The men and women who were called to duty during the Second World War have been referred to as the Greatest Generation. These young people shaped the history of our nation. Many of them never returned home.

Over the years, movies have been produced and books written about the sacrifices and battles that were waged by our grandfathers and fathers in Europe and the Pacific.

Their ranks are growing thin, now 60 years after the war, but we found seven of them – one a longtime Peters businessman, and the others living at Country Meadows Independent Living Retirement Community – who were willing to share their experiences:

John Opeka

John Opeka likes to refer to his years of service in the Army Air Corps during World War II as “hours of monotony sprinkled with moments of panic.” At 89, Opeka can still recall the 51 missions he and his B-25 bomber crew flew between 1943 and 1944 in North Africa and Corsica.

As a young and inexperienced navigator, Opeka quickly proved his mettle. “It started out on my first mission,” he recalls. “I was a rookie navigator involved in a 36-plane formation. When we went to the target, the 30 aircraft ahead of us dropped their bombs on what I saw was an open field. The plowed ground below looked like an airfield, but I could see the airfield we were supposed to bomb approximately 15 miles ahead. Showing the pilot the target, he said that we could not go in alone, since the other aircraft were already leaving to return to base. I made the decision with our bombardier to drop bombs on a railroad bridge and a highway bridge, and I know we hit and destroyed something.”

At the flight debriefing, Opeka spoke up to say that while the group didn’t reach its intended target, the last six aircraft dropped their bombs on the bridges. It was an act of courage in itself to defend his position before the group commander, but he was proven correct when the photographs of the bombing run were processed. “From that point on, they moved me to the lead navigator,” and the promotions and the respect of the bombing group followed quickly after that.

As the lead navigator, Opeka sat in a small compartment in the cockpit behind the pilot, but remained so focused on his mission he didn’t have time to worry about the anti-aircraft fire and the enemy fighters attacking his bomber group. “I always had a positive attitude for survival, and I always felt I could come through whatever obstacles that I ran into,” he says. “That brought me through the war, but as a navigator, I could not see what was going on outside with the fighter planes and the anti-aircraft flack.”

Opeka’s journey to becoming a flight navigator began long before the war, while growing up in Oakdale. “It goes back to the old Lindbergh days when I was a kid,” he says. “My brother and I became interested in flying because of him. We built model airplanes, and I always wanted to get into the Air Corps and fly.” He was accepted into the Air Corps two months after Pearl Harbor.

Life as a “fly-boy” during the war had moments of excitement and camaraderie, but it isn’t the same as portrayed in the many movies made about life in the Air Corps during the war.

“People ask me if I go to movies like ‘Memphis Belle’, but I won’t go to see them,” he says. “It’s not the same in the movies. It just isn’t that way. They show a lot of running around and action. But in fact, most of us were calm; we did what we had to do. Sure there were casualties, but we took them the way we should take them.”

One of the more dramatic and dangerous missions occurred on his 47th mission, when his crew was given orders to bomb a freighter in the Mediterranean.

“The British were flying reconnaissance, and they came back and told us that there was this ship sailing a particular course. We calculated the course and went out to find it,” he says. “We were in the area for quite a time trying to locate this ship, and we decided to make a run at our alternate target, which was an island. When we were beginning our attack, I located the ship, which was parked near a cliff on the island. We dropped the bombs on the ship, but because we had been in the area so long, the Germans detected us and sent their fighter planes out to attack.

“We were hit very badly, and there were four men injured on our aircraft. The co-pilot was hit, and the gunners and the photographer in back were also hit. One was in very serious condition. They all survived except the top gunner. When we came back to base, we couldn’t put down the landing gear. The hydraulics system was all shot out, and only the nose gear would go down and lock. Fortunately, the engines kept turning. We made a belly landing, and the plane was virtually a pile of junk in the end.”

Opeka stayed on board to help hand the injured crewmen out to rescuers. “When I found out we weren’t burning, I was able to take my time.”

Opeka also participated in a mission to help release Slovene prisoners of war being held near their air base in Corsica. Being of Slovenian ancestry himself, Opeka sought out the POWs, who had been inducted as laborers in the Italian Army, and eventually was able to provide them some luxury items such as cigarettes and candy, and later utilized them to work with his 310th bomber group loading bombs and working on the air base.

Opeka was discharged from the Air Corps in November 1945, after reaching the rank of captain. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Airman Medal with six Oak-Leaf Clusters, the Sicily, Naples and Fogia Campaign medal and the Presidential Unit Citation. He is a member of the Hall of Valor at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Oakland, and his name is listed on the Wall of Valor at the McMurray VFW.


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Larry Tornese

Larry Tornese, 86, grew up in East Liberty. He reported for duty as an Army draftee on the day that he was to have entered Harvard University to study for his Doctorate in Education. “I was 22 and married at the time, and I intended on being a college instructor, but I ended up in the Field Artillery,” he recalls. “I was inducted on July 8, 1944 into Basic Training at Fort Bragg, and eventually went to Officer Candidate School.” He became a Lieutenant and rose to the rank of Captain, and a commander in the Field Artillery.

Tornese was stationed first in France, and then in Belgium with the First Army, where his unit participated in the Battle of the Bulge. “It was cold and it was miserable,” he says. “It was about six or eight weeks of that. We were told to move back, move further back. Then when we stopped the Germans, we moved forward again into Germany.

“We were near Bonn, when the Remagan Bridge was captured, and my outfit crossed the Bridge about the fourth or fifth day after it was taken. About a month later, the bridge collapsed.”

Tornese’s unit moved deeper into Germany, and was in Marburg when the war ended. “I was very fortunate,” he says. “I had a very good cadre and sergeants, and some very good men. When we had a job to do, we did it, and did it as best we could.”

At the end of the war, Tornese finished his education at the University of Pittsburgh, and was offered a job as an Archivist with the Department of Defense.

“It was completely different from the experiences I ever had,” Tornese says of his experiences in the war. “I looked at it as something that had to be done.”


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Eugene Hrabovsky

Eugene Hrabovsky, 86, enlisted in the Marine Corps immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. “My mother had to sign for me to go in,” Hrabovsky, of East Carnegie says, “but with the attack on Pearl Harbor, everyone wanted to go in.” Hrabovsky and his friends all decided to be Marines, and went to Camp Lejeune for boot camp. He then saw action in the Central Pacific and at Guadalcanal, and even spent time in a balloon unit. “I was in several different units, then they put me in a Barrage Balloon Outfit,” he recalls. “They wanted to fly balloons over the islands to keep the Japanese away, and the general said, ‘Who the hell sent Barrage Balloons out here? They know where we are.’”

His company took part in the Battle of Guadalcanal, and then in two campaigns at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. Hrabovsky spent the better part of two years in the war in the Pacific, and left the Marine Corps as a corporal. He returned to Pittsburgh and finished his schooling at the University of Pittsburgh on the G.I. Bill, and became a perishable food inspector on the railroad. But his days as a US Marine during the Second World War remain a part of his life. “My buddies and I knew it was something that had to be done,” he says. “When Pearl Harbor happened, I told them....‘I’m going to be a Marine.’”


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Nick Farino

Nick Farino, 83, lived in Robinson Township when he was drafted into the Army in March of 1944. After basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, he became a tank gunner and was assigned to the 10th Armored Division in Europe. His appointment with fate came just over a year later, when the tank he was in was attacked in Gailsdorf, Germany on April 20, 1945. His unit was involved in the Battle of the Bulge, “and that’s where I got blasted,” Farino recalls. “A shell came into the side of the tank, and just blew it up.”

Farino was fortunate to escape, but shrapnel from the explosion embedded in his leg and remains there today. He was evacuated to an Army Field Hospital, and then returned to a New York hospital from which he was later discharged. “The funny thing about it all was that the medics later sent my personal belongings to me in a box, and in it was a piece of the tank that I was wounded in.”

That piece of tank, along with his medals and Purple Heart, remain a part of his collection of items and souvenirs from the war. “It is a time that I’ll always remember,” he says. “A war you can never forget.”


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Armond McAmbridge

“Mac” McAmbridge, as he is known to his friends, is 86. From Scott Township, he entered the US Army in time to land on Utah Beach on D-Day in 1944. He was a member of the 503rd Combat Engineers, and spent much of his time in Europe building float and pontoon bridges for Allied forces to cross.

“I enlisted in the Air Corps, but ended up as an engineer,” he says. “We built the bridges on land, and floated them out to the water.” His company was so efficient they could turn out a bridge a day.

McAmbridge’s unit saw plenty of action. His collection of campaign medals includes a Purple Heart, five Bronze Stars and a Bronze Arrowhead.

McAmbridge spent five years with the Army in Europe, and then two years in the Korean War. “It was demanding work, and it was dangerous, but our Company did what we had to do. It just had to be done,” he says.


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Frank Bevelacqua

Frank Bevelacqua, who lived in Jefferson, in Greene County when the war began, had a brother in the Army and another brother in the Navy. “I decided to join the Merchant Marine,” he says. “They didn’t consider us a branch of the service at the time, but it was something I wanted to do.”

Even though they may not have been considered part of the military, their mission was just as dangerous and just as vital as soldiers serving on any of the battle fronts. Bevelacqua recalls the terrifying days and nights on both the Atlantic and Pacific runs as his ship came under attack from submarines and aircraft. “We were constantly under attack,” he recalls. “When I first started, I worked out of Sheep Head Bay, and I was assigned to a tanker. That may have been the worst thing that I could have done,” he says. “We carried high-octane gas and we carried P-38s aboard. We were only three or four feet above the water and a prime target.”

Bevelacqua said his ships had to dodge attacks by day and night, even though they were accompanied by destroyers and other Navy warships. “The U-Boats seemed to always know where we were and what we were going to do,” he says. “I was assigned as a gunner aboard the ship, and when we left port we had to be alert at all times. We were never sunk, but a lot of ships around us were. We had destroyers ahead of us and destroyers behind us.

Bevelacqua saw the war from both oceans. After service in the Atlantic, he was assigned to ships in the Pacific. “I served for about three years, but it was no different in either ocean. It was a lot of water,” he chuckles.


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Jack McLaughlin

Jack McLaughlin, 87, was an infantryman in Patton’s Third Army in Europe. The native of Homewood was drafted and made a part of a Replacement Company, and arrived on Normandy Beach two days after the D-Day Invasion.

“Going up that hill and seeing all of the bodies still there, and looking at all those German pillboxes was just something,” he recalls. “You wouldn’t believe it; all of the pillboxes that were there and the number of dead Germans still in them.”

His unit remained on the move. “We went all through France, Luxembourg, and then over the Rhine River,” he says. “We went over [the Rhine] in ducks, and I remember receiving my combat infantryman’s badge.

We were always on the move.”

“They called Patton, ‘Blood and Guts’. It was our blood and his guts,” he says. “It was push…push…push, and when we got to a place where we could rest for the night, we no sooner got settled and it was push again.”

His unit was also involved in the Battle of the Bulge and the constant day-to-day fighting. McLaughlin recalls the demanding physical requirements as well as the brutal weather conditions. “We had on leggings and combat shoes, and no boots. The first winter there we had snow 15 feet high, and it was 10 or 15 below zero. I finally got time to take off my shoes for the first time since I left the States. I had frozen feet and trench feet because they were so wet. They just swelled up, and I couldn’t put shoes back on. I ended up in a Field Hospital.

“I still suffer from the cold weather and rain,” he says. “I’m probably a better weatherman than anyone, because I can tell whenever it’s going to rain or snow.”