An Interview with Frank J. Vargo, Jr.
"Treasure added 15 February 1998"
On June 6, 1944, my great uncle, Frank J. Vargo, Jr., was
a 21-year-old GI when he landed on Omaha Beach. Below is the transcript of
a taped interview conducted by Dennis Tarnay on 05 September 1977. Also included
is an interview with Frank's wife, Ann and more from Mary Murany Vargo.
Dennis: Frank, I'm sorry. It seems that I released something because the tape stopped and I didn't find out on time. Can you repeat some portion which you mentioned before how you came to England?
Uncle Frank: Very quickly, I was given the privilege to join the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, as one of the first five replacements ever taken from the States to replace that particular division that saw heavy combat in north Africa. I found out later that the 1st Division at any time had choice of any officer or enlisted man in any division of the United States Army to fill their ranks before anyone else. So they had their pick and I was pleased to be one of the first few to get over with them. However, as I mentioned previously, they would not even accept us as any part of the division, particularly in the company level, and the only way that I was able to gain any acceptance was to help them in two barroom brawls in England.
In any event, I worked with them very strongly for six months in simulated combat which included breaking into beach positions, pillboxes, breaking through minefields, and other things that would assist us in hitting the European area. On June 5th, excuse me, take that back, I would guess probably the later part of May, we were moved into a quarantine area with English guards and we were beginning to get briefings on when we were going to hit the mainland of France. As a matter of fact, I was to lead a patrol into about 14 kilometers past the beach on the first day upon hitting the beach.
Now, at this particular moment we did not know where specifically we were going to hit but the general area nor did we know the exact date that we were able hit. But the main thrust was that all of the troops that were part of the initial wave were quarantined so that no one would know and be in contact with them to tip and so forth. Now, in the meantime, as I found out years later, the British were putting up simulated camps, simulated tanks in other parts of England to decoy German intelligence in terms of when we were going hit and, of course, as a PFC at the time, in the lower level of the organization, I had no idea what really was coming off. The only thing I knew was that things were happening.
On June 5th, we were loaded on LCIs, this is landing craft infantry; it was a ship approximately 110 feet long, it had a turret on the top, it had 20mm guns in front and was commanded by Coast Guard officers and crew. It would take something like a half a battalion or 400 fully equipped men. It had a landing type of a ramp on each side of the ship, a little platform would go down into the water, you were to run off of that and onto the beach. It was a little larger than the normal flat-type open mouthed type of landing craft that the Marines have used very successfully on the islands. In any event, I recall that I was sick from seasickness. We had three days of canned rations on us; I, at this time, was a mortar ammunition carrier. A mortar ammunition carrier is the closest thing to a human mule in the United States Army because with me I had two bandoliers of M1 ammunition, I had four pounds of water which incidentally is the weight of a canteen of water, my M1 with a clip in it was nine pounds and then I had a type of a thing that if you could remember how the yardsman on a football team, they have this little cape that they put their head through and on each side is a little type of a cape. Well I had that along with all the rest of my equipment filled with six rounds of 60mm mortar on the front of me and six rounds behind me.
Now, with this, of course, I was very strong and, at that time, I was in peak physical condition and I also must admit I was extremely frightened and as we were going through these heavy waves on the Channel and I was sick and, of course, I must admit I didn't know how bad things were gonna get, and thank God for that. I did read General Eisenhower's letter to each one of the troops saying "God Bless You and go in there and raise hell" and I was touched with this particular letter as every one of us was and approximately at eight o'clock in the morning on June 6th, which we now recognize as D-Day, we were out I would guess probably about a mile off shore and all hell was breaking loose.
I could see puffs of smoke and I was just coming up the ladder from the little lower deck where our bunks were and there was a tremendous explosion. By this time, I would guess we were maybe 100 yards off the beach and there was a tremendous explosion and I was fully geared because they said get ready to hit the beach and my chest felt like it was falling through the back of my backbone and I didn't know until I got out, I heard men screaming below because water was gushing in on the bottom of the ship. They were screaming in agony and as I came up through the round turret that I was telling you about where the little wheelhouse was, I saw the entire front of this LCI blown off with the crew of Coast Guard people that were there manning that 20mm gun and what we did is we hit a tripod mine. Across the entire beach were large mines I guess maybe four or five times the size of a bowling ball and at high tide you couldn't see them. We had to come in at high tide and it hit the bough of the ship and blew off the ship, the water then gushed through the center of it.
Now then the bad thing about this was at this moment is that we were in very deep water and, of course, with this type of weight you were like the proverbial lead ball hitting the water and then not coming up. So there on the beach there were burning half-tracks and other things and they threw lines over and these heavy housers were the things that we put underneath our arm and tried to get off this ship. And I recall, of course I was just paralyzed with fear cause I heard all kinds of shellings coming in and people crying and it was just I was in deep, deep shock and if somebody had asked me what my name was at that time I'd be an absolute blubbering idiot. In any event, I did get this line underneath me and I recall going into the water and immediately the water was over my head and as a little boy I almost drowned twice when I was with the Boy Scouts and one other place with my uncle in Pennsylvania and water and me never did agree and, of course, I was totally petrified but for some reason I think the weight was so fast that my feet hit the ground immediately and my natural reaction was to kick up which I did so. I turned into a kangaroo; I'd go down and kick up, go down and I was pogosticking into the beach and how I got there I don't know because literally hundreds of men died coming in whether they were on my type of ship or on these little amphibious tanks that the water was so rough that they were just being filled up with water. So we lost actually as many men in the water as we did by gunfire on the beach I found out later.
So as I got on the beach I noticed immediately that there wasn't any sand. This is interesting, they were grey flat very smooth stones about two inches wide by maybe three inches long around the entire beach and in order for you to run, it was impossible, you were like on a treadmill you couldn't even dig in or anything. In the military term this was Easy Red Omaha. We had a type of a cliff I would say probably another hundred yards from the water's edge to the top and there were gun emplacements firing at us. Some were actually out of operation but the demoralizing thing was that in front of us was the first wave of our division, the 16th Regiment hit at eight o'clock in the morning. By the time we got in it was ten. The 16th was to take that ridge and so we could then move past them. We'd like leap frog and this was our way that we did combat from that time on and we had many dead on the beach and I recall guys were trying to dig in to try to hold their positions and we were coming in right behind them so this was getting to the point of near panic.
I might go back a minute and recall that I'm certain some of you have heard of these Navy barrages that had a series of long lines of rockets on them that they would shoot. These were rocket barrages, they would shoot into a beach area to break up the barbed wire or any other smaller defenses that might be there. In this particular case I recall them shooting them off, I could hear them whistling over us and seeing them strike before we hit the beach and the only thing those damn things did was to burn off the beach grass. Now, in a sense this was good because when it burned off the beach grass, it exposed a tremendous minefield. The minefield was like a big yellow carpet and every two and a half to three feet there was a yellow top disk anti-personnel mine and this was facing us as we went over the 16th Regiment. I could see these damn things and at the same I would guess the equivalency of 75-105mm German-type howitzers were beginning to rake the beach.
Now thank God at this time there was no enemy aircraft. There wasn't one single German aircraft in the sky strafing or bombing that area and thank God for that. I saw I would say to the best of my knowledge it may have been 12 o’clock noon or thereabouts and I saw the line of artillery shells breaking and coming toward me exactly on the line that I was lying in at the time. And we were moving up the hill very slowly and I said "the next shell is gonna kill me right there". It came in close but it didn’t hit me. This was my first very close proximity to heavy, we had a lot of light fire coming in, you know just ordinary bullets but this was the first I recall the first heavy type of armament coming in and it whistled by me and it hit behind me and it didn’t do any effect but my normal reaction was to hit the ground. And at that time when I hit the ground my hands straddled over of couple of these yellow mines that were under my chest and I almost got killed not because I didn’t see them but my canteen swung down and just missed one and this was my first very close and serious encounterment with instant death so at this time I was out of my mind completely and we were pinned down pretty much and we had a group of Army Engineers come in with little white tape and they would carry this tape and as a man would get expended the next man would walk over him with the tape and I saw probably six to eight men give their life to open up a way for us to get up to the cliff that night.
At about 6 o’clock, I was in the first relief trenches that the Germans had on the very top of the cliff at Omaha Beach and they were beautifully done. They had wicker baskets on the side and it was the most beautiful interworkings and neatness of a trench I’ve ever seen in my life, whoever did it was a master in basketweaving or whatever they had to keep up the dirt on the sides and all. It was gorgeous. I had also be told by a senior sergeant to watch where you step because many times when they leave a position they mine it and as you walk into it you get blown up so this was my first encounter with that. I was given my first hot drink up there about 7 o’clock at night.
We were exhausted, we were wet, we were frightened and I got to the other side of the road about 8 o’clock at night and this I’m talking about 400 yards from 10 o’clock in the morning. Theodore Roosevelt, the son of Teddy Roosevelt, was our assistant divisional commander. He got killed very shortly after we hit the beach. My company commander, Captain [Frank N.] Fitch, was killed shortly after that, I mean like about maybe 11 o’clock and about 30% of my company was either wounded or killed at that particular encounterment but to make a long story short, we later on within two weeks, formed the first army regimental team. This is very important. I think historically in army records, this particular thing is probably more important than what we did at D-Day.
The German division at that time was 5,000 men. Very mobile, they had light tanks with them, they had the movement of mobility which they could penetrate faster than our 18,000 man division. I was chosen with some of the rest of the people in my particular regiment to form the first 35,000 man regimental combat team. This was a strikeforce, the first type of military monitored strikeforce that would penetrate and keep going into enemy areas leaving the enemy behind you and also being exposed on each one of your flanks and we did it and we got to a point we broke through and got to the Kolmar area where we dug in and this was through the Hengelo country. At this particular time Sergeant [Walter D.] Ehlers, who was in one of our, well we were a company at that time of about 170 men but one of our platoons had a staff sergeant by the name of Ehlers. I supported him at this particular time with mortar ammunition. He heard that his brother was killed in the 4th Division which was a division on one of our flanks, and he wiped out, single handed, two German machine gun nests and later on was the first Congressional Honor Medal holder that I knew of and got to know and was proud to be with of a company of 180 men. I finally went through and we held the northern hinge, our division held the northern hinge during the Bastogne Breakthrough. Patton and his group was in the southern hinge coming up to close the hinge and we worked with the 101st Airborne.
Just before the Ruhr River, on January 18, 1945, I was wounded going into attack at approximately 8 o’clock in the morning in about a foot and a half of snow. I heard the popping of German mortars and being a mortarman and a machine gun sergeant at this time, I knew exactly what was happening. I put my shoulder behind a pine tree and prayed to God. By this time I was getting tired. I was seven months on line with one change of clothes and 4 warm meals in seven months and I was getting tired. I was the second last man from the original on D-Day and I was involuntarily crying at this time and I still had something like 25 people that I was commanding and I was only 22 years old and I prayed to God that I’d either get killed or wounded and I got a tree burst. The thing hit in the trees about me and sprayed down on my left leg. Because of the snow and cold, I was in shock and there was enough cold to stop the blood flow and they took me offline about four hours later. I lost consciousness and woke up in a barn and I remember a medic was taking my helmet and I fought him for that and he was taking my binoculars and I fought him for that and I remember he was taking my .45 and I really slugged him. I actually got off my stretcher and hit him and they had to strap me down and give me a shot of morphine or some damn thing and I went out again and that's it.
Dennis: Well, Frank that’s an experience which really counts. You never mentioned this in detail like now on this tape. This is a historical tape. And now Ann, you are wife of Frank Vargo. Can you tell us how you met him and about your young life and how many children do you have and so on.
Aunt Ann: I met Frank in Cleveland when we had moved there at the close of the Second World War. My father was sent to Cleveland to inspect the Great Lakes District for the United States Coast Guard. We lived two streets away from him and my younger brother Sonny met his younger sister who was working in a confectionery between our two houses and a little romance struck up between these two who were 16 and 17 years old. My brother talked about the beautiful, dark-haired girl that he’d met in the store and he first thought she was a Greek because he didn’t know anything about the ethnic groups or what a name meant in a city in the middle west. So he found out not too long afterward that she was a Hungarian and a Czech I guess together and he went off to school and that romance didn’t last as many don’t among adolescents, and young Dennis will verify that for me, I'm sure, but one day I went in the store where Virginia was working and she recognized me I suppose I still had a rather Southern accent, and she knew what I looked like so we talked and we talked about my brother and then she told me that she had a brother and it just sort of ensued that I went to his house with her and met her big brother who was very casual and not the least bit impressed with me at all which angered me greatly and I vowed that I would somehow make him impressed with me. So after quite a few months, we became engaged and we were married on August 14, 1948, after an occasionally stormy courtship but mostly a fairly smooth one until we made up our minds.
Unidentified Voice: How long were you engaged to him?
Aunt Ann: Well altogether I suppose I met him in November of 46 and I managed to get rid of all his other girlfriends sometime late in that spring. I don't know. He sent me flowers when I was 19, that musta been the spring after that.
Dennis: I know you are of Irish origin. Can you tell me about it? But you are Protestant, usually Irish are Catholics. How that you are Protestant?
Aunt Ann: Well, my maiden name was McCready which, of course, is Irish. My father's family were Irish. They had come, some of them quite a long time ago to Virginia and his mother's mother came after the Potato Famine in 1840 and her name was Redding and she married this young John Anthony McCready, that was my grandfather. My father's name was Thomas Edward. They were Catholics and my father was one of seven children who grew to adulthood there in Richmond and he felt away from the Church as a young man at about the time he went away to be in the First World War. My mother's family were from the northern neck of Virginia which is the strip of land between the Potomac and the Rappanunnock Rivers. Her people came in the late 1600s so genealogically in this country they go back almost as far as you can go which is, of course, is not like in Europe but they lived there in that little neck of Virginia for many, many years sometimes with some money, sometimes not, always very proud of family and with a great sense of being in Virginia from the time the state began.
My father, when he returned from the First World War, got a job at the Naval Proving Ground at Darwin, Virginia, that was about 1921. He had stayed in Europe and traveled around some after the war was over. He met my mother, she was 16. He was 22 at the time and she have never gone out with any other man and she never did and she married him when she was 19 and they lived together very happily for over 40 years. They had my brother and me. I was born in 1927, my brother in 1929. My mother still lives in the place where her grandfather and grandmother had a farm when she was a young girl, Colonial Beach, Virginia on Monroe Bay in Westmoreland County.
Dennis: Thank you, Ann. That's a nice contribution to the genealogy investigation what I am doing many, many years which I started actually in 1952 or so. Thank you very much, Ann.
Aunt Mary, I just mention here that if we missed something in the genealogy story and you are mentioned here this uncle which came to United States in the end of the 19th century. He was brother of your grandfather, Tarnay Janos, would you please tell what you heard even if you're sure or not sure about it because you are the only person who can tell something about it.
Grandma: Well, the only way that I could, at the time, I was not sure or rather I really was too young to pay attention to but my mother said that that was her uncle as far as I know that he went to Mexico; came to this country then went to Mexico and he went with this, I don't know whether it was Pancho Villa or whoever was one of these men that they were quite high up in the Mexican whatever they were doing up there but that he was with one of those revolutionary men but we never heard afterwards whether he got killed there or he came back to this country, he might have come back to America, but I never heard after that, my mother never mentioned after that.
Dennis: Like I mentioned before, these Turdossy or Turdossy Andras who left Austro-Hungary because he was in trouble with gambling. I heard from my father, Joseph Tarnay, and from my grandparents that he actually came to the United States like a single man and later he married a girl named Szabados which was also from the same city like he from Presov and they had a child, a girl, or two I am not sure, I think only one child and she born here in United States but probably when the parents died or I don't know what's happened, but she returned to Czechoslovakia because in 1919 Austro-Hungary never existed anymore and the territory from which they belong was actually Czechoslovakia and she settled in Bartfa-Bardejov and I heard that she was little mentally ill because something in the family but I think it was not mentally ill but like very sensitive in nerves, nervous and she had two children, I don't remember who was the man who married her but they had two children and I saw a picture of these two children but I don't know what was the reason but there was actually no relationship between them and either part of family. Probably reason was this old gambling problem which was in the family.
Grandma: As far as I know, the little bit I knew of it, that he gambled away all the Tarnays', or my great-grandfather's, whatever they had money that he gambled off and then they started again and when we left Austria-Hungary at the time that my own grandparents that they were well off, at the time but that this particular uncle that he did gamble away a lot of the inheritance and that's why I guess he had to leave the country because he gambled away and whatever happened to him after that, I lost track of it.
Dennis: I heard that he actually lost all the property that the family had and the debt which he left after gambling was paid off by his brother, your ...
Again, the tape ends here. Whatever happened to the gambling
relative who lost the family fortune? Did he run with Pancho Villa and die
in Mexico? No one I've contacted seems to know. Maybe we'll never know.