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Lowellville native recounts VE-, VJ Days, loss of war buddy
RELATED: AP there as Germany surrenders, but fires journalist reporting it
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
alcorn@vindy.com
POLAND
Photo
Vincent G. Ballanca, 91, of Poland Township, who shows he can still fit into his World War II Army uniform jacket, talks about his reaction to hearing about the German surrender May 8, 1945, referred to as Victory In Europe Day. Ballanca, a member of the 44th Army Division, was in Arzla, a small town in the Austrian Alps, when word was received the war in Europe was over.
There was no big celebration May 8, 1945 — Victory in Europe Day — by members of the Army’s 44th Infantry Division, which had fought in several major battles from Cherbourg, France, to the small town of Arzl im Pitztal in the Austrian Alps.
“We were mostly just relieved,” said Vincent G. Ballanca, a member of the 157th Field Artillery Battalion attached to the 44th, which had stopped in Arzl after some 244 days of combat, broken only by one weekend of rest and recreation in Paris.
“We knew the fighting was over in Europe, but we also knew we were on our way to Japan,” explained Ballanca, 91, of Poland Township.
“We got clean uniforms and hot food and waited,” he said.
At the time, soldiers did not know the United States was going to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and three days later on Nagasaki, leading to Japan’s unconditional surrender.
But, said Ballanca, who grew up in Lowellville and was home on a 30-day leave to see his first wife, Margaret Carducci, and their first child before heading to the Pacific Theater, the celebration Aug. 15, 1945, of Victory in Japan Day was anything but quiet.
There were thousands of people in downtown Youngstown, most of them drunk, Ballanca said.
“I know I was,” he said with a laugh.
“Thank God [President] Truman had what it took to drop that bomb,” Ballanca said.
But getting to that happy victory celebration was a harrowing path for Ballanca, who graduated from Lowellville High School in 1940.
After training together in the states, Ballanca and his good friend from Lowellville, Michael Marzetti, both assigned to the 44th Infantry but not in the same unit, sailed for Europe and landed Sept. 15, 1944, in Cherbourg, France.
They were in combat by the end of October.
Before Germany’s surrender, Ballanca and the 44th participated in campaigns in Northern France, Central Europe and the Rhineland, according to his discharge papers.
According to a May 9, 1945, letter to the soldiers of the 44th, its commanding officer, Maj. Gen. William F. Dean, praised them for their bravery in repeatedly repulsing the enemy and keeping them off balance.
“You have captured more than 44,000 prisoners of war, roughly equal to a force three times the size of your division. Soldiers of the 44th Infantry Division, I congratulate you,” Dean wrote.
In one of those battles, someone told Ballanca that his friend Marzetti had been killed.
“I place a rose on his tombstone in Holy Rosary Cemetery every Memorial Day,” he said.
“I saw enough combat to cry out more than once: ‘God, save me!’ Those are things you don’t forget,” said Ballanca, who has served as chaplain and in other offices for American Legion Post 247 in Lowellville, VFW Post 3538 in Struthers, DAV Chapter 2 in Youngstown and the United Veterans Council.
“First of all, I didn’t want to go to war, but my draft number came up in February 1943,” he said.
But, Ballanca said, “I would have done it again, even if it had cost me my life, for my country and the men I fought beside.”
“We’d be speaking German here and Japanese on the West Coast. That’s how close it was,” he said.
“I really get upset by disrespect for the flag,” said Ballanca, who operated Vince’s TV Service in Youngstown from 1953 until he retired in 1983.
He and his first wife, who is deceased, had five children: Joanne Baltes of Canfield, Margaret Roberts of Columbus, Louise Milanese of Youngstown, Vincent Jr. of Hermitage, Pa., and a daughter, Anna Budiak, who is deceased.
He and his second wife, the former Cheryl Manley Powers, whom he married in 1983, have 10 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. Ballanca has a brother, Carmen of Centerville, Ohio, and a sister, Angie Giancola of Cleveland.