Unfit for War – America’s Most Lethal Soldier

Vito Bertoldo wasn’t meant for war. Army recruiters had told him so seven times;  he was half-blind, unfit for combat. When a   recruiter finally stamped his papers out  of pity, it was only as kitchen staff. Bertoldo didn’t care what  patch was on his uniform;   he was in, and he would find a way into the fight.

In January 1945, in the French village  of Hatten, he got his chance. The command   post where he was peeling potatoes received  alarming news; German armor was closing in,   and the situation outside the village was  collapsing. The officers ordered a hasty retreat. Bertoldo begged to stay behind alone,   to cover their escape. Better to return home  in a box than return having never fought.

He dragged a .30-caliber machine gun and  placed it at the entrance of the building. Moments later, two German armored  battalions rolled into the village.   They expected a handful of fleeing Americans. Instead, they found a half-blind cook  who’d waited the whole war for this moment. Pearl Harbor was still burning when Vito Rocco  Bertoldo marched into the Decatur, Illinois,   recruiting station. December  8, 1941.

 America was at war,   and every able-bodied man in  town was lining up to fight. The coal dust was still embedded under  his fingernails from the morning shift   when the Army doctor held up the eye chart.  Bertoldo squinted through his thick glasses,   leaning forward, straining to make out even  the largest letters.

 The doctor didn’t need to   see more, saying: (QUOTE) “Son, I’m sorry.  You’re 4-F. Unfit for military service.” The words hit harder than any punch Bertoldo had  taken in the mines. Around him, his friends and   neighbors were getting approved, shaking hands,  ready to ship out. The son of Italian immigrants,   born December 1, 1916, Bertoldo had  grown up believing in the American dream.

Now, when America needed him most, he was being  told he wasn’t good enough to fight for it. Bertoldo told the recruiter  there had to be a mistake,   his accent carrying traces of his parents’  Calabrian dialect: (QUOTE) “I can work. I’ve   been hauling coal since I was sixteen. I drive  trucks. Test my strength, test anything else.

 “ But the answer was final: (QUOTE) “It’s your  eyes, son. You’d be a liability in combat. Next.” Liability. The word burned as Bertoldo walked  past the line of accepted recruits. Outside,   Decatur’s streets bustled  with 1940s wartime energy. Factory whistles announced extra  shifts for military production.  

Women headed to work jobs that  yesterday had belonged to men,   now bound for boot camp. Everyone was  doing their part. Everyone except him. For weeks, Bertoldo haunted that recruiting  office. He tried the Navy. Rejected. The Marines.   Rejected. Even the Coast Guard turned him away.  Each time, the same verdict: 4-F.

 The bulky lenses   that helped him navigate the dark mine shafts  were now a prison, keeping him from the fight. His fellow miners started calling  him “Lucky Rocky”, lucky to have a   free pass while they shipped overseas. They  didn’t get it. Bertoldo didn’t want safety;   he craved purpose.

 His parents had fled  poverty in Italy for opportunity in   America. This was his chance to repay that  debt, and his own body was betraying him. By spring 1942, Bertoldo had memorized the eye  chart. Not well enough to pass legitimately,   but well enough to get creative. When the Decatur  recruiting station started recognizing him,   he took a bus to Springfield, then to  Champaign, and then to Chicago.

 Each time,   he got a little further in the process  before the eye tests exposed him. But Army quotas were rising. Casualties from the  Pacific were mounting. On his eighth attempt,   Bertoldo found a recruiting sergeant  who was behind on his monthly numbers. Reviewing Bertoldo’s file, the man finally said:  (QUOTE) “I can get you in, but only for limited   service. Stateside only. Military police  or kitchen duty. That’s the best I can do.

” Bertoldo didn’t hesitate to sign in. He’d spent six months fighting for the privilege  of peeling potatoes for soldiers who could   actually fight. It wasn’t heroic or glamorous,  but Private Vito Bertoldo was finally in uniform. The man who’d been rejected seven  times was now Private Bertoldo,   serial number 36793293,  cook and military policeman.

At Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, they put  him through basic training alongside men   who’d be storming beaches and jumping from  planes. Bertoldo struggled with marksmanship;   his thick glasses fogged in the humidity and  shifted when he ran, but he refused to quit. When others complained about kitchen duty,  Bertoldo volunteered for extra shifts.

 When   they needed someone to stand guard in the  freezing rain, Bertoldo took double watches. He would later admit: (QUOTE): “I wanted to do  more than just stand guard or do the cooking,” But for now, this was his  war: chopping onions until   his eyes streamed tears and standing gate duty. All Vito Bertoldo knew, as 1942 turned into 1943,   was that he’d rather perish trying  to serve than live knowing he hadn’t.

By late 1943, the war had become a numbers  game, and America was losing. Fatality rates   in Italy were exceeding replacement rates.  The impending invasion of France would require   every available trooper. Standards that seemed  iron-clad in 1942 were bending under necessity. The Army granted Bertoldo special permission to  retrain as an infantryman and deploy to Europe,   not as a combat soldier, exactly,  but as something in between.

 He was   assigned to Company A, 1st Battalion, 242nd  Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division,   the famous “Rainbow” Division from World War  1, now reconstituted with fresh recruits. Officially, he was still on kitchen duty,   but with a critical addition, he  could: (QUOTE) “fight as needed.” The 42nd Infantry Division was in an odd  position in late 1944.

 Once a legendary force,   it had been deactivated after World War 1, then  hastily reassembled with whoever was available.   It had green troops who’d never seen combat,  support personnel trained as emergency infantry,   and recently appointed officers trying to  make a fighting unit from scattered parts. Captain William Corson commanded Company  A, and amid all of the problems he had   with his green improvised squads, one  frustrated him the most: the messman,   Vito Bertoldo. Bertoldo wasn’t  drinking, fighting, or going AWOL.

It was an ironic position for someone who’d fought  so hard just to wear the uniform. After two years   of rejections and appeals, after finally making  it into an infantry division headed for combat,   Bertoldo was making trouble in the one place  he was supposed to belong: the kitchen. He was constantly at odds with  the Company’s mess sergeant,   and he was known as a loudmouth. This soon  made him a pain in the neck to his superiors.

By late 1944, Private First Class  Bertoldo arrived in France with   the 42nd Division. The timing couldn’t have  been worse, or from Bertoldo’s perspective,   better. In December 1944, soon  after the division landed,   the Germans launched Operation Nordwind,  also called “the other Battle of the Bulge.

” Hitler’s goal was to punch through the  thinly stretched American lines in Alsace,   destroy the U.S. 7th Army, and perhaps  capture Strasbourg. The unprepared 42nd   Infantry Division was rushed to the front  to help stop this last-ditch German attack. Bertoldo’s regiment, the 242nd Troops,   went into action around the villages of  Hatten and Rittershoffen in early January   1945. These villages sat directly  in the path of the German advance.

On January 5, 1945, powerful  German forces struck. The 25th   Panzer Grenadier Division and 21st Panzer  Division, veterans of the Eastern Front,   were equipped with Tiger tanks and  88-millimeter guns. The American defenders,   many fighting for the first time, were  immediately pushed to their limits.

The 42nd Division soldiers, lacking  armor or heavy artillery support,   had to improvise. During one chaotic  week, companies and battalions were   shifted around. Corson commented that it was:  (QUOTE) “like firefighters plugging gaps.” By January 8, 1945, elements of Bertoldo’s  battalion were defending Hatten under severe   pressure. Company A had taken up positions  in concrete pillboxes outside the town.

But German forces were infiltrating the perimeter,   preparing for a full-fledged assault that  would turn Hatten into a slaughterhouse. The German offensive was three days old, and  Hatten was becoming a nightmare. Shell-shocked   soldiers stumbled back from the line with  stories of Tiger tanks crushing foxholes,   of entire squads vanishing in artillery  barrages.

 Company A held positions in   concrete pillboxes outside the town,  waiting for the storm to hit them. Then orders came down from  battalion headquarters. They   needed three soldiers from each company  to guard the Battalion Command Post in   Hatten itself. Not a punishment,  exactly, but not a reward either. Corson saw this as an opportunity  to stop his kitchen troubles;   he would later recall (QUOTE): “I  told the first sergeant that the cook,   Vito Bertoldo, was number one on that  detail. Good riddance, I thought.

” Standing guard duty while your unit prepared  for combat was nobody’s idea of glory. But   Bertoldo had been the: (QUOTE) “only  real discipline issue” in the unit.   Corson believed a night guarding the Command  Post would scare Bertoldo into behaving. Company A had taken up defensive positions in  the old Maginot Line fortifications, concrete   pillboxes that had failed to stop the Germans  in 1940 and probably wouldn’t stop them now.  

The men huddled in the ruins  of France’s failed defense,   watching the horizon for the  first signs of German armor. Bertoldo gathered his gear without complaint.  After fighting two years for the chance to   see combat, he was being sent away from his  unit right before the battle. “Voluntold,”   in Army parlance, volunteered by someone  else. The other cooks probably smirked.

The troublemaker was now someone else’s problem. The walk from Company A’s positions to the  Battalion CP in Hatten took less than an hour,   but it was like crossing into another  world. Outside the town, foxholes and   pillboxes dotted the frozen ground.

 Inside  Hatten, narrow streets wound between ancient   stone buildings that had survived one world  war and were about to be tested by another. The 1st Battalion Instruct Post was set up  in a sturdy building near the center of town.   Maps covered tables. Radio operators hunched  over their sets. Officers clustered around   acetate-covered situation boards, marking  German positions in grease pencil.

 This was   the nerve center of the battalion’s  defense, and it needed protection. Nine men total to secure the building.  Bertoldo took his position at the CP   entrance as darkness fell on January 8.  Through his specs, he could see muzzle   flashes far in the distance. The  temperature dropped below freezing. He took a deep breath.

This was the night. By 11:00pm, the sound of running engines had  spread across the village’s ancient stone   roads. Not American engines, no, it was  the deeper, potent sound of German armor. Panzers. Their shadows moving  through Hatten’s outskirts,   their commanders confident in their  night vision equipment and veteran crews.

At Company A’s pillboxes, all hell was  breaking loose. German infantry had   infiltrated the positions. Captain  Corson later described the chaos:   men firing at shadows, grenades exploding  within the narrow tunnels connecting pillboxes,   the screams of wounded soldiers  echoing off concrete walls. Company A was being stormed.

Corson himself was wounded and captured  along with dozens of his men. Those   concrete pillboxes became traps, surrounded and  systematically reduced by German assault teams. But Bertoldo had no idea his unit had  been decimated. He stood at his post,   watching German vehicles probe Hatten’s defenses.

  The early hours of January 9 brought artillery,   massive, earthshaking bombardments that  turned buildings into rubble. The German   attackers had broken through  the main line of resistance. Inside the CP, the battalion staff faced an  impossible decision. Stay and risk capture,   or evacuate while they still could.  Maps were burned.

 Radios prepared for   destruction. The brain of the defensive  efforts was about to make a run for it. Bertoldo could have simply followed  orders, evacuated with the staff,   fallen back to a safe position,  and lived to fight another day.   He was just staff after all. But he  saw this crisis as something else,   the opportunity he had so desperately been  waiting for, a chance to actually fight.

He volunteered to stay behind  and cover the retreat. One man   with a machine gun against an  entire German assault force. The staff officers must have thought  he was insane. Or maybe they were just   desperate enough to accept any delay, any  confusion that might help them escape.   They had no idea that Bertoldo’s offer  wasn’t bravado; it was the culmination   of two years of rejection,  frustration, and determination.

As the battalion staff slipped away  into the darkness, Bertoldo hauled a   .30-caliber machine gun to the CP entrance.  German tanks were already entering Hatten,   their commanders scanning for targets. Behind them came the infantry, hundreds of veteran  soldiers who’d fought from Russia to France. The 25th Tank Grenadier Division and  21st Panzer Division were elite units.  

They’d faced the Red Army at Kursk, the  British at Caen, the Americans at Metz.   They didn’t expect serious resistance from a  battalion CP that was obviously evacuating. They certainly didn’t expect Vito Bertoldo. At 4:30am on January 9, the last  American footsteps faded into darkness,   leaving Vito Bertoldo alone with a machine  gun and the approaching thunder of German   armor.

 Through the doorway came the  sounds of tank engines growling,   commanders shouting in German, the  metallic rattle of ammunition being loaded. Bertoldo positioned the gun to cover  the main street and waited for dawn. The first Tiger tank rumbled past at 5:00am, its  88 millimeter gun sweeping for targets. Bertoldo   held his breath, invisible in the shadows. Let it  pass.

 Behind the armor came the Panzergrenadiers,   forty-plus veterans of the Eastern  Front, moving in tactical formation. At 5:15am, Bertoldo made a decision that  defied every principle of military survival.   He stepped outside, into the middle of the  street, fully exposed, and opened fire at the   group of German men who were certain they  were walking into an abandoned village.

The .30-caliber erupted at 600 rounds per minute.  The first burst caught a squad in the open,   dropping them before they could scream.  He swept left, taking down another group,   then right, soldiers dove behind rubble.  In ten seconds, a dozen Germans were gone,   and every enemy soldier in Hatten  knew precisely where he was.

Return fire exploded from three directions. Rifle  rounds cracked past his head. An MG-42 opened up,   its distinctive ripping sound filling the air.  A Panzer IV’s turret was already rotating toward   him. Bertoldo had perhaps three seconds before  its 75 millimeter gun turned him into mist. He dove through the CP doorway as the tank fired.

  The shell detonated where he’d been standing,   blowing chunks of masonry through the  entrance. Inside, Bertoldo didn’t pause;   he hauled the gun to a window and resumed  firing at the now alert German infantry. Two half-tracks rounded the corner at 5:30am,  rear doors swinging open. Twenty Panzergrenadiers   began dismounting, bunched together, assuming  the tank had suppressed the American position.

Bertoldo leaned out the window,  again, completely exposed,   and held down the trigger. The entire  group went down in a hurricane of bullets. The Germans pulled back, radioing for artillery  support. They assumed they faced a reinforced   squad at a minimum.

 Bertoldo encouraged this  fiction, dragging his gun between windows,   varying his rate of fire, making  one weapon sound like three. At 11:00am, an 88-millimeter  round finally found him. The   shell punched through the window and  detonated inside. The explosion lifted   Bertoldo off his feet and hurled him  across the room into the far wall. His ears rang. Plaster dust filled his lungs.

The machine gun was blown off its  mount. Bertoldo strapped it to a   table using his belt, aimed through  the ruined window, and kept firing. For twelve hours, he held that position. When  the gun overheated, he urinated on the barrel;   his canteen water was too precious. When  Germans tried flanking, he shifted positions.  

When ammunition ran low, he switched to  single shots, making each round count. As darkness fell, the field telephone  crackled: Evacuate to the alternate CP   down the street. Bertoldo volunteered to  stay behind and cover the movement. Alone.   All night. One man on his own, keeping  the illusion of a defended position.

In the pre-dawn hours of January  10, Bertoldo finally moved to the   alternate command post. When he arrived,  officers asked who else was with him. He sighed and answered: (QUOTE) “No one, Just me.” The room fell silent. They’d assumed at least a   squad had held the original  position through the night.

At 6:00am, the Germans launched their  heaviest assault yet at the new CP location. A Panzer IV led the attack, supported  by a self-propelled 88-millimeter gun   and about 15 Panzergrenadiers. Bertoldo  decided the best approach was to cover the   new CP from the overlooking building next  to it.

 A few other defenders joined him,   but there was little organization;  everyone was fighting their own war. Bertoldo began shooting at the  enemy infantry from the building’s   windows just as he had done before. The  Panzergrenadiers scattered in a panic. The Germans, infuriated at the antics of this one  man, sent the 88 closer to the building, so much   so that its muzzle nearly poked through one of the  windows.

 The first time it fired into the room,   the shockwave was so strong it knocked Bertolo  down and wounded some of the other defenders. Blood poured from his nose and ears. His glasses  were shattered. Through the ringing in his head,   he heard German voices; a squad was  preparing to storm the building. Fighting through double vision, Bertoldo made  his way back to his machine gun.

 When the   first German appeared, he fired a burst that  sent the entire squad retreating. By noon,   German commanders had committed an entire  company to eliminating this strongpoint,   still unaware it was little more than one man. Each time the Germans thought  they’d silenced the position,   machine gun fire would resume  from a different window.

When ammunition ran low, he switched to  single shots, making each round count. At 4:30pm on January 10, American  reinforcements finally counterattacked.   A relief force from the 79th Ground Forces  Division broke through to Hatten’s outskirts. Hearing American weapons joining the fight,  Bertoldo fired his last belt of ammunition in   one continuous burst, the barrel glowing red,  providing cover for the advancing infantry.

When soldiers reached his position  at sunset, they found Bertoldo barely   conscious, still gripping the machine gun,  surrounded by thousands of spent casings. The investigation started immediately.  Battalion intelligence officers walked   through Hatten’s ruins, counting shell holes,  measuring distances, and collecting spent   casings by the thousand. The numbers didn’t  add up. One man couldn’t have done this.

But witness after witness confirmed  the impossible. Staff officers who’d   evacuated the original CP on January 9 swore  Bertoldo stayed behind alone. Soldiers from   the alternate position described seeing  him blown across rooms multiple times,   only to crawl back to his gun.

 German prisoners,  when questioned, spoke of a “strongpoint” that   had devastated their assault waves with  coordinated fire from multiple positions. When told it was primarily one  man, they refused to believe it. The 1st Battalion, 242nd Infantry had  entered Hatten with 781 men, 33 officers,   and 748 enlisted. Three days later,  only 264 remained effective.

 Company A,   Bertoldo’s unit, had virtually ceased to exist. German losses were even more revealing. Two  elite divisions, the 25th Panzer Grenadier   and 21st Panzer, had been rendered combat  ineffective. The official count credited   Bertoldo with eliminating at least forty  enemy soldiers, but everyone knew the number   was higher. The Germans couldn’t evacuate  all their fallen from those two streets.

Colonel Hans von Luck of the 21st Panzer Division  would later write that Hatten-Rittershoffen was:   (QUOTE) “one of the hardest and most  costly battles that had ever raged on   the western front.” His division’s offensive  capability was broken, not by American armor   or artillery, but by the delay and confusion  inflicted by a single determined defender.

Bertoldo’s forty-eight-hour stand had given  American forces crucial time to establish   new defensive lines. Other units rushed to  contain the breakthrough. By late January,   Operation Nordwind, Hitler’s  last offensive in the west,   had failed. The German Army would  never mount another major attack.

Word spread through military channels like  wildfire. A man classified 4-F had held off an   armored division. The kitchen discipline problem  had saved an entire battalion command structure. In Washington, the Army’s personnel branch quietly   began reviewing policies.

 If a half-blind  cook could do this, what did that say   about their classification system? How  many other Bertoldos had they rejected? The recommendation for the Medal of  Honor moved up the chain of command   with unprecedented speed. Witnesses  provided sworn statements. Officers   who’d never agreed on anything agreed  on this: Vito Bertoldo had performed   one of the most extraordinary acts of  individual courage in American history.

By November 1945, the paperwork  reached President Truman’s desk.   The former artillery captain  from World War 1 read it twice. Truman told his aide: (QUOTE)  “Clear my schedule for December   18. And get me Eisenhower. He needs to see this.” On December 18, 1945, the White House  Blue Room was packed with reporters and   military brass. General of the Army Dwight  Eisenhower stood at attention.

 Photographers   competed for the best shot. At the center of  it all stood Master Sergeant Vito Bertoldo,   looking uncomfortable in his dress uniform,  thick glasses reflecting the camera flashes. President Harry Truman held the Medal  of Honor citation, reading aloud:   (QUOTE) “Master Sergeant Vito R.

 Bertoldo…  fought with extreme gallantry while guarding   two command posts against the assault  of powerful infantry and armored forces.   With inspiring bravery and intrepidity,  M/Sgt. Bertoldo withstood the attack of   vastly superior forces for more than  48 hours without rest or relief, time   after time escaping death only by the slightest  margin… killing at least 40 hostile soldiers.

” Truman paused, studying the short, stocky man  before him. He had not just gone on a violent   frenzy; he had performed a carefully calculated,  sustained operation that took more than guts. The press clamored for a statement. Bertoldo, ever  modest, delivered words that would define him:   (

QUOTE) “All I did was try to protect  some other American soldiers … At   no time did I have in mind that  I was trying to win something.” Captain William Corson recovered from  his wounds and German captivity. One day,   he opened the newspaper to find  the President decorating his former   kitchen problem child. He would later  comment: (QUOTE) “Imagine my surprise,” The man he had tried to get rid of had become  one of America’s most decorated heroes.

Bertoldo received additional decorations: the  Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster, the Purple   Heart, and the French Croix de Guerre  with Silver Star. His entire battalion   received the Distinguished Unit  Citation for the defense of Hatten,   though everyone knew one man  had made the crucial difference.

Eisenhower, who’d commanded millions in Europe,   sought a private word with Bertoldo after the  ceremony. What they discussed went unrecorded,   but witnesses said the Supreme Commander  seemed genuinely awed by Bertoldo. As Bertoldo left the White House, a reporter  asked one final question: What would he do now? He revealed he wanted to help veterans like him,   he said: (QUOTE) “The best way to honor  the dead is to try to make it up to the   living who have given the best years of  their lives in the interest of peace.”