Vincent J. Oliverio—U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II from 1943 to 1946 and was assigned to the 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion. He served as a high-speed Morse code operator in the China-Burma-India Theater.
Salamanca native to be honored at Tampa Bay Veterans Parade
•By Deb Everts, Press Reporter
•Nov 10, 2017
•SALAMANCA — World War II veteran Vincent J. Oliverio will be this year’s honoree Saturday at the 25th annual Tampa Bay Veterans Parade.
•More than 70 years after his service to his country, Oliverio is finally getting the recognition he deserves. Riding in an antique car, the 94-year-old veteran will lead the two-hour parade accompanied by Colonel April Vogel, commander of the 6th Air Mobility Wing at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, Fla., who will be this year’s grand marshal. With an expected 20,000 spectators in attendance, the parade will include four bands and about 60 units.
•A lifelong Salamanca resident, Oliverio and his wife, Angela, have a winter home in Holiday, Fla., near Tampa. Longtime family friend Don DeGain, also from Salamanca, is treasurer of the Veterans Day Parade Group, Inc. and lives about 10 miles from the Oliverios in Odessa, Fla.
•The Patriot Guard motorcycle group is expected to send 10 to 20 members to Oliverio’s home to escort the couple to the parade route. The Oliverio’s three children, Rita, Barbara and Vincent, are planning to not only attend but also ride in the third car in the parade.
•DeGain was given the task of picking this year’s honoree which, he said, is an intense decision with a lot of responsibility.
•“I had read a previous article in The Salamanca Press and I thought about Vinny’s amazing story serving in Burma, China and India during World War II, so I went to the parade group and said, ‘Wait until you meet him,’” he said.
•Oliverio was a sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II from 1943 to 1946 and was assigned to the 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion. He served as a high-speed Morse code operator in the China-Burma-India Theater.
•Although he was an expert shot with a .22 rifle, Oliverio said he pretended to be a dummy and unable to handle a gun so he wouldn’t be assigned to the infantry. Because he was a musician, he was sent to radio school. He was told, as in music, a person must have timing and rhythm to do Morse code.
•DeGain said Oliverio’s first assignment was in Tampa at Drew Field as a radio operator where the 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion was created. After completing training in Tampa, his unit departed from Hampton Roads, Va. in October 1943 on a boat that was part of a 90-ship convoy headed for Oran, Africa.
•Oliverio said they spent over a month in Oran before it was safe enough to ship out because there was so much German activity. When they finally left aboard a British troop ship in January 1944 they didn’t know they were headed to the west coast of India as they passed through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.
•According to DeGain, the 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion was a contingent of 60 men split into six squadrons of 10. After leaving Africa, the battalion headed for the jungles and mountains of Burma. Arriving in Dinjan, India, the unit was temporarily assigned to the 88th and 57th Army Air Corps Fighter Groups as radio operators. Their mission was to track the Japanese bombers and fighters flying through the valleys of the Himalayan Mountains.
•On May 26, 1944, the 10-man squads were sent to Lampumpum and into the mountains, where they set up small radio shacks on the mountaintops as high as 5,000 feet. Oliverio said when they arrived, the natives who accompanied them cut a clear spot where their permanent post was to be.
•“The natives were from the Naga Headhunter tribe and we lived among them along the India-Burma border,” he said. “Before we got there, the British who controlled India and Burma got the Naga tribes to make peace with each other and stop the headhunting. Otherwise, we never would have been alive. To kill someone from another tribe, cut their head off and save it made you a warrior. And, the harder it was to kill somebody, the higher the honor.”
•Led by their sergeant, Howard Hitchcock, the squad included three plane spotters, three morse code operators, a medic, a radio man and a cook. Oliverio said Hitchcock was very instrumental in keeping the 10 men together, and they looked to him as a real leader. He was his sergeant at three different posts and, unlike some of the men who rotated out at each post, Oliverio was there under Hitchcock at all three.
•“We were there 11 months,” he said. “We were 10 men living with natives who built our huts called bashas that were bamboo huts with thatched roofs. When the Japanese flew over, it looked like a native village.”
•Oliverio said the six or eight Nagas who stayed with them had their own little shack and when the planes dropped the chutes with their provisions, the natives would go get them.
•“They dropped us everything we needed, but we never had a piece of fresh meat or fresh vegetables,” he said. “The natives brought us water, but the minute they brought it to our camp, the medic put tablets in to sterilize the water.”
•On one clear day, they caught a glimpse of Mt. Everest sticking up through a shroud of clouds. Oliverio said after a while, it disappeared and they never saw it again because it was always hidden in the clouds.
•In November 1945, Oliverio came down with malaria and was discharged in 1946. He suffered with malaria attacks for almost 13 years.
•After his discharge, Oliverio worked at his family’s business, the Riverview Hotel, for a while. Then he had the opportunity to work for the Erie Railroad – that became Conrail – as a train man and held many positions until he became experienced enough to become a conductor. He retired from Conrail in 1986.
•The last two members of Oliverio’s squad, Howard Hitchcock and John Martino, passed away this past year leaving Oliverio as the last remaining member.
•Oliverio said the squad classified ourselves as “The Forgotten 10” because nobody seemed to know anything about the 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion that served from 1943 to 1946 in India and Burma.
•“Nobody knew what I did,” he said. “You can Google to search my name or 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion, but all it will say is ‘India-Burma’ — that’s it. There hasn’t been one single word about me being a Morse code operator sending messages to our fighters to intercept the Japanese, what we did in the mountains or a mention of the natives.”
•According to Oliverio, George Fillgrove, constituent relations manager at New York State Senate, based at Senator Catharine Young’s Olean office, helped him find the documents marked “secret” containing his military life.
•DeGain said there was little known of these secret units on the mountaintops for many decades. Oliverio’s lifelong quest to tell his unit’s World War II story is coming to fruition. Dr. Robert Lyman, renowned military historian and author, will be writing about Oliverio’s unit in his upcoming 15th book on World War II.
•As one of the members of America’s “Greatest Generation,” Oliverio has written down his first hand account of his service overseas to preserve it for generations to come.
Vincent J. Oliverio—U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II from 1943 to 1946 and was assigned to the 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion. He served as a high-speed Morse code operator in the China-Burma-India Theater.
Salamanca native to be honored at Tampa Bay Veterans Parade
•By Deb Everts, Press Reporter
•Nov 10, 2017
•SALAMANCA — World War II veteran Vincent J. Oliverio will be this year’s honoree Saturday at the 25th annual Tampa Bay Veterans Parade.
•More than 70 years after his service to his country, Oliverio is finally getting the recognition he deserves. Riding in an antique car, the 94-year-old veteran will lead the two-hour parade accompanied by Colonel April Vogel, commander of the 6th Air Mobility Wing at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, Fla., who will be this year’s grand marshal. With an expected 20,000 spectators in attendance, the parade will include four bands and about 60 units.
•A lifelong Salamanca resident, Oliverio and his wife, Angela, have a winter home in Holiday, Fla., near Tampa. Longtime family friend Don DeGain, also from Salamanca, is treasurer of the Veterans Day Parade Group, Inc. and lives about 10 miles from the Oliverios in Odessa, Fla.
•The Patriot Guard motorcycle group is expected to send 10 to 20 members to Oliverio’s home to escort the couple to the parade route. The Oliverio’s three children, Rita, Barbara and Vincent, are planning to not only attend but also ride in the third car in the parade.
•DeGain was given the task of picking this year’s honoree which, he said, is an intense decision with a lot of responsibility.
•“I had read a previous article in The Salamanca Press and I thought about Vinny’s amazing story serving in Burma, China and India during World War II, so I went to the parade group and said, ‘Wait until you meet him,’” he said.
•Oliverio was a sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II from 1943 to 1946 and was assigned to the 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion. He served as a high-speed Morse code operator in the China-Burma-India Theater.
•Although he was an expert shot with a .22 rifle, Oliverio said he pretended to be a dummy and unable to handle a gun so he wouldn’t be assigned to the infantry. Because he was a musician, he was sent to radio school. He was told, as in music, a person must have timing and rhythm to do Morse code.
•DeGain said Oliverio’s first assignment was in Tampa at Drew Field as a radio operator where the 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion was created. After completing training in Tampa, his unit departed from Hampton Roads, Va. in October 1943 on a boat that was part of a 90-ship convoy headed for Oran, Africa.
•Oliverio said they spent over a month in Oran before it was safe enough to ship out because there was so much German activity. When they finally left aboard a British troop ship in January 1944 they didn’t know they were headed to the west coast of India as they passed through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.
•According to DeGain, the 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion was a contingent of 60 men split into six squadrons of 10. After leaving Africa, the battalion headed for the jungles and mountains of Burma. Arriving in Dinjan, India, the unit was temporarily assigned to the 88th and 57th Army Air Corps Fighter Groups as radio operators. Their mission was to track the Japanese bombers and fighters flying through the valleys of the Himalayan Mountains.
•On May 26, 1944, the 10-man squads were sent to Lampumpum and into the mountains, where they set up small radio shacks on the mountaintops as high as 5,000 feet. Oliverio said when they arrived, the natives who accompanied them cut a clear spot where their permanent post was to be.
•“The natives were from the Naga Headhunter tribe and we lived among them along the India-Burma border,” he said. “Before we got there, the British who controlled India and Burma got the Naga tribes to make peace with each other and stop the headhunting. Otherwise, we never would have been alive. To kill someone from another tribe, cut their head off and save it made you a warrior. And, the harder it was to kill somebody, the higher the honor.”
•Led by their sergeant, Howard Hitchcock, the squad included three plane spotters, three morse code operators, a medic, a radio man and a cook. Oliverio said Hitchcock was very instrumental in keeping the 10 men together, and they looked to him as a real leader. He was his sergeant at three different posts and, unlike some of the men who rotated out at each post, Oliverio was there under Hitchcock at all three.
•“We were there 11 months,” he said. “We were 10 men living with natives who built our huts called bashas that were bamboo huts with thatched roofs. When the Japanese flew over, it looked like a native village.”
•Oliverio said the six or eight Nagas who stayed with them had their own little shack and when the planes dropped the chutes with their provisions, the natives would go get them.
•“They dropped us everything we needed, but we never had a piece of fresh meat or fresh vegetables,” he said. “The natives brought us water, but the minute they brought it to our camp, the medic put tablets in to sterilize the water.”
•On one clear day, they caught a glimpse of Mt. Everest sticking up through a shroud of clouds. Oliverio said after a while, it disappeared and they never saw it again because it was always hidden in the clouds.
•In November 1945, Oliverio came down with malaria and was discharged in 1946. He suffered with malaria attacks for almost 13 years.
•After his discharge, Oliverio worked at his family’s business, the Riverview Hotel, for a while. Then he had the opportunity to work for the Erie Railroad – that became Conrail – as a train man and held many positions until he became experienced enough to become a conductor. He retired from Conrail in 1986.
•The last two members of Oliverio’s squad, Howard Hitchcock and John Martino, passed away this past year leaving Oliverio as the last remaining member.
•Oliverio said the squad classified ourselves as “The Forgotten 10” because nobody seemed to know anything about the 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion that served from 1943 to 1946 in India and Burma.
•“Nobody knew what I did,” he said. “You can Google to search my name or 761st Signal Air Warning Battalion, but all it will say is ‘India-Burma’ — that’s it. There hasn’t been one single word about me being a Morse code operator sending messages to our fighters to intercept the Japanese, what we did in the mountains or a mention of the natives.”
•According to Oliverio, George Fillgrove, constituent relations manager at New York State Senate, based at Senator Catharine Young’s Olean office, helped him find the documents marked “secret” containing his military life.
•DeGain said there was little known of these secret units on the mountaintops for many decades. Oliverio’s lifelong quest to tell his unit’s World War II story is coming to fruition. Dr. Robert Lyman, renowned military historian and author, will be writing about Oliverio’s unit in his upcoming 15th book on World War II.
•As one of the members of America’s “Greatest Generation,” Oliverio has written down his first hand account of his service overseas to preserve it for generations to come.