By Bob Staranowicz
BucksLocalNews.com correspondent

“When I first saw those Marines marching in New York in 1942, I knew then that I wanted to be a Marine.” Jim Campanella had traveled to Grumman, Long Island, from his home in Montclair, N.J., to apply for a job at an Aircraft Company. After seeing the Marines, he went back to New York the next day and enlisted in the Corps. Because he had two cavities, however, he was not accepted. Jim went home and borrowed $2 from a neighbor, had his cavities filled and eventually took the Marine Corps oath in August of 1942.

“I worked at a fish market and delivered newspapers before I enlisted,” Jim says, “but after I joined, I was off to Camp LeJune, North Carolina for basic training.”

Jim had spent time in several different areas in the Pacific including Guam, Guadalcanal, Okinawa and Iwo Jima. He was assigned to the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade as a forward observer.

The island of Guam was occupied by the Japanese from Dec. 13, 1941 to July 9, 1944. In July of 1944, regiments of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade had arrived. Jim was in the second wave of LSTs (Landing Ship). At around midnight on July 26, 1944, the Japanese were trapped on the peninsula and began a suicide attack. Although the Japanese were almost completely wiped out, the Marines still met with very heavy Japanese resistance in the vicinity of the airfield where they fought from caves and bunkers. The peninsula was secured on July 29, 1944. An estimated 3,000 Japanese were lost in the defense of the Orote Peninsula. The invasion cost the United States forces almost 8,000 casualties, including over 1,000 killed. The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade won the Navy Unit Citation for its performance on Guam.

“The worst part of my service came about in Guam when I had to be carried off the battlefield suffering from malaria,” Jim recalls. It didn’t keep him down for long, though.”

Jim was back with his unit in a few days, although he eventually did need treatment again when he returned to the states after the war.

While on the island of Guam, Jim ran into a fellow Marine he recognized from his home town. Carnivale, the only name by which he was known, was eventually killed there.

“I had no idea of his death until I returned home after the war,” Jim says.

Jim recalls another unique story. “I was going on shore and I saw another neighbor from home - Ernest Brunetto - and I handed him a chicken that had been given to me by a local villager and that I had been carrying for a few days since fresh food was hard to get.”

Also while on Guam, Jim was fortunate to be associated for a time with the Navajo Code Talkers. This select group took part in every assault the U.S. Marines carried out in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. The Code Talkers served in all six Marine divisions, sending messages by telephone and radio in their native language - a code that the Japanese were never able to break. The primary duty of the code talkers was to transmit information on tactics and troop movements, orders and other battlefield communications.

“They would call in coordinates and we would respond with fire,” Jim says.

Jim’s next major assignment was off the island of Iwo Jima serving as a floating reserve on board ship as the Marines raised the American Flag on the island on Feb. 19, 1945. Iwo Jima was not originally part of the strategy but because the Philippines fell so quickly, the U.S. was experiencing a longer-than-expected respite prior to the already planned invasion of Okinawa. After the combat, photographers returned to the ship and had their photos developed. One of them handed Jim a group of pictures. One of those photographs appears to be the original infamous shot of the Marine Corps raising the flag on the island taken by Joe Rosenthal, although that has not been verified.

Jim also participated in the invasion of Okinawa.

“On the night before the invasion, we prayed to the Southern Cross for our Safety.” “Crux,” commonly known as the Southern Cross, is a constellation visible in the Southern Hemisphere and very distinctive.

“We invaded on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945,” Jim recalls.

The Army had run into stiff opposition so the Marines were being ordered to support them and eventually take the island.

One of the significant highlights of Jim's service was his participation in the ceremony at the surrender of the Japanese Military Forces in the area of Tsingtao, China on the Oct. 25, 1945. Jim still has the certificate signifying that event signed by Maj. Gen. Lemuel C. Shepherd, commander of the 6th Marine Division.

Jim also had four brothers, all drafted and all had seen combat during World War II. His brothers Joe and Leonard served in the Army. His other two brothers, Mike and Bing, were in the Navy.

Jim left the Marines as a corporal after three and a half years of service. He then became a member of American Legion Post 382, The Lt. Vincent J. Russo Post.

Jim is now retired with his wife of more than 60 years, Ann. His daughter, Phyllis Katasak, lives in Buckingham with her husband Denis and son Jim. He also has two other daughters who live in New Jersey.

Labels: Buckingham, Marines, WWII

New Hope’s Joe Doherty (left) is now an author of two books and a borough parking meter officer. He was in active service with the Marines (right) from 1961 to 1966.

The Marines taught this Bucks resident lessons for life.

By Daniel Brooks
BucksLocalNews.com Editor

Like most U.S. Marines, Joe Doherty believes life is a mission and he is lucky to be serving in it. While his time in active service was from 1961-66, his commitment to the values he learned as a Marine has been life long.

Now 67 years old and a resident of New Hope, Dougherty grew up one of three boys in the Bronx, son of Irish and German working class parents. In the 1950s — his high school days — life in the Bronx was changing. A New York borough built largely on immigrant family life and religious morality; the kids of the Bronx in those days were learning to be rough, tough and rowdy. Doherty refers to the era as “Rock Around the Clock” years. He saw himself swaying in an aimless direction upon graduation from high school with no particular goals or direction, a good time guy looking for the next party. It was an era of confusion: one side trying to hold down the post-World War II ethics of family and country above all, the other — the” beat generation” — looking to change what appeared to them as a vanilla “sugar-coated” world.

It was a tumultuous time and Doherty was caught squarely in the middle.

“It could have gone in any direction for me. I was a two-bit punk from the Bronx,” says Doherty. “But I found myself at a recruiting office one day and it changed me. The Marine Corps saved my life.”

Now the sole survivor of that family, except for his 90-year-old mother, he is thankful for the opportunity to live every day to its fullest.

Despite his many attempts to get shipped overseas, Joe Doherty did not see combat action in the service. The Marines found his abilities to be most valuable to them on the home front.
After boot camp on Parris Island, S.C., and a short stint in Infantry Training at Camp Geiger, N.C., his innate talent as a mechanically minded individual scored him high on his Military Occupational Specialty test and that meant permanent assignment to the Marine’s base at Beaufort, S.C., as a radio mechanic. At first it made him miserable, seeing his friends readied and shipped out to a conflict in Santo Domingo or, eventually, to what was to become a hot bed of strife in Vietnam.

Doherty tried hard to get himself reassigned to active duty. He attempted to “request mast” — a formalized Marine procedure that enabled him an opportunity to state his case for active duty to various officials in the chain of command, asking repeatedly for a “Duty Station Change.” However, the most he was able to change was his assignment from a mechanic working in a civilian environment to one surrounded by fellow Marines in a Marine Corps warehouse. But Marines learn, above all, that when there is an assigned task — no matter what the task — the job is not to whine, but simply to get the job done. So, Doherty settled in to becoming the best mechanic that he could be and eventually earned the rank of non-commissioned corporal.

His stint as a formal Marine officer lasted for four years and, after being arbitrarily reassigned in stop-loss fashion because the country was at war in “the Nixon years,” Dougherty left the Marines and went back to the Bronx where he briefly found outlet for his youthful abilities and desire for action in the New York City Police Department as a rookie cop. He found his first wife — a marriage that lasted 35 years — and began having children.

“The pay for a cop in those days — $6,000 a year — wasn’t really making it for a guy with a growing family,” Doherty says, and he joined a construction company where he remained employed for most of his career. As a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Doherty led a disciplined family life raising four children until a divorce sent him on an uncharted journey.

The divorce was a trying time but Doherty considers it a turning point of his life and he is very emotional about it even today.

“To a Marine who is taught to succeed at all costs, divorce represents complete failure,” he says. “That is a terrible state to be in and I was torn up, completely down on myself. I could have ‘crawled into a bottle’ and shut myself off.”

But as fate had it, an uncle died and left property to Doherty and a cousin — two uninhabitable cabins in Monroe County, N.Y. — and Doherty found a refuge.

“The cabins were a mess, with no running water or heat. I set out on a mission to make them livable,” he says. “They were barren and had not been habited since my grandmother. One day I was working in the cabin and, out of no where, an old photo fell from a rafter. It was me as a child. How or why it got there I don’t know. There was no reason for it to be there.”

But the mysterious occurrence gave Doherty a new confidence.

“It was an epiphany for me, one of those moments in life. I didn’t think much about God in those days, but I saw it as a sign that he was thinking about me,” he says.

From that moment, Doherty became refocused in life and put much effort into learning scripture and reading the Bible. From that period, his first self-published book, “In His Hand,” was born.

“It is stern scripture but told in a humorous way, relating to funny things in my life,” he says. Asked about the book’s premise, Doherty explains that “it is about evangelisms and testimony but, most of all, it is about rising above the ‘poor me’ thing.”

Five years ago, through an Internet site, Doherty became acquainted with Kathryn Kelly from Alexandria, Va., and the two met shortly thereafter on a date. Kelly, formerly from Philadelphia, had a country home in New Hope, the two eventually married and Doherty moved to New Hope, where he authored his second book, “Grandly Told Tales and the Donahue’s of Solebury.” It debuted five months ago in a book signing at the legendary John and Peter’s bar and restaurant. It is a fiction book, set locally, “loosely based on my life, touching social issues, alcoholism, life and death, death in the streets.”

Like many Marines, Doherty has “heroes” and his hero here is his real life friend, John Donahue, who he had looked up to as the consummate “stand up guy.”

Doherty continues to relay his life experience through prose and literature and now works on a series of short stories. His books are available locally at Post Mortem Gallery, 12 Mechanic St., in New Hope.

Though no longer working full time, he is far from retired and is employed part-time by New Hope Borough as a meter officer. His military background and ethics are employed, he says, when giving out parking tickets. While he states that he will often give people the benefit of the doubt and he carries quarters in his pocket to feed meters where he thinks the car owner is just late, when he sees that a violation has clearly occurred, he spares no one, irregardless of their status in the community.

“If I see a wrong and I can fix it, I am there,” he stated. “I am known as ‘the hammer’ because while I don’t have a quota per se, I do my job.”

He continues to maintain his ties to the military and the Marines as an active member of the Marine Corps League at their branch in Doylestown and also belongs to the New Hope post of the American Legion. In the former, which meets monthly, Marine Corps life is constantly talked about and reinforced. They are, Doherty describes, “the crème de la crème’ of former Marines. They have structure and ribbons, metals and rank. They mentor young people and operate the ‘Young Marines’ group that you see frequently raising money.” He serves the group as “Web sergeant”—the man responsible for maintaining their online presence.

Clearly, for all that it has been to and for him, Doherty is proud to have served the U.S. Marine Corps.

“In my life I have worn suits worth hundreds of dollars and, on the lapel, have a Marine Corps pin that probably cost a dime,” he says. “But the pin to me is worth many times more than the suit.”

He regards the Corps as having taught him “self-respect, self-reliance, respect for country, motherhood and a ‘can do’ attitude about everything. What is it that they say? Marines analyze, improvise, adapt and overcome. Wherever I go, and I see a Marine, there is an instant bond. Marine’s are brothers for life.

Labels: Marines, New Hope

Upper Black Eddy resident Steven Christiano (above)
served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Central America,
Africa and the Persian Gulf. Christiano (below) at age 17.


Keeping the Wolf at Bay: The life of a ‘lifer’ Marine

By Daniel Brooks
BucksLocalNews.com Editor

"There is no life other than service to your country,” many have often heard Steven Christiano, a resident of Upper Black Eddy, quickly quip to any and all within earshot. He often follows this statement by flashing an impish grin.

“There are those that are weak and then there are the Marines,” said part teasing, part instigating, part boasting. Another frequent mantra of Christiano is: “Are you prepared to keep the wolf at bay? If not, don’t blame those who do!” Christiano, though no longer in the United States Marines, like many that have served there, will never stop being a Marine.

Born into a “military family,” the first of five children with a 6-foot-6 ex-Marine father, Christiano is one of five generations of family who have dutifully served their country. He grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s in New Providence — a very green, small town in the mountains of central Jersey — and his dad taught him to appreciate all of the resources available there: hunting, fishing and boating among them. He was taught to construct and encouraged in life survival skills. In a family of taller siblings, at 5-foot-8 Steve was, as he says, “the runt of the litter.”

“My Dad was a big man. He and I were a lot alike,” says Christiano. “I was the ‘econo’ version of him.” Always interested in strength, he became an avid recreation seeker, gym body-builder and spent most of his youth mastering martial arts. Despite all of his dedication to self-discipline, he gained a reputation for being the neighborhood hell-raiser.

Though mischievous and outspoken in school, his heroes were tough teachers and ex-Marines. “They taught me three principles: be smart, be respectful and know yourself,” says Christiano. “I said to myself, ‘I want to be like them’. I was drawn to people who have something that separates them from others.” He was an academically quick kid — a voracious reader of books — and had no problem skipping through to graduation from New Providence High School. Almost immediately after, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.

He describes his 10 weeks of boot camp on Parris Island, S.C, as “graduating into life.” After several months in the infantry at base in Quantico, Va., Christiano was selected for “Fast Company School,” a security detail training session in Norfolk, Va., where he was picked for “the Fleet,” a group whose mission was basically national security. He spent his first duty abroad in various locales, dutifully trouble-shooting in Central America. While he can’t discuss his assignments, these were the days of Noriega and drug trafficking. “My job was basically cleaning up messes,” he jokes. All the while Chistiano was working intelligence, he continued to upgrade his combatant skills — necessary for what was to be his next tours, in the jungles and deserts of Africa.

In Africa, Christiano and his group cross-trained with international defenders such as the British Royal Marines and the French Foreign Legion, together integral parts to the massive military infrastructure which defends U.S. concerns abroad. His subsection acted as scouts and he was sent wherever there was suspicion of “trouble” until called into active permanent detail in the Persian Gulf — it was 1992 and it was all about Desert Storm. Acting as “scout sniper,” Christiano was sent ahead of the larger groups to learn key enemy strengths and weaknesses.

“Wherever there was trouble, whatever they needed to ‘see up-front,’ that’s where we got sent,” says Christiano. “We were professional fighters — we went where we were told.”

For all years which the hunt for Hassan Hussein raged, Christiano and his friends were in the dangerous thick of it.

“As a sniper my job was to save other Marines,” he says. “Each day you didn’t know what that would mean for you.”

Christiano still holds true his vows of mission secrecy. While he loves to tell stories of his buddies and their antics during off-duty adventures, asking for mission details will send the generally gregarious, chatty, fun-loving Christiano to silence. One can sense that asking those questions not only invades his privacy and conflict with his military ethics but that, in addition, they are just too difficult for him to think about.

After eight years and numerous injuries, the U.S. Marines wanted Christiano on safer ground. He did not, desiring to stay in combat. The conflict led to his honorable discharge as a staff sergeant at the end of his final tour in 1995. He remained in the Marine Reserves until 2002.

During those five years he struggled with his adjustment to civilian life, started a construction business, married and moved up river from New Hope. In the past years he and wife, Lara, have had two children: Maximilian, 4, and Corbin, 2, and he hopes the kids will continue his values. Despite his success in rebuilding a life, Christiano has not had an easy time leaving the military and he is often restless.

Looking through his old pictures Christiano came across a picture of his reconnaissance group, about 15 Marines, clowning at a stateside wedding, a bunch of comrades who fought the “bad guys” and defended their country together.

“Each would go the ‘extra mile’ for the other, often endangering their own lives in doing so,” adds Christiano. “That is what Marines do — they look out for each other.”

These 15 men have seen life sights in a few years that most will not see in a lifetime.

Christiano said that 13 of those men are now dead. He mourns their loss and also the absence in his life of the bonds the Marine environment provided them. “Being a Marine is the best thing. If you can make it in the Marine Corps you can make it anywhere. People wise, it is the best of the best.” he still states proudly. “You have a group that genuinely believes in the work they are doing, what they are defending, and whatever the local conscious is they are not swayed by it. They are there to do a job. In the Marine Corps, for those who make it, everyone learns to best do their job. People don’t join the Marine Corps because the Marines are different than other branches of service; they join because they are different than other people.”

Christiano has spent years of his civilian life trying to employ his Marine ethics with others in need. As a professional contractor, he is constantly helping people of the area, voluntarily, with their home disaster problems, will be the first one to stop for an accident and the last one to leave a job done if he feels he is being treated with respect and fairness.

Often he speaks of his concern for the future. “America is a great country but if we don’t quickly come together as a one-world community we are going to run into some really bad problems down the road,” Christiano says.

He added, “We are running out of resources and we owe it to the next generation to put it together.” As for himself and his integration into civilian life, he says, “I still try to live my life in the tradition of the Marine Corps, whether that means duty to my country, my family or my neighbors.”

***

While writing this “salute” story and searching for a summation I stumbled on a statue of Kemble Warren, a major general in the Civil War and New York governor. My eye was caught by a small inscription at the end of Warren’s military career biography, carved on a tarnished brass plaque. It reads: “Everything to him was subordinated by duty.” I stood there for awhile thinking that for my friend Steven Christiano and for many veterans past and present, in every aspect of their lives, they are compelled by fighting “the good fight.” Duty is their real story, from beginning to end.. — D.B.

Labels: Gulf War, Marines, New Hope