WWII veteran shares memories in Portland

From Middletown Press: WWII veteran shares memories in Portland
PORTLAND — “You want to talk to this guy, my neighbor,” Ed Drzewiecki said. “You really do.”

Oh, how right Mr. Drzewiecki was.

James D. Wright sat quietly, slowly eating his dinner at the “Thank you, Veterans” dinner in Portland High school Friday night. As he finished the last of his roast pork, mashed potatoes and carrots, Drzewiecki, his tablemate, neighbor and friend looked on approvingly.

When at last he had finished his meal, Wright put down his silverware and pushed his plate out of his way. And then Wright, 92, began to tell a story about his grandfather, the Brooklyn Dodgers and Gen. George Patton.

The grandfather first.

“My grandfather was born in 1847. I used to sit on his lap. He chewed tobacco,” Wright explained. “And he fought in the Civil War.” His grandfather died in 1929, when Wright was 10.

“He used to send me to the store to get his tobacco. His brand was Liberty. They still make it. It had a picture of the Lady (Liberty) right on the cover,” Wright explained in a clear, direct voice.

And when he came back from the store, mission accomplished, Wright would climb into his grandfather’s lap.

Wright retains clear memories of his grandfather. “Oh, he was a great guy.”

Fighting for the Union, the grandfather took part in the Battle of the Wilderness in northern Virginia in May 1864.

Known today only by serious students of the Civil War, the Wilderness ended inconclusively. What little fame it has today rests on the fact it was the first battle undertaken by Ulysses Grant against Robert E. Lee.

While Grant did not win, he also did not retreat. Instead, he sidestepped sideways, pushing ever further south towards Richmond.

This sideways crab-like movement and fighting continued unabated for nearly 11 more months until, worn down and flushed from his defenses at Petersburg, Lee finally gave up and surrendered at Appomattox Court House.

Wright’s grandfather wasn’t there to see the end; he was captured in the confusion that was the Wilderness and sent south to Andersonville, the Confederate prison camp in southwest Georgia that became a synonym for hell on earth.

When William Tecumseh Sherman launched his scouring march to the sea from Atlanta in late 1864, Wright’s grandfather was moved to South Carolina. When Sherman turned his 60,000-man strong column north into the cradle of secession, Wrights’ grandfather was freed in a prisoner exchange.

Which is how he came to be sitting in a chair in a house in New Jersey in the 1920s.

His grandfather’s death coincided with the stock market crash. Suddenly jobless, Wright’s father moved the family to Brooklyn where he got a job with Sheffield Farms Dairy.

Those years in Brooklyn live on in Wright’s pronunciation. And then, Wright got a try-out with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

“Me and 15 other guys, we all got the chance to get out on the field” of the Dodgers’ fabled home, Ebbetts Field.

“They’d hit six or seven grounders to each one of us, and we’d get to throw from third to first,” Wright recalled.

But He would have to be happy with the fact he got the tryout. “I didn’t have that much of an arm; I was only 17,” he explained.

Still, he was good enough to play semi-pro ball on Long Island. That was where he was when the United States Government decided it required Mr. James Douglas Wright’s skills in the Armed Forces. It was 1941.

At first, “I played a lot of baseball,” Wright said, “until they caught up with me and sent me to France.” It was 1944.

He joined the Third Army, commanded by George S. Patton. The Allies had finally disentangled themselves from Normandy and were streaking across northern France. There was talk the war could be over by Christmas.

Wright was assigned to a mobile anti-aircraft unit; he was gunner on a quad .50, a pod that was mounted on a truck bed and which contained four .50 caliber heavy machine guns.

Designed for use against attacking airplanes, Wright said most often the guns were fired across rivers in support of ground attacks upon German positions.

With Patton in the lead, 3rd Army swept east across France and Belgium into Luxembourg. It was mid-December, 1944. And then, “we got bogged down,” Wright said off-handedly.

What caused 3rd Army to “bog down” was the Germans famous last-gasp offensive which became the Battle of the Bulge, the largest battle in history involving US troops.

It took two months of hard fighting and some 80,000 US casualties before the battle was over, and Patton could resume his drive ever eastwards. When the war finally ended in May, Wright and Patton had streaked through Germany and were in Czechoslovakia.

The rest of Wright’s abruptly left for home en masse. He alone remained behind.

“Someone had to watch the Germans – and the German women!” Wright said, prompting Drzewiecki to laugh out loud, “Not bad for 92, huh?” Drzwiecki noted.

When he finally came home, Wright went to work for Western Union and then for a trucking company. He worked until he was 75, retiring for good.

Just after he got back, “I met the most beautiful girl at an American Legion dance on Long Island.” They were married 56 years before his wife died in 2002. He moved to Portland following her death.

Wright and his wife had two children, a son and daughter. The son died within the past month, at age 62. It is a loss Wright is still coming to terms with.

His daughter, Carol Lanigan, lives in East Hampton and came with her father to the dinner Friday.

Wright and Ed and Josephine Drzewiecki live in a 55-and-older community in Portland.

A Navy veteran who served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Wasp in the early 1960s, Drzewiecki helped recover Gemini space capsules as part of the US space program.

He keeps an eye on Wright and helps out when and where he can. “The only reason I agreed to help him out was because I found out he was a World War II veteran. How can you say no to a guy who served in World War II?” Drzewiecki said.

In June, Wright traveled to Washington, DC, to see the World War II Memorial on the National Mall.

“Oh, it was great!” Wright said. All his nieces and nephews surprised Wright by showing up unannounced at the memorial.

“There I was, standing in the middle and suddenly they were all around me. I didn’t even know they were coming. It was great – and it was a freebie,” he said.

About his army career, Wright said, “It’s something you had to do. I’m not saying I enjoyed it, but when they tell you to do something – you do it."