Rutland?s Larry Bolgioni talks about his experiences in the Medical Corps during WWII.
Photo: ALBERT J. MARRO / RUTLAND HERALD

Larry Bolgioni remembers the winter of 1944-45 all too well.

The Rutland native was a 29-year-old Army medic in the thick of the Battle of the Bulge. Having survived that battle during the waning months of World War II, Bolgioni was captured by the Germans and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.
The son of Italian immigrants, Bolgioni graduated from Rutland High School in 1933 and joined the National Guard in 1939.

His Guard unit was activated following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. He was part of the 43rd Division, which later saw action in the Pacific under Gen. Leonard Wing. But the Army had other plans. He and ?surplus? members of the 43rd Infantry Division were reassigned to the 28th Infantry Division, with Bolgioni attached to Company B, 103rd Medical Battalion.

As a combat medical sergeant, he had 41 enlisted men of a litter platoon under his command. His duties included the evacuation of sick and wounded personnel and instructing the men under his command in first aid.

During 1942 Bolgioni received additional training stateside, including before being ordered overseas. In 1943, his troop ship landed in Wales where he took part in amphibious training for the invasion of Europe.

As it turned out, as the armada of ships were on their way to France on June 6, 1944. Bolgioni was back in England with the rest of the 28th Division.

?We were lucky. The 29th (Division) took our place in the invasion,? said Bolgioni, now 93.

Bolgioni and his unit were indeed lucky. The 29th Division landed at Omaha Beach on the Normandy coast and sustained heavy losses at what became known as Bloody Omaha.

When the 28th Division landed in France several weeks later, they had to fight their way through hedgerow country. The thick hedgerows provided cover and camouflage for the German defenders.

?One guy was really badly wounded (and) we tried to get him back by ambulance but he didn?t make it,? Bolgioni said. ?It bothers me to even think about that poor guy.?

During the fall, elements of the 28th Division advanced into Germany southwest of Aachen in a heavily defended area that became known as the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest.

As a medic, Bolgioni saw his share of casualties.

?The lack of plasma played a big part in a lot of the GI?s deaths,? he said. ?They didn?t get enough plasma. That was really a bad situation in the Hurtgen Forest.?

He recalled that during that battle the Americans and Germans agreed to a temporary cease-fire so both sides could evacuate their wounded.

During the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 ? the last gasp German offensive of the war ? the 28th Division got ?pretty well messed up,? said Bolgioni, a staff sergeant.

After surviving that battle, Bolgioni found himself a month later in the Alsace region of France near the German border. It was there that Bolgioni and eight other soldiers were captured after attempting to evacuate two seriously wounded soldiers near the town of Ste. Marie.

?We ran into a patrol and that?s when we were captured,? Bolgioni said. ?We spent a whole day down in a command post in the cellar and we didn?t move out of there until night.?

Bolgioni said the Germans forced their prisoners to march during the night. Along the way, his captors ordered the men to stop.

?We thought there was going to be an execution,? he said during an interview at his Pine Street home.

Instead, he and his comrades marched to another town 14 miles away where they were interrogated.

Along the way, a horse-drawn cart with fresh bread passed by the prisoners. A hungry Bolgioni couldn?t resist the smell of freshly baked bread and snatched a loaf off the cart. ?The guard came up and started to give me holy hell for stealing and I said we were hungry so he softened up,? he said.

The prisoners found themselves on the march again, deeper into Germany, where they were held in a barn for several weeks with 115 American and 100 French prisoners.

In a 1945 interview with the Herald after the war, Bolgioni described the conditions as a diet consisting of synthetic coffee for breakfast and thin soup and bread at night; they slept on cots with chicken wire for springs and no blankets; there was no sanitation, no way to bathe and lice everywhere.

The Germans made several attempts to transport the POWs by rail further into Germany and away from the Allied advance. On one attempt, he said the POWs were trapped in box cars during an attack by Allied aircraft.

The POWs ended up in Ludwigsburg at Stalag IX with French, British, Americans and Russians.

In late April 1945, as American forces approached Ludwigsburg, the Germans evacuated the camp. Bolgioni and the other POWs found themselves on a forced march.

He and his fellow prisoners knew the day of liberation was at hand when they woke up in a barn on the morning of April 27 and found their guards had taken off. The Germans were gone but they had one more close call when the barn was hit by friendly fire.

Over the next several days, Bolgioni and the other prisoners stayed with local farm families until the arrival of the 12th Armored Division of the 7th Army.
After his capture in January 1945, his parents didn?t know whether he was alive or dead.

The secretary of war desires me to express his deep regret that your son Staff Sgt. Lawrence Bolgioni has been reported missing in action since thirty one January in France. If further details or other information are received you will be promptly notified, read the Western Union telegram sent by the War Department to his parents at 43 Forest St.

It wasn?t until May 1945 that his mother and father were notified that their son was alive and a POW. He made it home on leave during the summer of 1945.

After the war, Bolgioni married his sweetheart Florence Mulcahey in 1946. They had two children, Peg and Tom. Bolgioni spent 26 years working at GE Aircraft Engines, retiring in the 1980s.

More than 60 years after the end of the war, Bolgioni said the story isn?t about him but about serving with the men of the 28th Division.

?The guys in the 28th Division were well trained and we had Omar Bradley as our commander for a whole year, which was something to be proud of, before he was elevated to a higher position,? he said.

Bogioni received the Bronze Star for meritorious service, an American Defense Service Medal and the European African Middle Eastern Theater Campaign Ribbon.