Paratrooper lost a lung, 'a lot of good men' in war

John Santucci, owner of Capri Italian Restaurant & Steakhouse in Desert Hot Springs, nearly lost his life on a remote island in the Philippines during World War II.

Santucci, a member of the 11th Airborne Division, 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, survived a blast from enemy fire and was awarded a Purple Heart.

He decided to become a paratrooper after watching the live action from the big screen.

“I used to go to the movies and see the news reels and see those guys jump out of planes, and I said, ‘That's fun,'” he said.

Santucci took his parachute training at Fort Benning, Ga., where they packed their own chutes and made five qualifying jumps from heights of about 1,200 to 1,400 feet.

After qualifying, the paratroopers were shipped to New Guinea for about four months of jungle training in preparation for the Leyte Campaign in the Philippines, Santucci said.

“That New Guinea is the worst hole in the world,” he said. “At night it was so hot and humid.”

The men would wet their mattress covers with water and wrap them around their bodies to try to keep cool.

Mosquitoes, malaria and jungle rot made for nearly unbearable conditions, he said. But he realized the military was putting the men through the training to prepare them for battle.

“The jumps over there were good,” he said. “The air was heavy. We loved to jump there.”

There was no place to jump for their first battle, he said, so the paratroopers were delivered to the shores of Leyte near Tacloban City, where they started across the island on foot on Thanksgiving morning, 1944.

“We climbed the mountain; we fought like crazy,” Santucci said. “We lost a lot of good men there.”

Santucci said it took about one and a half months to cross the island.

“We fought our guts out,” he said.

One day when they were making an attack on a hill, Santucci and a sergeant took a position on a side of a trail.

They were standing together, fighting shoulder to shoulder, when all of a sudden, the sergeant was hit by enemy fire and was instantly killed.

“I'm right next to him,” Santucci said, then asked himself, “'Why him, not me?'”

After they secured the islands, the men relaxed for a good three weeks and received new weapons and new clothes.

On the first of February, they moved to Mindoro, where they prepared for a jump on Tagaytay Ridge on the island of Luzon, about 30 miles outside of Manila.

After the landing, fighting their way over to Manila, Santucci was shot by a 20 mm bullet from an anti-aircraft weapon.

“Oh man, things were rough over there,” he said. “I got wounded Feb. 7. They shot the hell out of me took my left lung right out.”