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Show (Conn.) high school. Wounded on Bougainville, he contracted malaria on Guadalcanal. "I don't know anything except , how to be a marine," Aiello said. "Now that I'm disabled I can't follow fol-low my profession, so I'm learning another. I'm going to be a good electrician, because in addition to my wife, I've got a 'little marine' two years old." Carmine Pizzo, 24, of Brooklyn, is the principal support of a widowed mother and three sisters. A Salerno veteran, the only survivor of his platoon, Pizzo says he can "get by nicely on this checking job because I can hold a pad of paper with what's left of my left arm, and these two fingers that are gone from my right hand don't interfere with my' writing much." . "These men who have made such sacrifices are interested in a chance to do a day's work on their own, where they can continue to help out in this war," Admiral Kelly said, "and that's what we see they get." Hundreds Wounded in War Are Now Serving in Important Jobs. NEW YORK. Matthew Wagner Jr. lost a leg on the beach at Casablanca Casa-blanca when a mine exploded under a charging American tank, killing two of its occupants and wounding the others. Today that wounded soldier sol-dier has a full-time job as a property prop-erty and supply clerk at the New York navy yard. He is only one of more than 800 disabled veterans of this war at work in the yard's warehouses and shops and on its fighting ships. Veterans Vet-erans of landings in Africa, Sicily and Italy, of campaigns on Guadalcanal, Guadal-canal, Bougainville and New Guinea, of the Arctic and the battle of the Coral sea, their number is increasing in-creasing by eight a day. Many lack an arm, a leg or an eye, but they are doing a "splendid job," Rear Adm. Monroe Kelly, commandant of the yard, said,' "both in helping the war effort and in helping themselves." Wagner of Maspeth, N. Y., gets about the supply house nimbly on crutches. As soon as his leg is ready for an artificial limb, Wagner, who knows "how terrible war can be" says he will try to get back into the army. Enter Trade Schools. Three junior officers with civilian personnel experience are working under the commandant with shop supervisors in placing the disabled men in positions for which they are suited, the Third naval district said. Men without special training or those unable to return to the jobs for which they are fitted are sent to one of the yard's trade schools to begin as help-trainees. "There are two primary considerations," con-siderations," Admiral Kelly said, "what is best for the man himself and where can he best be employed in helping the war effort. Obviously a man with a back injury or a missing miss-ing leg can't stand up at a lathe all day, so we try to place him at a job where he can sit down. "A man with a medical history of battle fatigue or extreme shock, even though he may be all right physically, can't endure the incessant inces-sant noise of the boiler shop, so he may go to the sail loft or one of the more quiet shops until he is more fully recovered. "In no instance, however, do we coddle the men. They emphatically don't want it, we have found." Arthur C. Eberspeacher, 31, of Brooklyn, was a Wall street clerk before he Joined the army. Today he's doing a similarly classified job in the yard's electrical shop. Eberspeacher's hair turned white on Guadalcanal, where he was among the first army troops to relieve re-lieve the marines, and he was discharged dis-charged for battle fatigue and recurrent re-current malaria which still sends him to a veterans' hospital occasionally. oc-casionally. Takes Up Electricity. Frank Robert Aiello, 26, of Brooklyn, Brook-lyn, joined the marines in 1936, right after his graduation by Stamford |
