Read Online "I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa by Charles Brandt - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Charles Brandt
Tags: United States, Fiction, General, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography, Mafia, LABOR, True Crime, Business & Economics, Criminology, Criminals & Outlaws, organized crime, Gangsters, Mafia - United States, Hoffa; James R, Teamsters, Sheeran; Frank, Gangsters - United States, Teamsters - United States
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about sixty prisoners each being shot, but who chose not to report the story after Patton gave his word he would put a stop to all atrocities. The newspaperman, however, told a friend, and that friend prepared a memorandum that recounted the events. The memo states: “Patton’s bloodthirsty way of talking, and wording of his instructions, before the landing in Sicily was taken too literally by the American troops of the 45th Division particularly.”
“ Later that day, Diggsy asked me about a rumor he had heard from a neighborhood pal he had run into overseas that I had enlisted because Yank knocked a girl up and blamed me. Can you imagine, halfway around the world and rumors are going around about me. I knew Yank was out there in college somewhere still having his little jokes. ”
chapter six
Doing What I Had to Do
“ For me the easiest part of the war was Sicily. The Italians were terrible soldiers. The Germans were keeping the backbone in the Italians. We’d advance, and sometimes the Italian soldiers actually would be standing there at attention with their suitcases packed. While I was in Sicily, Mussolini surrendered and the Germans took over the war from the Italians. The Sicilian people were very friendly. Once we drove the Germans out I got to see Catania, where every house had homemade spaghetti drying on the clothesline. After the war Russell Bufalino liked the fact that I went right through his town.
My first new pal was a tough guy in our squad out of the Jewish section of Brooklyn named Alex Siegel. We had our picture taken together in Sicily with my arm resting on his shoulder, but he got killed a month later in a strafing on the beachhead at Salerno.
Salerno is a town just below Naples on the western coast of Italy. In September 1943, we jumped off landing craft into the Mediterranean with German shells exploding all around us. Salerno was the worst of the three invasion landings I made. Those of us who made it ashore had the goal of getting about 1,000 yards up to secure the beachhead. Each soldier had a shovel on his pack, and we began digging in. No matter how tired you are, when you hear enemy artillery, you dig with a passion.
Our position was pounded by artillery and strafed by German planes. If you saw German soldiers coming at you, you shot your rifle. I know I was there shooting. I know I asked myself why the hell did I volunteer for this, but I have no recollection of the first time I fired at an enemy soldier in Salerno.
We almost got pushed off the beach by the Germans. But I know I stayed there the same as everybody else did. Everybody’s scared. Some don’t want to admit it. But it doesn’t make a difference whether you admit it or not, you’re still scared. ”
The Combat Report quotes an on-the-scene general of another division who said: “The 45th prevented the Germans from driving the Allied invaders into the sea.”
“ When our Navy artillery brought in heavy firepower, the Germans retreated back out of the range of the Navy’s guns. That gave us a chance to move up, and we advanced off the beach and hooked up with other divisions for a push north.
Riflemen would do whatever we were assigned to do. If you didn’t follow an order in combat they can shoot you automatically, right then. Jimmy Hoffa was never in the service. He got a hardship of some kind to keep out. In combat you learned fast, if you didn’t know it already, certain rules are strict rules and nobody’s above those rules. Before combat I was never much on following orders myself, but I learned over there to follow orders or else. ”
Sheeran was there following orders for what the Combat Report calls the “sickness and exhaustion that had developed among the troops” in the “fatiguing and heart-breaking fighting over rough terrain” in the drive from Salerno north to Venafro. In unrelenting succession came the “suffering
“ Later that day, Diggsy asked me about a rumor he had heard from a neighborhood pal he had run into overseas that I had enlisted because Yank knocked a girl up and blamed me. Can you imagine, halfway around the world and rumors are going around about me. I knew Yank was out there in college somewhere still having his little jokes. ”
chapter six
Doing What I Had to Do
“ For me the easiest part of the war was Sicily. The Italians were terrible soldiers. The Germans were keeping the backbone in the Italians. We’d advance, and sometimes the Italian soldiers actually would be standing there at attention with their suitcases packed. While I was in Sicily, Mussolini surrendered and the Germans took over the war from the Italians. The Sicilian people were very friendly. Once we drove the Germans out I got to see Catania, where every house had homemade spaghetti drying on the clothesline. After the war Russell Bufalino liked the fact that I went right through his town.
My first new pal was a tough guy in our squad out of the Jewish section of Brooklyn named Alex Siegel. We had our picture taken together in Sicily with my arm resting on his shoulder, but he got killed a month later in a strafing on the beachhead at Salerno.
Salerno is a town just below Naples on the western coast of Italy. In September 1943, we jumped off landing craft into the Mediterranean with German shells exploding all around us. Salerno was the worst of the three invasion landings I made. Those of us who made it ashore had the goal of getting about 1,000 yards up to secure the beachhead. Each soldier had a shovel on his pack, and we began digging in. No matter how tired you are, when you hear enemy artillery, you dig with a passion.
Our position was pounded by artillery and strafed by German planes. If you saw German soldiers coming at you, you shot your rifle. I know I was there shooting. I know I asked myself why the hell did I volunteer for this, but I have no recollection of the first time I fired at an enemy soldier in Salerno.
We almost got pushed off the beach by the Germans. But I know I stayed there the same as everybody else did. Everybody’s scared. Some don’t want to admit it. But it doesn’t make a difference whether you admit it or not, you’re still scared. ”
The Combat Report quotes an on-the-scene general of another division who said: “The 45th prevented the Germans from driving the Allied invaders into the sea.”
“ When our Navy artillery brought in heavy firepower, the Germans retreated back out of the range of the Navy’s guns. That gave us a chance to move up, and we advanced off the beach and hooked up with other divisions for a push north.
Riflemen would do whatever we were assigned to do. If you didn’t follow an order in combat they can shoot you automatically, right then. Jimmy Hoffa was never in the service. He got a hardship of some kind to keep out. In combat you learned fast, if you didn’t know it already, certain rules are strict rules and nobody’s above those rules. Before combat I was never much on following orders myself, but I learned over there to follow orders or else. ”
Sheeran was there following orders for what the Combat Report calls the “sickness and exhaustion that had developed among the troops” in the “fatiguing and heart-breaking fighting over rough terrain” in the drive from Salerno north to Venafro. In unrelenting succession came the “suffering
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