A Testament to Perseverance: A Decade-Long Journey

 

Uncovering Stephen Ganzberger’s World War II Story Over Ten Years

 

By Zach S. Morris

 

Preface

 

 

“Today, you honor a man who lived his life with patience and purpose. His children will be able to tell their children that he not only stood for all that is good, he always took action.”

 

– U.S. Representative John D. Dingell Jr. (D-MI), May 24, 2011

 

 

“HERE HE COMES!” Stephen shouted from atop his gunboat’s conning tower the moment he saw the kamikaze headed directly toward the heart of his ship.

Twenty-year-old Stephen Ganzberger’s eyes were glued to his binoculars on that humid, tropical October morning in Leyte Gulf, Philippines. “I was watching through the binoculars, and at the time I was steering the ship,” he explained, “and I kept watching him. I kept looking at him . . . and pretty soon you could see that airplane was coming exactly where [I] was standing.”

 

*          *          *

 

I’ll never forget the rain. Nearly sixty-seven years later, I stood there half soaked with my family and a group of Marines. Arlington National Cemetery. The most sacred place where our country’s fallen heroes go to rest. In my right arm I cradled an urn, and in my left an umbrella. The front of the urn held a picture of a young sailor standing on a sandy island in front of a tree. The picture had a tiny autograph written on it. The words “Love Stevie” were delicately penned on the bottom right-hand corner. A Marine and the Arlington staff began escorting me to Stevie’s final resting place. I gripped the urn and held it as tightly to myself as I could. As I walked, the rain around me created a mood that felt like the angels themselves were weeping for the loss of such a great man. It was August 2011.

I was never supposed to have carried Stevie’s urn. That duty had always been reserved for his daughter, my Aunt Barrie, his youngest child. Like every father’s youngest child, Barrie held a special place in his heart, and he in hers. But once my family had arrived in the main waiting room of Arlington before his funeral began, my aunt approached me and told me she wanted me to carry his urn to his final resting place. She mentioned that he would have wanted it that way. I will always be eternally grateful to my aunt for doing that, especially because I know she loves him as much as I do. It meant the world to me.

But there was something else eating away at me on that dreary day. For as lucky as I was to have known my grandpa, I felt robbed at the same time. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. My grandpa and I were supposed to have sat down and spent the entire summer of 2011 recording his World War II story together. After decades of silence, he wanted to spill every last detail. One of the last things he ever said to me was, “we’re going to go back,” referring to the start of his story, “and then see what I can fill in.” Then he said, “We’re gonna be all summer long on this. I’ll make sure we fill it in all right.” But two days later, he was taken from me. Sadly, as is life, it was yet another opportunity just barely missed. The reality of quite possibly never uncovering his story after so long was too much to bear.

But there was hope. There were bits and pieces of information I had gotten from him over the years, glimpses into his wartime past that I’d collected. This included an interview I’d gotten just days before he died, as well as a home movie from 1997 that my uncle sent me. I’d also obtained some of his official records from the National Archives Personnel Center. As an avid WWII historian, I was determined to get the rest of his story no matter what. Something deep down within me made me feel like I had no choice. I just had to. Through the rain, I continued walking with my grandpa on his final journey. Once at his grave, I stopped and placed the urn inside the vault and said my final goodbye. At the moment I laid his ashes to rest in Arlington, I began another journey entirely.

 

It all started three months earlier in a small kitchen in Southgate, Michigan.

On May 18, 2011, I sat down with grandpa at his home and interviewed him about his World War II experiences in the Pacific theater. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945, and as he spoke, I recorded it all. We spent the afternoon discussing things he hadn’t spoken to anyone about in more than 65 years, including how and why he was awarded his silver battle star and two bronze battle stars. After more than two hours, we had managed to gloss over the basic gist of everything, but most of the details were missing. The story was far from over and we both knew it, so before I left, we made each other a promise that we would spend the entire summer pouring over the details on each of the seven campaigns he was in. It was one of the most special days of my life. I had no idea it would be the last time I would see him conscious and alive.

He passed away two days after our interview on May 20. He was eighty-six.

I am extremely blessed and fortunate to have known him and been able to call him my grandfather. The indelible mark he has left on me is something I am proud and privileged to carry with me for the rest of my life. He was and to this day remains my hero. I would not be the man I am if not for him.

With the limited amount of information that I did get from him, I was determined to find resources that could help fill in the details of what happened to him and his shipmates during the war. What really happened during the “beer stealing” incident? How exactly did his close buddy die? What was he talking about when he claimed his skipper abandoned his fellow Americans in the water on Bloody Sunday? I knew there was more. So much more. More, it turns out, than I could have ever possibly imagined.

 

From talking to my grandpa, I knew he served aboard something called a Landing Craft Infantry (LCI). I decided to search for his shipmates, hoping there were still some alive. I began in September 2012, at the USS LCI National Association annual reunion in Charleston, South Carolina, where I met dozens of Navy veterans who served aboard LCIs in WWII. That year the LCI Association held a joint reunion with the veterans of LSMs (Landing Ship Medium). Sadly, I wasn’t able to meet any fellow shipmates from my grandpa’s two ships, USS LCI (L) 329 or the LCI (G) 65 in Charleston. I did, however, have the pleasure of meeting and speaking with several Navy veterans from my grandpa’s LCI flotilla group. Since some of them fought with my grandpa’s ships, they began explaining details to me. Slowly, other veterans from both theaters of war gathered around and began retelling LCI sea stories. I was hooked. I came for details about my grandpa but left the reunion realizing I wanted to hear all their stories.

While there I was able to meet all sorts of incredible individuals involved with the association, including the ones who helped organize the annual reunions. The LCI veterans I met there became close friends, and I keep in regular contact with the last living one who is still with us as I completed this book in 2021. Nearly all of them, sadly, have passed away in the nine years since. I will always cherish the memories I have with those fine men and consider myself lucky to have earned their friendship and trust for them to tell me their stories. But the man who truly stood out to me the most was the president of the association, a wonderful and lively writer named John Cummer. He served as a gunner’s mate aboard the LCI (L) 502 during the D-Day invasion at Normandy, France (Gold Beach), on June 6, 1944. Though I was completely unaware at the time, John would become a mentor, close friend, inspiration, and second grandfather to me. It was John, a fellow writer himself, who offered me a chance to get involved by editing the association’s quarterly magazine newsletter called the Elsie Item. I didn’t even need a moment to think. I immediately jumped at the opportunity. It would mean I’d get a firsthand look at all the LCI veterans’ stories before they were published. Perhaps I’d eventually come across my grandpa’s shipmates, I thought.

In the years since then, I have interviewed dozens and dozens of LCI veterans to hear their stories of what life was like serving aboard an LCI vessel during World War II, in both Europe and the Pacific. Many more veterans have sent me their stories, diaries, memoirs, and even books. In 2013 I began writing articles for the Elsie Item, based on my interviews as well as other memoirs I received in the mail from the LCI vets. By the end of 2013, as health issues became more frequent in John’s life, he offered me his position of editor-in-chief of the Elsie Item, and I accepted. Through my work with the LCI Association, I finally connected with one of my grandpa’s shipmates, J.R. Reid, in 2015. As my journey continued as editor, I learned more about my grandpa’s story. So much of what I discovered was beyond belief.

 

I’ve spent the last decade gathering material from LCI veterans with the purpose of completing my grandpa’s story. In that time, I have received hundreds of WWII stories, articles, documents, books, memoirs, and photographs. Aside from the dozens of personal interviews I’ve conducted with LCI veterans, I’ve spoken at length with veterans from all branches of the United States Armed Forces who served in WWII. I have collected and sifted through hundreds of pages of official records and documents from the U.S. National Archives that are relevant. I’ve also incorporated stories from past Elsie Item newsletters where applicable and have tried my best to reproduce as many of these LCI veterans’ stories as accurately and as best I can throughout my grandpa’s story. To ensure the highest quality, countless hours of diligent fact checking and validating all stories to the best of my ability has gone into this book, but as an imperfect historian I also recognize and acknowledge that mistakes can be made. Any inaccuracies or inconsistencies in this book are solely my responsibility alone.

My hope is that by writing this book, my family and my generation will have the opportunity to acknowledge and treasure the stories I was fortunate enough to obtain from some of these remarkable men from the Greatest Generation—who sacrificed so much fighting for the liberty and freedom, not just for America but for the entire world. The most incredible sacrifice of all, though, was the one the men made for each other. As the old epitaph goes, “Theirs is not to make reply. Theirs is not to reason why. Theirs is but to do and die.”

These are the men of the LCI. And these are their tales.

 

Zach S. Morris, Author

Stephen Ganzberger’s grandson

 

 

 

 

 

 

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