A Tale of Three Veterans

‘ Proud to have served,’ Crittenden County has a long legacy of military service

ralphhardin@gmail.com

[ Editor’s Note: For Veterans Day 2020, we take a look back at a story that originally ran in the Times on Nov. 11, 2008, about a trio of local veterans and their stories]

Johnie “Sandy” Sanfratello

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.

Whether his parents believed him or not, 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 two-man dive bomber, a three-man 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 gunnery sergeant.

His tour was the U.S.S.

Saipan 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 call 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 said ‘What is going on.

There is no outgoing (fire). It is 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

Continued on Page 2 VETERANS DAY (cont.)

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 but 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 still 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 one 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.

Oddly enough, there is no Purple Heart among the medals he proudly displays on a wall in his comfortable

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

In spite of the separation from his family and nearconstant 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.”

***

As a young African-American college graduate, William “Bill” Wolfe thought he would pull his two-years in the U.S.

Army as a Lieutenant.

He had to take two years of ROTC at Arkansas A& M (now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff). It was mandatory for all young college men in the early 1970s. Wolfe hung in there and completed four years of ROTC and received his commission in the U.S. Army in 1973.

That was college.

The Army was a wholly different world.

Initial confusion and seeking direction, the young 2nd Lieutenant found his way with the help of a Major.

“I was blessed to have a Major talk to me” Wolfe said. “He influenced me and I stayed with it. It was the best decision I could make and I’d do it again.”

Being thrust into the close quarters and general population of the Army gave Wolfe the opportunity to learn about people.

“I quickly learned that people in general are good. I’d never been exposed to other racial and ethnic groups,” he said. “You have to trust everyone. I was the only black Lieutenant in the brigade.”

Wolfe’s transition into Army life was made easier by a Captain at Ft. Riley, Kansas.

“Capt. Ross, he was from Wisconsin, took me under his wing and taught me a lot,” Wolfe said. “”I learned right off the bat the goodness of people regardless of race, color, creed. We all shared something unique in the Army.

If it had not been for him, I’d fallen flat on my face.

It made the searching for my career go very well. I’d plan to stay in the Army for only two years, but I wound up staying for 22 years.”

He also credits his platoon sergeant with helping him find his military bearings.

“His name was Sgt.

Frances Lagerman, he was also from Wisconsin.

He was a very tough guy and he taught me everything, managing resources and that you had to trust someone,” Wolfe said.

Continued on Page 9 VETERANS DAY (cont.)

“When I left there, the gates opened for me.”

From Kansas, the Arkansas Army officer was sent to Germany as commander of a company of soldiers.

“I carried the same principles I was taught at Ft.

Riley… You take care of people. You have to understand that you are only make a small contribution to your own success,” he said. “It is the rope syndrome.

You don’t forget how you got where you are and you throw a rope to others and pull them up with you. You are going to succeed.”

Wolfe said the Army taught him the value of selfless service.

“That was molded into me, that you put others before yourself,” he said.

“I operate my business the same way.”

He took his new Army education and skills and applied them to becoming a paratrooper.

Assigned to the 82 Airborne at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, Wolfe had to overcome one very important thing to become an airborne soldier.

“I was deathly afraid of heights!” he said.

But he jumped anyway.

His desire to advance didn’t let a small step out of a flying airplane stop him.

“I just looked straight at the horizon and stepped out,” he said.

In all, Wolfe estimated he stepped out of an aircraft while it was well above the ground around 110 times.

Even that training came in handy when he became the adajuant of the 3rd Brigade, 82 Airborne. He was the first black officer to hold the position.

“I don’t know how that happened but the commanding officer was rough. He’d walk down the line and say ‘You’re fired’ to almost every officer.

Men would try to hide from him,” Wolfe said.

The position put him in charge of all administrative work for the division and prepared him for Operation Urgent Fury, the 1983 rescue mission to the island of Granada.

“We’d been in the field for about two weeks when they took us to a holding area and locked us in,” Wolfe said. “They removed the speakers from all the telephones so we couldn’t talk to anyone. The next thing I knew, we were on a plane, with parachutes and ready to jump.”

Wolfe said they didn’t have to jump onto the island but made a rough landing in the plane onto a very short runway.

“That was the only time I didn’t have to tell my men to dig a fox hole. The bullets were flying from every direction,” Wolfe said.

The operation took six weeks.

His leadership skills did not go unnoticed.

Just before he retired, Wolfe was assigned as Chief Liason for the Multi-National Peacekeeping Forces and prepared them for duty in the Middle East.

“I had to put together a battalion of Army reserves and National Guards but they were to be commanded by an active Army Lt.

Colonel,” Wolfe said.

“They were deployed to Sinai, Egypt and there is still a contingency still there.

Even though the Army was tough, Wolfe said he would do it again “in a blink of an eye.”

Wolfe credits the Army with teaching him skills everyone should have and that he still uses today.

“It teaches you the value of courage, both physical and moral, and it teaches you that sometimes you have to stand up,” he said.

“It teaches you how to pick your battles.”

Wolfe retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1995, having been awarded a Bronze Star, three Meritorious Service Medals and four Army Commendation Medals.

And service is still part of his life. Wolfe owns Wolfe Brothers Funeral Home and was recently re-elected as the Crittenden County Coroner.

[ Editor’s Note: Wolfe continues to serve Crittenden County as Coroner. He was re- elected in 2018]

***

“It was so cold,” said Claude “Shorty” Steele.

With temperatures dropping to 30-below zero on the Korean Peninsula, Steele endured the deadly temperatures as well as North Korean and Chinese gunfire as he and his outfit defended an Air Force radar installation on an island just a few miles off the Korean coast.

“We went up to provide artillery support and they’d fly over every night. ‘Bed Check Charlie’ came in every night and bombed us,” Steele said.

“We could see their troops moving at night.”

Steele was a member of the 933 Anti-aircraft Artillery unit of the 2nd Division stationed on a small island off the coast of North Korea.

“I’d heard a lot of the experiences of soldiers in World War II. I never thought I’d get involved in something like that,” he said.

His tour of duty lasted one year and 11 months.

Even getting wounded didn’t keep Steele out of the hot zone for long.

A piece of shrapnel, some still imbedded in his leg, only removed him from the cold for a few weeks.

Evacuated to an Army hospital in Yokohama, Japan, Steele lived the life of luxury for only 15 days and was sent back to the