Sanfratello’s Story

Crittenden County man served in three wars

By RALPH HARDIN

ralphhardin@gmail.com

You’d think after serving in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, a U.S. Marine would have had enough fighting, but not Johnie A. “Sandy” Sanfratello. The Semper Fi spirit and attitude never goes away. Sanfratello joined the Marine Corps less than one month after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

“I was just out of high school. We were losing the war and I had to get into it,” Sanfratello said. “I told my parents I would be drafted if I didn’t enlist.”

The Marine Corps, like all branches of the service at the outbreak of the war, was more than happy to take a warm, strong body like Sanfratello into its ranks. Sanfratello finished boot camp and wanted to become a paratrooper.

“I was told I was too small,” he said. “I told sergeant, he was over 6-feet tall, to give me a rifle and I’d be as big as he was.”

Sanfratello got his chance at becoming an airborne Marine, but the “dream” was short-lived. The Army dropped airborne troops on an island in the Pacific and it did not end well. When the news of the fiasco got stateside, the Marine Corps immediately dropped its paratrooper program and Sanfratello was assigned to aerial machine gunners school. Next stop, the U.S.S. Salerno Bay, a light aircraft carrier prowling the Pacific theater. Sanfratello spent his fighting time manning a machine gun in the rear of a twoman dive bomber, a threeman torpedo bomber and over the skies of Bouganville, Peleliu, Guam, the Marianas Islands, Saipan and Okinawa.

After Bouganville and Peleiu (the bloodest battle in the Pacific), Sanfratello got a little time off for additional training in Australia. The retreat was short and intense, following by a return to the Pacific battle fronts. As the war ground down, Sanfratello and his Marine buddies were assigned to become part of the invasion forces destined for the Japanese mainland.

“That was until they dropped the bomb,” he said.

His combat in the Pacific was not complete though.

“We flew air cover for the Chinese as they retook Formosa from the Japanese,” he said.

He also was part of the air support for the occupation forces in Japan. Just a few years of peaceful duty and Sanfratello shipped out for Korea. By now, he was a

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gunnery sergeant. His tour lasted from 1950-51 and more in 1953 until the war ended.

“It was cold in the winter and hot and dusty in the summer,” he said of Korea.

After 13 years of being a quiet Marine, Sanfratello was again called to a war zone. This time, it was a little Asian country called South Vietnam in 1966. He arrived in-county on Thanksgiving Day.

“It was a different experience. The third night I was there, we took rockets and mortar fire,” he said.

“I woke a buddy up and asked. 'What is going on? There is no outgoing (fire). It’s all incoming.’ We had to have permission from the village chief to fire back. And the snipers at night …It was just different.”

Sanfratello completed two tours of Vietnam, his second, from 1971-72. By then, the enlisted man had been promoted to 2nd Lieutenant. He retired as a Captain in 1977 after turning down a promotion to Major. By then, maybe the fight was out of him.

“I’d have to take another overseas assignment. I’d been assigned to overseas duty nine times and served in 35 countries. I thought that was enough,” he said. But there was still a little spark of Marine in the old soldier.

When the first Gulf War broke out, Sanfratello wrote then-President George H.W. Bush and volunteered for active duty.

“I told the president I could push paper and let the young ones serve,” he said. “The president wrote back to me and said ‘You’ve served your country enough’ and that was it.”

“He was grumpy,” his wife quipped. “The Marines were having a war and wouldn’t let him in!”

And with 35 years in the Corps, Sanfratello was awarded two Bronze Stars, the Korean Victory Medal, the Flying Cross, the Air Medal and the Vietnamese Cross for Gallantry.

Somehow, amazingly there is no Purple Heart among the medals he proudly displays on a wall in his comfortable home in Marion.

“I’m a Marine without a Purple Heart,” he laughed. “That is pretty rare.”

In spite of the separation from his family and near constant danger, Sanfratello has only fond memories of his service to country and his Marine Corps.

“I remember the dedication of the Marines to their brothers and to the Corps,” Sanfratello said. “There is nothing like it in the world.”

[Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the Nov. 11, 2008 edition of the Evening Times. Mr. Sanfratello passed away on June 30, 2016, at the age of 91 ]