Union messenger must have thought he had encountered the most callous mother in the world when my mother then put the telegram in her apron pocket without even reading it! Likely thinking it was the promised telegram from my brother, she could read the details of the flight home later. She was more interested at that point in returning to her friends in the living room and continuing the discussion of Mike’s marriage. It was only later when Sue called to inform Grammy of the plane crash and my injury that she finally took the telegram from her apron pocket and read it for the first time.
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Gigged by Cpt. Alexander Haig
In 2009, I carried on our over 40 year tradition of sharing snippets of my life with my friend Col. Bob Ray (Ret.) and his wife Peggy.
I know the shadows are lengthening when at the West Point Founders Day Dinner this past March (held at the Union League in downtown Philly), I turned out to be the “oldest grad” signed up to attend. As such, I had the “honor and privilege” of giving the traditional “old grad” speech. To balance it, tradition has the “youngest grad” give a follow up speech. Both speeches turned out well. The superintendent and the new football coach were in attendance.
I’d like to give you this old grad’s perspective on West Point looking back fifty-two years by using a couple of West Point stories as my crutch—one of them on the light side and one more serious. To tee up the first story, I want to tell you why I really accepted the honor to give the “old grad” speech this year. I accepted this honor because now, now, I finally have the chance to tell a very personal, up-front story, and it involves General Alexander M. Haig, Jr., the illustrious graduate of our alma mater whose storied accomplishments have been recognized by our West Point Society of Philadelphia with the prestigious annual Guardian of Liberty Award which bears his name. I’m certain you all know that General Haig was the US Secretary of State in 1981–1982 and the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, from 1974–1979. It’s common knowledge that General Haig was the White House Chief of Staff in 1973–74 and the VCSA (Vice Chief of Staff of the Army) in 1973, but how many of you know that General Haig was the Company M-1 Tac Officer in 1953! Well, my story takes place in the fall of 1953, a Saturday morning in ranks inspection—one of my first as a plebe.
We did the open ranks thing, and in time, Captain Haig and the cadet platoon leader with pen and quill pad in hand made their way down the ranks toward me. Now, I had prepared very hard for this inspection, and I thought I was really ready—brass, shoes, belts, haircut, rifle, the whole works. Captain Haig did a left face and pivoted in front of me. My heart was pounding as I came to inspection arms and slid the bolt of my M-1 rifle open. Major Haig was very old school, and he gave me the top-of-the-head to the tip-of-the-toe thorough inspection, and I thought I had nailed it when he returned my rifle to me. I waited anxiously for him to pivot and move to the victim next to me. Instead, he turned to the cadet platoon leader and said, “This man is out of uniform. He has his cuff links on backwards. Let’s do a better job of teaching these plebes how to wear the cadet uniform.”
And there you have it! My moment of fame which I share with you. How many of you grads can claim to have been gigged by General Haig for wearing his cuff links backwards. Well, I can. . . that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!
Meeting a Classy Lady
Kitsy Westmoreland visiting a soldier in the hospital,
image from VietnamWarEra/tumblr.com
My second account was more serious.
My story concerns class rings and our cherished motto “Duty, Honor, Country.” I’ll be brief about setting this one up. The time was October 1966, and the place was the Clark Air Force Base [AFB] hospital in the Philippines. A week before, I had been in an airplane crash in Vietnam—the C-7 Caribou in which I was flying as a passenger along with thirty-two other people flew into the side of Hon Cong Mountain near An Khe during a blinding fog.
I was one of the fortunate survivors—I survived the crash with a broken hip and was being medevaced through channels with the first stop out of Vietnam being Clark AFB [in the Phillipines].
I had been placed in a spica body cast to immobilize the hip, and I relate this story from the perspective of being in that full, rigid, horizontal body cast, completely dependent on others for just about everything. I attempted to recall years later as much of what happened when we arrived at Clark in a short piece I wrote for our class’s 50th Anniversary Year Book, part of which was to collect the Vietnam experiences of our class. I would like to read this excerpt from that piece to you:
After landing at Clark Air Force Base, we were transported to a modern base hospital by a blue air force bus that accommodated our stretchers in the now familiar stack. No sharp memories about all this except the realization and recognition of the signs that we were now out of the battle zone, and everything, including the nurses’ uniforms, were back to normal white. The overall pace and outlook were clearly becoming “stateside” and away from the war zone. I was placed in a transient ward with about twenty other immobilized patients—the usual ten or so beds along each wall with an aisle in the middle.
I had been placed in the first bed along one of the walls. I can remember being visited by a nurse who did the usual check-in patient profile—temperature, pulse, blood pressure. I remember another set of X-rays being taken and added to my manila envelope. This last set was done by a portable X-ray device that was brought to my bed and the X-rays taken right there in the ward.
I was next visited by someone I thought was yet another nurse. This lady wore what appeared to be a nurse’s uniform dress but with an apron. She was pushing a wheeled cart with several metal wash bowls containing warm water. Since I was in the first bed, she started with me and asked if I wanted a bath. We had traveled for what seemed like all day, and I was tired and feeling somewhat travel weary—all this over and above the discomfort I was feeling in that body cast. It had been several days now since I was placed in the cast, and my body and skin beneath the cast were telling me how abnormal this situation really was.
I tried to make light of the situation and told the lady, passing my arm over the body cast, “Whatever is exposed of me, I would be grateful for a bath.”
The exposed parts of me outside the body cast were my head, shoulders, and arms, the two-by-two-inch square cut out on my chest, my left leg below my knee, and my right foot. The lady never hesitated and immediately took a washcloth, dipped it in the warm water, soaped it up, and began to wash the exposed upper part of my body. Even under these extraordinary circumstances, it is somewhat embarrassing and awkward to be washed by a stranger—and a woman. If I wondered what I was going to say or how I was going to feel, the lady put me completely at ease.
She immediately began to ask me questions as she washed me. “What’s your name? Where are you from? Where were you hurt? How were you hurt? Do you have family? Where are they?” Somewhere in the conversation, she mentioned she had noticed my West Point class ring and asked me what class I had been in. She told me her husband was a West Point graduate as well.
As she spoke, a flash thought went through my mind that this lady was the wife of a West Point graduate who went into the air force after graduation (you could select air force as a career choice back then). He must be stationed at Clark Air Force Base, and she was a Gray Lady volunteering her help with the Red Cross at the base hospital.
Then I asked her, “What is your husband’s name? I just might know him. Where is he stationed?”
The next two events happened almost simultaneously. As I asked the last two questions, my eyes glanced over at the little, rectangular metal name tag she had pinned to her apron. It said, “WESTMORELAND.” This incredible recognition was coming over me just as she was saying, “My name is Kitsy Westmoreland and my husband is General Westmoreland. He’s in Vietnam right now, although he was just here for a short visit and left last night.”
As the full recognition hit me, I blurted out, “Mrs. Westmoreland, you do me great honor!”
She replied, never stopping for a second giving me my “bath”, “No, no—you give me great honor.”
The remainder of my bath was spent trying to understand how the wife of the commanding general of US Forces in Vietnam, a four-star general in the US Army, was giving me a bath! In the most unpretentious and straightforward manner, Mrs. Westmoreland explained how she and her two children had tried living in several places while General Westmoreland served in Vietnam, but in these places, and particularly in their last location in Massachusetts, the harassment and ominous phone calls became too much for her, especially as it related to their children. The decision was then made to move the family to the Philippines and to be as close to her husband as she could. He was occasionally able to slip away from Vietnam to visit them, as he did just recently.
After finishing bathing this awe-struck major, Mrs. Westmoreland said she would return and talk to me some more, and then she proceeded to the next bed and asked its occupant whether he would like a bath. And that’s the way it went for the next hour or so before she finished her task and really did return and talk to me again. We talked for a few more minutes about families and West Point, and then she left me.
I had watched Kitsy Westmoreland go from bed to bed around that entire ward, and as best as I could observe, she had given a bath to every one of those twenty or so occupants. This was a mixed, transient ward I later found out. There were no rank or service differences on this ward—just hurting military men, wounded or injured in Vietnam. I remember there being officers and enlisted men—all races—soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen. This was a staging and decision point in the medical evacuation channels out of Vietnam. The seriously ill and wounded would be identified and sent directly home to the United States; the less seriously wounded and injured would be sent to Japan to one of two general hospitals there for treatment and surgery and possible return to Vietnam.
I was told by one of the nurses that Kitsy Westmoreland met this flight every day, and she greeted the wounded and injured coming out of Vietnam just as she did for me—with a warm smile and a bath. For the cynical reader, I want to say that this act was clearly much more than a token or symbolic gesture by the wife of the senior US military officer in Vietnam. This was very hard work that filled a real need providing comfort and relief to immobilized wounded and injured military men coming out of Vietnam. This was the act of a classy lady who matched her feelings and beliefs with actions and example. I doubt that most of the men she bathed and comforted ever knew her name or who she really was.
That ends the excerpt from my little written piece—and my story about Kitsy Westmoreland, a member of our West Point family. This story will not be found in the New York Times or the Washington Post, not in 1966 and not today. This story, however, is very important to me, and I wanted to share it with you because it says everything I want to say to you about Duty, Honor and Country—the motto engraved on the sides of our class rings—and how Kitsy Westmoreland lived it.
I was one of the fortunate survivors—I survived the crash with a broken hip and was being medevaced through channels with the first stop out of Vietnam being Clark AFB [in the Phillipines].
I had been placed in a spica body cast to immobilize the hip, and I relate this story from the perspective of being in that full, rigid, horizontal body cast, completely dependent on others for just about everything. I attempted to recall years later as much of what happened when we arrived at Clark in a short piece I wrote for our class’s 50th Anniversary Year Book, part of which was to collect the Vietnam experiences of our class. I would like to read this excerpt from that piece to you:
After landing at Clark Air Force Base, we were transported to a modern base hospital by a blue air force bus that accommodated our stretchers in the now familiar stack. No sharp memories about all this except the realization and recognition of the signs that we were now out of the battle zone, and everything, including the nurses’ uniforms, were back to normal white. The overall pace and outlook were clearly becoming “stateside” and away from the war zone. I was placed in a transient ward with about twenty other immobilized patients—the usual ten or so beds along each wall with an aisle in the middle.
I had been placed in the first bed along one of the walls. I can remember being visited by a nurse who did the usual check-in patient profile—temperature, pulse, blood pressure. I remember another set of X-rays being taken and added to my manila envelope. This last set was done by a portable X-ray device that was brought to my bed and the X-rays taken right there in the ward.
I was next visited by someone I thought was yet another nurse. This lady wore what appeared to be a nurse’s uniform dress but with an apron. She was pushing a wheeled cart with several metal wash bowls containing warm water. Since I was in the first bed, she started with me and asked if I wanted a bath. We had traveled for what seemed like all day, and I was tired and feeling somewhat travel weary—all this over and above the discomfort I was feeling in that body cast. It had been several days now since I was placed in the cast, and my body and skin beneath the cast were telling me how abnormal this situation really was.
I tried to make light of the situation and told the lady, passing my arm over the body cast, “Whatever is exposed of me, I would be grateful for a bath.”
The exposed parts of me outside the body cast were my head, shoulders, and arms, the two-by-two-inch square cut out on my chest, my left leg below my knee, and my right foot. The lady never hesitated and immediately took a washcloth, dipped it in the warm water, soaped it up, and began to wash the exposed upper part of my body. Even under these extraordinary circumstances, it is somewhat embarrassing and awkward to be washed by a stranger—and a woman. If I wondered what I was going to say or how I was going to feel, the lady put me completely at ease.
She immediately began to ask me questions as she washed me. “What’s your name? Where are you from? Where were you hurt? How were you hurt? Do you have family? Where are they?” Somewhere in the conversation, she mentioned she had noticed my West Point class ring and asked me what class I had been in. She told me her husband was a West Point graduate as well.
As she spoke, a flash thought went through my mind that this lady was the wife of a West Point graduate who went into the air force after graduation (you could select air force as a career choice back then). He must be stationed at Clark Air Force Base, and she was a Gray Lady volunteering her help with the Red Cross at the base hospital.
Then I asked her, “What is your husband’s name? I just might know him. Where is he stationed?”
The next two events happened almost simultaneously. As I asked the last two questions, my eyes glanced over at the little, rectangular metal name tag she had pinned to her apron. It said, “WESTMORELAND.” This incredible recognition was coming over me just as she was saying, “My name is Kitsy Westmoreland and my husband is General Westmoreland. He’s in Vietnam right now, although he was just here for a short visit and left last night.”
As the full recognition hit me, I blurted out, “Mrs. Westmoreland, you do me great honor!”
She replied, never stopping for a second giving me my “bath”, “No, no—you give me great honor.”
The remainder of my bath was spent trying to understand how the wife of the commanding general of US Forces in Vietnam, a four-star general in the US Army, was giving me a bath! In the most unpretentious and straightforward manner, Mrs. Westmoreland explained how she and her two children had tried living in several places while General Westmoreland served in Vietnam, but in these places, and particularly in their last location in Massachusetts, the harassment and ominous phone calls became too much for her, especially as it related to their children. The decision was then made to move the family to the Philippines and to be as close to her husband as she could. He was occasionally able to slip away from Vietnam to visit them, as he did just recently.
After finishing bathing this awe-struck major, Mrs. Westmoreland said she would return and talk to me some more, and then she proceeded to the next bed and asked its occupant whether he would like a bath. And that’s the way it went for the next hour or so before she finished her task and really did return and talk to me again. We talked for a few more minutes about families and West Point, and then she left me.
I had watched Kitsy Westmoreland go from bed to bed around that entire ward, and as best as I could observe, she had given a bath to every one of those twenty or so occupants. This was a mixed, transient ward I later found out. There were no rank or service differences on this ward—just hurting military men, wounded or injured in Vietnam. I remember there being officers and enlisted men—all races—soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen. This was a staging and decision point in the medical evacuation channels out of Vietnam. The seriously ill and wounded would be identified and sent directly home to the United States; the less seriously wounded and injured would be sent to Japan to one of two general hospitals there for treatment and surgery and possible return to Vietnam.
I was told by one of the nurses that Kitsy Westmoreland met this flight every day, and she greeted the wounded and injured coming out of Vietnam just as she did for me—with a warm smile and a bath. For the cynical reader, I want to say that this act was clearly much more than a token or symbolic gesture by the wife of the senior US military officer in Vietnam. This was very hard work that filled a real need providing comfort and relief to immobilized wounded and injured military men coming out of Vietnam. This was the act of a classy lady who matched her feelings and beliefs with actions and example. I doubt that most of the men she bathed and comforted ever knew her name or who she really was.
That ends the excerpt from my little written piece—and my story about Kitsy Westmoreland, a member of our West Point family. This story will not be found in the New York Times or the Washington Post, not in 1966 and not today. This story, however, is very important to me, and I wanted to share it with you because it says everything I want to say to you about Duty, Honor and Country—the motto engraved on the sides of our class rings—and how Kitsy Westmoreland lived it.
Kitsy Westmoreland Interview
(Click image to listen)
Post script: My editor, Shauna Perez, found a recording of Mrs. Westmoreland describing her life as a general’s wife in general and highlighting her cherished time at West Point. Mrs. Westmoreland told a very similar story to mine of a young man recognizing her and being surprised at how the "generals' wives" stayed busy when their husbands were deployed. I will give you some timestamps to find the parts of her interview intersecting with my experience.
“Kitsy Westmoreland on Service, Family, and the Army Life,” The West Point Center for Oral History, 1 October 2016. (Click picture to view full interview)
30:20 “My main work was the Red Cross”32:43 Mrs. Westmoreland describes her Red Cross work.
33:45 She describes the hospital she worked with while in Vietnam and setting up their guest house for additional 30 beds which was used for overflow after a bombing at the Rex Hotel sent many injured to the hospital. Then they went to Hawaii. Bought a house there, but then went and lived in the Philippines.
40:00 She describes life in the Philippines.40:30: “I worked in air-evac”
46:00 She tells about helping a soldier who said, “I always wondered what generals' wives did when their husbands were overseas.”47:10 “It made me feel more useful.” 52:20 Her best experience as an Army wife: “Being here [West Point].”
55:53 “I would say to the young wives, ‘Go get a job, quick…go get something that you like, to volunteer.'”
40:00 She describes life in the Philippines.40:30: “I worked in air-evac”
46:00 She tells about helping a soldier who said, “I always wondered what generals' wives did when their husbands were overseas.”47:10 “It made me feel more useful.” 52:20 Her best experience as an Army wife: “Being here [West Point].”
55:53 “I would say to the young wives, ‘Go get a job, quick…go get something that you like, to volunteer.'”
Deceived by Poverty
Boys in my kindergarten class - Front row: 4th - Sammy Parente, 5th - Joe Tedeschi; Back: 3rd - Turk Petrarca
I began kindergarten at Baker Street School in September 1939, the same month World War 2 started in Europe. From the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, this world event would paint a backdrop to my life and early school years. The rationing sticks with me, how frightened we were by the shortages of sugar, butter, meat, etc. Air raid drills and the black outs constantly reminded us of the uncertain times. But surrounding my school days, I also remember the pleasure of seeing the big lilac tree in the corner of the school yard and the smell of lilac blossoms on spring days when the classroom windows were all opened (no air conditioning in those days!). For my First Communion, my mother bought me five chicks from the Woolworth’s in Arctic, a town south of us. I remember they sold such things in the five and dime stores back then. They had an incubator filled with chicks, and you bought them just like any other purchase! The purchase was very timely—with the war just starting, we would have our own source of eggs! All was well, but as the chicks grew, it turned out we had two roosters and three hens. It didn’t take very long before the dominant rooster got rid of the other rooster. We named the survivor “Blondie” because of the blond streaks he had in his feathers. He clearly ruled the roost—and everything else in sight. Blondie was very territorial, and he staked out our yard as his turf. This meant no one could enter, including the postman, the milkman, and the tenants who were living in our upstairs apartment. Silk was used for making parachutes and was very scarce (nylon stockings were just coming into their own). So, this made Blondie attacking the lady visitors and tearing their stockings quite the travesty. My brother Mike and I were the only ones Blondie would tolerate and allow to handle him. These transgressions and his threatening the postman really led to his demise. We had him for at least a couple of years, but at some point, my Uncle Mike took his hatchet and did away with him. The cruelest thing—my brother Mike and I did not know it until Blondie showed up at the Sunday dinner table!
By today’s standards, my family would have been considered poor, but I certainly was not aware of it. I just didn’t see or feel any poverty. I was deceived by all that “poverty” implies. Instead, despite all the trappings of poverty, I was raised in a loving home and nurtured by a caring family, relatives, and community.