16-159 Garand Picture of the Day - 101st Airborne Division in Eindhoven

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Paratroopers of Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division in Eindhoven. The man on the right is Frank Perconte


By John Ruane, January 8, 2014 at 7:37 pm


Frank Perconte died on October 24, 2013, nearly three months ago. He was 96. I can tell you from visiting him several times since my first interview with him in May of 2011 that he was a man of honor, courage and grace. His death could have very easily taken place 69 years ago in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge where he was hit in the right hip with a bullet, while trying to peek up over a dirt mound. That was a million-dollar wound, going right through is right buttocks and out his thigh. “Best thing that ever happened to me,” said Frank, repeating that line as often as he was asked about the injury. “Made me a disabled veteran and I got a pension out of it.”

Frank Perconte was just like hundreds of thousands of other brave soldiers who fought in World War II, until Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg decided to produce a mini-series on Easy Company, part of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the 101st Airborne Division, known as the Screaming Eagles. The Band of Brothers made household names out of soldiers like Perconte, Dick Winters, Joe Toye, Babe Heffron, Bill Guarnere, Bull Randleman, David Webster, Carwood Lipton, Don Malarkey, Shifty Powers, Buck Compton, Lewis Nixon and Ronald Speirs. They all fought bravely, landing behind enemy lines early on the morning of June 6, 1944 with the mission of knocking out the German guns around “Causeway 2” overlooking Utah Beach. They were successful disabling a battery of four German guns, saving the lives of countless American soldiers in the process of landing on Utah Beach. But that was only the beginning and it is all recounted in the book, "Band of Brothers” by Stephen Ambrose as well as the award-winning mini-series by Hanks and Spielberg. When one thinks about the luck a soldier like Perconte had to have to make it from D-Day all the way into Germany with just one wound, it’s pretty amazing.

When Frank returned from the war in 1945, he was hired by the U.S. Post Office a few years later and delivered mail for the next 33 years right in Joliet, where he grew up. The people on his route didn’t know that they had a war hero delivering their mail each day. He never brought it up. He was just like an entire generation of soldiers who returned home. In my neighborhood of St. Bede’s, we never knew we were surrounded by World War II veterans who had survived D-Day, fought through France, Belgium and into Germany; fought in the Pacific; fought in Korea. It was never talked about. They were just the dads in our neighborhood, most of whom were blue-collar workers employed by the City of Chicago in some capacity.

That was the mindset of Frank Perconte. He would tell you what happened to him in the war, if asked about it. If not asked, he wouldn't bring it up. But of course, I brought it up every visit and Frank provided me with the history and insight only a solider who had been there could reveal. Having heard Frank repeat the stories verbatim so many times, I’m sure that when Easy Company was making their way into the battle of Foy, or later in the Battle of the Bulge, none ever imagined their acts of courage would one day be recounted in such a grand fashion. Like the other soldiers in the war, they were just doing their duty, what was expected of them.