Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:19 | Brooklynite Andy Staruch got in on the ground floor of an innovative pipe coating business but when the contract he was working on ran out, he was swept up in the early 1940's draft. He wound up going through basic training repeatedly because the Army kept poaching his unit for replacements, an unusual situation which caught the eye of Walter Winchell.
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He was among the last of his unit lined up to board the SS Leopoldville for the Channel crossing when the officer manning the gangplank stopped Andy Staruch and all the men behind him. The ship was full and that proved to be most fortunate for them.
He had deployed very late in the war, but Andy Staruch did get to fire the mortar he was trained to use. The action kept German troops on the French Riviera from moving North to help in the Battle of the Bulge.
His last duty in Europe was guarding a truck repair operation in Austria. Andy Staruch was responsible for going to Czechoslovakia with a pile of invasion scrip to bring back a load of safety glass. Finally released, he headed home to rejoin a successful business he had been in before the war.
