As the United States was fighting Germany and Italy in Europe,
Sal LoBue received a letter signed by President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. According to LoBue, the letter contained a single
question:
”
Mr. LoBue, would you like to serve in the United States Army, or
to serve for Italy?
”
As the United States was fighting Germany and Italy in Europe, Sal LoBue received a letter signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. According to LoBue, the letter contained a single question: “Mr. LoBue, would you like to serve in the United States Army, or to serve for Italy?”
LoBue, 82, had come to the United States with his parents in 1937. When America entered World War II, he was not an American citizen, and he’d spent most of his life in Sicily. But for LoBue, there was no doubt that he would be fighting for his new home.
“I was glad to go,” he said.
So LoBue enlisted in the U.S. Army, and soon enough he was shipped to Arizona for basic training, and then to Arkansas. While training in Little Rock, he received a call from City Hall. For a second, he was worried.
“I thought they were going to tell me to go back to Italy,” he said.
Instead, LoBue was asked another easy question: Did he want to become a citizen of the United States? He quickly agreed, and one brief ceremony later, he was a citizen.
LoBue spent three years in all as an infantryman. Although dictator Bernardo Mussolini’s alliance with Adolf Hitler made Italy “the enemy,” LoBue said his Italian heritage didn’t affect his relationship with his fellow troops.
“We got along fine,” he said. “Some of them called me ‘dago,’ but I wasn’t going to start a fight over that. The Germans got called worse names.”
The soldiers supported each other, LoBue said. As one example, he recalled sitting in a boat off the Normandy coast, waiting for the D-Day invasion to begin. Before jumping off the boat, LoBue eyed the water warily: He was carrying heavy packs, and he didn’t know how to swim.
“I told my buddy behind me, ‘If it gets too deep, you’re going to have to help me swim,'” LoBue said. “And my buddy said, ‘Oh sure, go ahead.'”
It turned out that the water wasn’t too deep, and LoBue waded to the shore. He was one of more than 100,000 Allied troops to storm the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. It was the start of a long, successful Allied push that eventually ended with the liberation of Paris from Nazi control in August.
When asked about the campaign – in which 29,000 American soldiers were killed – LoBue simply said, “I made it. It scared the hell out of me … but I’m real glad I went and served, and that I deserve to live here now.”
After the war, LoBue returned to his parents in San Jose. He bought a truck with his father; together they bought vegetables from farmers and “sold them retail to housewives.” LoBue said their operation would be hard to pull off today.
“Things were slower then,” he said. “Nowadays, if anybody pulled into San Jose with a vegetable truck, they’d get yelled at: ‘Get out of here! There’s no parking, anyway!'”
Eventually, LoBue went to work for the Lucky Stores grocery chain, in the produce department. He had two children – including former Hollister Mayor Tony LoBue – and two grandchildren.
Around 20 years ago, LoBue decided San Jose was getting too crowded, so he moved down to Hollister. It’s a decision he’s happy with, save for one thing: In the move, he lost the letter from President Roosevelt.
“It’s a shame,” LoBue said. “I’d really like to have that letter now.”
Anthony Ha covers local government for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or [email protected].
