Veterans Voices of Mt. Lebanon program misses one voice
Megan Andros served in Iraq and Dennis Deal in Vietnam.
Maurice Deul (1921-2016)
Warren Goss was part of the invasion of Normandy and served in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.
Chuck Torisky served in Korea.
By all accounts, Maurice Deul was full of interesting stories, and he was prepared to tell some during the Veterans Voices of Mt. Lebanon program Nov. 9.
Sadly, the World War II Army veteran died the day before, at age 95.
”I was looking forward to having him appear on this panel, but he was not, I have to say,” organizer Todd DePastino said at the start of the program, held in the Mellon Middle School auditorium.
“He said, ‘I don’t know if the audience is going to like what I have to say about war, and that war.’ He had a very grim and wry view of war. He said something like, ‘You learn to accept the unexpected and embrace the unimaginable.'”
Taking his place on the four-person panel was Sewickley resident Warren Goss, who also served in the Army during World War II. Also participating were Mt. Lebanon residents Chuck Torisky and Megan Andros, and Washington resident Dennis Deal, a 1960 graduate of Mt. Lebanon High School.
As founder and executive director of the Veterans Breakfast Club, through which veterans share their stories to the public, DePastino got to know Mr. Deul well.
“Maury was a tough guy, but I did see him tear up once,” he said. “And that was when he talked about landing in the invasion of Sicily with his anti-aircraft artillery crew.”
The landing took place July 10, 1943.
“Word came to his artillery battery that the Germans were going to be dropping paratroopers on their lines,” DePastino said. “And the planes came, the paratroopers dropped, and Maury’s guns blew these paratroopers out of the sky, blew the planes out of the sky, along with hundreds of other guns, only to find hours later that these were Americans with the 82nd Airborne.”
Goss, who said he started talking about his war experiences only about three years ago, told about participating in the D-Day invasion of Normandy as an 18-year-old on June 6, 1944.
“I was at Utah Beach. Thank God I was, because Omaha was even worse,” he said about the relative landing spots of the Allied forces. “I went over the side of the boat, jumped over the side. When I hit the water, the water was just about up to my neck. It was clean up to my chest. And the only thing that held me afloat was my gas mask.
“When a big wave come in, I jumped and was holding my rifle up. Then we hit the beach. That’s what we did.”
Torisky was 19 when he was drafted, during the Korean War.
“Actually, at that age, I guess you need some structure in your life,” he said. “I think the Army, if it teaches you nothing else, it teaches you structure, to be on time, the right time at the right place, or there are consequences.”
He recalled his 1953 arrival in South Korea.
“The place had been bombed so many times and shot up so many times,” Torisky said. “There were kids at the railroad station who were hobbling around on one leg and a crutch, and they were begging for food or anything the GIs could give them.”
The Army also drafted Deal, which was good news for him.
“I always knew I was going to be in the service,” he explained. “I wanted to make it a career. I knew that from the time I was in sixth grade and saw ‘The West Point Story’ in the movie theater.”
He was sent to Vietnam, arriving in September 1965. Two months later, he found himself in the middle of the Battle of the la Drang Valley, the first major battle of the war, where enemy soldiers ambushed his company.
“They were enveloped in the vegetation, and within five minutes, eight men lost their lives,” Deal said. “Twelve were wounded, only about three of whom could still fire a weapon. And seven were unhurt.
“At any given time, there were probably a thousand bullets flying around in an area three times the size of this stage.”
Andros served in Iraq in 2009-10 as an Army captain, having graduated from West Point. She was recruited to play tennis at the school, in the summer of 2001, just before the terrorist attacks.
“I thought twice about it, even then,” she said about her commitment. “I kind of, in my mind, had to wrestle with, was I OK with for five years being in the military after graduating from college? It wasn’t something that I envisioned myself doing as a high schooler.”