An Army veteran didn’t know his epic beer run was World War II legend for 65 years :)

World War II veteran, 95-year-old Vincent Speranza, took his final jump. His first jump out of an airplane in over three decades. (Via U.S. Army Recruiting Twitter account).

Even as the World War II Allies pushed the German Army back toward their homeland in 1944 and 1945, victory was never a sure thing. Nothing illustrated that fact more than Nazi Germany’s 1944 suprise counterattack through the Ardennes Forest. It threatened to cut the Allied army in two, cut them off from their supply center at the port of Antwerp and destroy four armies in the field.

“The Battle of the Bulge,” as it came to be known for the large bulge that protruded in Allied maps of the front line, was Nazi Germany’s last grasp to force the Allies into a negotiated peace. And that’s where Vincent Speranza made an epic beer run for a wounded comrade.

Speranza was a member of the storied 101st Airborne, 501st Parachute Infantry Company and was in the American-held city of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Within five days of the German surprise attack, Bastogne was surrounded and under siege. The only defenders of the city were the 101st Airborne, the all-Black 969th Artillery Battalion, and Combat Command B of the 10th Armored Division. An Army veteran didn’t know his epic beer run was World War II legend for 65 years

These soldiers would not give up the city despite being completely surrounded and cut off from the rest of the Allied forces. It would be nearly a week before Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army would arrive to relieve them. When the German asked for American terms of surrender, commanding Gen. Anthony MacAuliffe famously replied, “Nuts!”

While that makes for a great story some 80-plus years later, for the men on the ground in Bastogne in December 1944, things were looking pretty grim. Toward the end of the siege Vincent Speranza was helping tend to the wounds of his fellow soldiers. He recognized one of the wounded men, his friend and assistant machine gunner Joe Willis.

“I found him,” Speranza told the Springfield, Illinois State Journal-Register. “And asked ‘How you doin?’ He said, “I got a couple pieces of shrapnel in my leg. It’s not too bad.′ I asked if there was anything I could do for him. He said, ‘Yeah, go find me something to drink.’”

By this time, Bastogne had seen a lot of fighting and was in shambles. Many of the city’s defenders were wounded and some had been massacred by the Germans. But Speranza went out in search of a drink for his buddy anyway. He left the church where Willis was resting and found a bombed-out tavern. Inside the tavern was, of course, a beer tap.

When Speranza pulled the tap, beer actually came out. So Speranza did what he said he would, filling up his helmet with the liquid and bringing it back to his buddy Joe. When other wounded men saw Joe Willis having a beer, they wanted one too, so Speranza went to fill up his helmet once more.

When he came back with the second beverage, he was confronted by a regimental surgeon, who threatened to have him shot if he kept up the beer runs. Beer might kill some of those wounded men. Vincent Speranza was just giving aid and comfort to the wounded, but he didn’t want to kill anyone.

The Siege of Bastogne was eventually lifted, the Allies won the war and Vincent Speranza returned home. Some 65 years later, he returned to Bastogne to commemorate the anniversary and a new museum of the battle.

While there, he met two European tank officers, one from Belgium, the other from the Netherlands. He told them the story of his World War II beer run, and they looked at him incredulously.

“You were the GI who gave beer to the wounded?” they asked him. “You’re famous in Europe!”

Speranza had no idea what they were talking about until the two men ordered him an Airborne Beer. The beer was designed by a local brewer 20 years before to honor the legend of the GI who made a beer run for his friend, but no one realized it was real until Vincent Speranza told them the story.

The waiter brought the men a bottle featuring a U.S. soldier carrying a helmet full of beer, and a bit of it served in a small ceramic helmet. The locals of Bastogne and the brewer of Airborne Beer were shocked to actually meet the legendary paratrooper, but no one was more surprised than Vincent Speranza.

Have my own story of illicit drinking - while I was in Vietnam, anything alcoholic was hard to get where were, but one of my buddies snagged a gallon size can of pineapple from the mess hall.

USN 1951 sub service here. One of the guys told me that during WWII they used the 200 proof alcohol reserved for torpedo fuel to lace grapefruit juice. Tied on some marvelous benders.

Said he swore off it after waking up one morning and couldn't move a muscle for about an hour. Scared the Hell out of him.

The stuff killed or blinded many, so the military added a foul-tasting pink dye to make it undrinkable. Still, "pink Lady" made a great deodorant before hitting the beach though.

Subs in 1951! Dang buddy - I thought I was "Old Corps"!

I had heard stories about "Torpedo Juice" but I never heard anything first hand before.

I was actually pretty lucky to be deprived of alcohol during most of my tour, since in those days I was pretty easily drunk.

I drew R&R in Taipei on my eighth month in country and on the evening before my flight from Danang I joined three other Marines and we all decided to visit the Air Force side of the base to see what was there. As always, that was a bad idea.

We found the NCO Club and it was raining heavily, so we were soaked - and a large bouncer told us that we couldn't come inside. We kept asking to come in and some of the Air Force guys inside urged him to go ahead and let us in. Reluctantly, he let us come in and we found a table and started drinking. I don't remember the exact sequence of things, but I remember some airman telling me war stories (!) when one of my companions hit the young waitress accross he bottom with his wet hat as she bent over to hear another table's order. She tottered into that other guy's lap - and then all hell broke loose. The bouncer got knocked out almost immediately and it was about evenly divided between "non-Marines" and "adopted Marines" and the place was pretty torn up, fast. We heard vehicles arriving with urgency, so we picked that time to leave through a broken window and vanish into the rain.

I heard that after that, Marines were banned from that side of the base and they're probably still looking for us - the Air Force never forgives or forgets.

Doing fine, buddy! I am impressed that you were able to get back to 185 - I am unfortunately able to gain weight by staring at a Burger King commercial. I was 175 as a Marine (but temporarily a lot less after the hospital) but I have ballooned up to 200 for the last year or so.

It does make be sigh to think of all that wasted Pineapple Upsidedown Cake!

My book is in final review before printing - so it'll be ready soon.

My son has proven to be a prodigy with precision shooting, so I bought him a Hammerli AR20 match air rifle and I set up a 10 meter range in the back yard. Dang thing is amazing! Postage-stamp size groups at that range.

Hope you are doing well! "Charlie Mike" - I like it!

Heh, that’s a great story-The Air Force never forgives or forgets”!

Yes, in those days, I was susceptible to drink as well, no doubt. I don’t drink much at all anymore, probably better for me, but I did spend a few days offshore fishing in Maine with my buddy who went into the USN with me back in the Seventies...and I did knock back a few.

It didn’t take much, but I sure did have a good time. I forgot how much fun it is-I just don’t have the energy to drink anymore, it really takes the starch out of me hte next day!

I admit, though...we had a damn good time, laughing our butts off having drinks and dinner at a restaurant after...:)

That was what popped into my head as I was driving home-I was wondering how that was going with your book! Glad to hear your progress-

The weight loss thing is kind of fun, since I am not really working at it, it is new meds and just not moving around as much. I guess it is muscle mass going away, but...I do enjoy fitting into clothes.

I have less, er...butt now though, which makes me have to cinch my belt down tighter, and I had a funny experience earlier in the summer. We were having rabbits out the kazoo, and they were destroying my wife’s garden, so I told her I would trap the rabbits and get rid of them. (I am in a neighborhood, so I don’t have the option of picking them off)

I get the trap set, and one night, as I am sleeping with my windows open, I am having dreams of skunks. I woke to my wife whispering “Wake up! I think there’s a skunk in the trap!”

Sure enough, in my groggy state, I peered out the window at the trap and could see black and white in it. It was about 5 AM and just barely light, and I thought if I could release it quickly, I might be able to sleep another hour before I had to get up for work. So I grabbed a pair of pants, pulled them on commando-style if you get my drift, put on a t-shirt and shoes, and still completely befuddled by sleep, shuffled out to the backyard to release the skunk.

Now, this was a first for me. Never had to release a skunk, but I had talked with my boss about it and he said it was safe as long as you held a sheet or beach towel in front of you as you walked calmly and slowly towards the skunk, then you could gently cover the cage with it and release it.

This all sounded reasonable when you were in an office with fluorescent lights discussing it before lunch, but at 5 AM with a real, smelly skunk in your trap...well, I was a little nervous. But he had sounded confident, so I thought it should be just as he said. I walked slowly towards the skunk, which stopped moving as I approached. I knew this, because the tinkling sound of rustling inside the cage trap suddenly stopped, and the silence seemed...well...ominous to me! But on I went.

I reached the trap, and bending over, very gently laid the towel over the top. So far so good.

Unfortunately, as I bent and opened the other end of the trap to allow the skunk to run out, my pants started to slip down. I had grabbed a baggy pair of pants that really didn’t fit, and didn’t take the time to put on a belt. So just as the skunk exited the trap, my pants started to go, and it was a full moon starting to rise. I desperately cinched my elbow to my side, and looked up to see my wife’s grinning face in the window looking out at me.

I suddenly had this instantaneous vision of me, getting my fifteen minutes of Internet Fame from a viral YouTube video posting by my wife from her phone.

In this video, here I am with my pants falling completely to the ground as the skunk exits the trap. It stops, and gives me a spray right in my face before waddling off. Me, with my naked chalk-white butt completely exposed, blinded by skunk spray, groping around and gasping before tripping over the empty trap and falling to the ground.

All this went through my mind in a flash, and to my relief, my pants didn’t go down, the skunk didn’t pause, and my wife didn’t have a phone recording the whole thing! But she was grinning as she saw me struggling to keep my pants up!

That was a great story - and I'm glad you didn't get exposed to the world, in more ways than one!

I am a touch nervous about my book - it is meant to be an inside view of being a Marine in the '60s/what Vietnam was like for us and combat and being in the "river of wounded". It will likely not make me popular with the "Vietnam was an illegal, immoral war" crowd or the "poor me" crowd either.

I suspect that it won't elevate my status in the Officer's Clubs either, since this view of enlisted life is considered to be beneath my former rank - but what the heck, right? It's meant to be a marker in that time in history and maybe an antidote to the false histories that populate our books and movies about our war.

Anyway, it should be a fun read.

"...It will likely not make me popular with the "Vietnam was an illegal, immoral war" crowd or the "poor me" crowd either..."

I would consider that unpopularity to be "a feature not a bug"...

At a fundamental level, IMO, we were not in Vietnam to save the South Vietnamese from the Communists, though that may or may not have been a good side effect if we had been able to accomplish that.

We were in South Vietnam to fight Communism, which up until that point (and for at least five more years after South Vietnam finally fell) before the tide of Communist advancement around the world began to recede instead of advance, and that is because someone like Ronald Reagan set the tone for dealing with communism, which was "Don't accept and live with Communists, defeat them".

Anyone who has been in the military knows that, as in every walk of life, there are good officers and bad officers, just like there are good surgeons and bad surgeons. The good officers will understand the criticism even if it stings. The bad ones will react with defensive anger, as we would expect them to. But they know themselves, who they are.

I re-watched a movie recently ("Dunkirk") which had a part that really stuck out for me on the second viewing that applies here. (I had somehow missed its significance the first time I saw the movie)

After the civilian pleasure boat carrying all the soldiers and one Spitfire pilot (who had been shot down in the channel and had to be rescued by the boat) docked, they all disembarked, and as the pilot in his RAF uniform joined the crowd of soldiers streaming from the boats, a soldier walking by spotted him and snapped furiously at him "Where the hell were you?"

The pilot just stood there kind of dumbfounded, and the Captain of the small pleasure boat came up behind him and, putting his hand on the pilot's shoulder, gestures towards the rescued soldiers still filing off of his own boat that had carried him back to England and said gently but with conviction: "They know where you were."

And it applies here, IMO. And that is all that will count.

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