A mission with his name

The, yet unborn generation of the Lanzara family will know what life was like for their forefathers.

Michel Northsea

Richard Lanzara, 86, served in the South Pacific druing WWII. He is one of 104 veterans going on the next Honor Flight.

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Ocala Palms resident Richard Lanzara is writing a book of “poems, short stories and dribble” that includes stories about his life, including his time as a Marine in World War II.

 Following the events of next Tuesday, Lanzara may have another chapter to add to his memoirs.

Lanzara is one of four Ocala Palms residents on the June 14 Honor Flight to see the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. He has never seen the memorial that was completed in 2004. Joining Lanzara on the flight are neighbors, Bob Larsen, Joe Riley and William Stewart.

Ocala Palms residents Susan Daugherty, Janet Fassano and Francis Sheets are escorts for the first trip from Ocala this year.

Lanzara joined the Marines soon after his graduation from Gloversville High School in upper New York, in June 1943. Not wanting to get drafted and go the route of the Navy or Army, he volunteered for the Marines and was accepted.

His first days in the service he thought he was royalty. He was assigned a Pullman car for his trip from New York to South Carolina. His first meal was tasty, served by waiters and on good china.

That meal was the last of the good life for awhile.

“That meal and pampering we received with it was akin to a last meal given to man about to be shot. And for all intent and purpose, that’s what we were - executed, crucified and stripped of any trace of civilian softness and mother’s milk we have had,” he writes in the book he is preparing for his family.

Boot camp training went well until reality hit Lanzara and he realized they were being trained to kill other men with their bare hands and knives.

Wanting to be a pilot, Lanzara passed a battery of tests and was top of his class when it came to aviation mechanic school, radar school and gunnery school. His request to become a pilot was granted but never materialized.

Lanzara wasn’t willing to sign up  for a four-year stint in the Marines, even though he realized it was a practical request from the government’s standpoint, to become a pilot. He didn’t want to stay in the service any longer than necessary taking orders from people he didn’t respect, he said. 

Instead, he served as an airplane mechanic and top turret gunner in a B-25 Mitchell bomber. Sometimes he flew in the co-pilot’s seat as a flight engineer.

Training took him on to Cherry Point and Edenton, N. C.; Memphis, Tenn., and Yellow Water (Jacksonville) Fl. and then on to a liberty ship in the South Pacific.

Promotions also came along and Lanzara was a sergeant.

On the ship, he was selected as the gun captain for the forward guns- twin 20mm cannons, which Lanzara had never seen before.

It didn’t matter though.

Around midnight came the announcement to turn off all the lights; the ship was stopping because an unidentified ship was coming up fast. Lanzara and two crew men assigned to shooting the cannons waited. Lanzara ended up switching places with his triggerman as the bigger ship got nearer.

“It had to be a Japanese cruiser from the size of it - almost twice the size of our ship,” Lanzara said.

For whatever reason, no gunfire or cannon fire was exchanged that night. Neither had the other ship collided with the Marines.

Later on Emirau Island, Lanzara went to see if he was scheduled for any missions. He was told all the crews were picked. Finding out that one of his buddies was assigned to a mission, he traded places with his friend. Reporting in, he said he was “Ray Jensen” and flew the mission.

Since he didn’t give the right name, his military records do not show he flew any missions.

Without any missions assigned, Lanzara described himself as “aircrew who hung all day.”  Lack of training for a particular job wasn’t reason for not doing a task.

Still on Emirau Island, he was assigned the job of “beach master” coordinating the landing of troops and supplies to the line of fire.

A problem arose for Lanzara.

Landing ship tanks needed to come ashore to unload equipment but the water was too shallow. Using 55-gallons drums and palms trees they were able to build a causeway to the landing tanks.

Lanzara says he has never been one to spend lots of time thinking about those World War II days but the memory of how quickly and how well his plan to take the “beach to the ships” was put into action stays with him.

“To this day, I’m still impressed,” he said.

Lanzara spent three years in the service.

After his service to his country, Lanzara returned to New York and became an attorney. In his early days as an attorney, he envisioned himself working until he was 90 year olds, like several in the firm were doing.

“They would come in and spend a couple of hours at the office and I thought that would be a wonderful way to go out,” he said.

He retired when he was 57. He had started his career when business was done by a handshake and by the time he retired “young attorneys were trying to make an adversarial proceeding out of a property closing,” he said.

Lanzara did learn to fly and enjoyed flying his own planes for 40 years before deciding his hobby had grown too expensive.

He enjoys writing and has published three books. His most recent “The Secret Life of Jesus and Mary Magdalene” took three years of research before he started writing.

Next Tuesday, when Lanzara sees the World War II memorial for the first time, he will probably think of Ray Jensen, the buddy who taught him to play cribbage and Herb Sawinski, a long time friend he met in the service and a beach too shallow for the landing of ship tanks.

On Tuesday’s Honor Flight mission, Richard Lanzara’s name will rightfully be on the list.