| An American POW During WWII: Survival Then and Now
In 1943, young Nick Moramarco, a Southern California boy of Italian-American heritage, found himself turning from a boy into a man in several giant steps: he quarreled with his older brother and his father, thus asserting his own independent mind; he fell in love and got engaged to his high-school sweetheart, Marie Santiago; he graduated from Lincoln High School; and he joined the U.S. Army to fight in World War II.
This last step, joining the Army, was to have a profound and lasting step on Nick's life. It was a decision that led to travel and responsibility, danger and adventure, and the kind of trauma from which there is no recovery. He still suffers from what is known as post-traumatic stress disorder. And no wonder.
Nick wanted to be in the Navy, but the quotas wouldn't allow that, and so he joined the Army, from which he was moved into the Army Air Corps. He became a gunner on a B-17 bomber, stationed in England and flying bombing missions over Germany.
So far, so good, until the law of averages caught up with him, and his plane was hit and his weapon blew up in his hands. He jumped out of the doomed plane and parachuted to the ground-enemy ground. His hands and arms were seriously wounded, his fingertips blown off. He was captured and treated by the Germans, and held as a prisoner of war.
He was classified "Missing in Action." His family and sweetheart had no way of knowing if he was alive or not. He survived in captivity until he was liberated by Patton's 14th Division. He returned to America wounded, disabled, decorated, and changed forever.
Nick Moramarco survived the war, and America is the better for the price he paid. He did the right thing, but he still is paying that price, the twitch of anguish whenever the subject of war is raised. He has lived his post-war years in service to the disabled community.
This is not a tale of glory and parades, but of a hero nonetheless. It is accounts like this that make up the real history of World War II, arguably the most important watershed event of the twentieth century. |
