Rocky Matteis
Age: 91
Born: Feb. 10, 1920
Hometown: Raritan, N.J.
Residence: Desert Hot Springs
Military branch: U.S. Army; 77th Infantry Division; U.S. Army Air Corps; 8th Air Force; 3rd Bombardment Division
Years served: March 25, 1942 - Oct. 12, 1945
Rank: Staff sergeant
Family: Wife Theresa; two children, Nancy of Palm Desert and Rena Matteis of Seattle; and two grandchildren.
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Rocky Matteis began his military career as an infantryman, training in the southwest desert. Two years later, he was flying missions over the hostile skies of Europe under the belly of a B-17 bomber.
He started out with the 77th Infantry Division, training in the Mojave Desert. But after about a year, he decided he wanted to be a pilot.
The military gave him the opportunity, so he went to Phoenix to take a test and passed.
While training to get his wings, an order was issued requiring trainee pilots previously serving in the ground forces to return to their divisions.
For some reason, Matteis' name wasn't called out to go back to the infantry.
“A general said, ‘You're going to gunnery school,'” Matteis said — in the desert — training at hot spots, including Needles and Kingman, Ariz.
After graduation, he was assigned to B-17 squadron as a ball turret gunner.
Matteis and his bomber crew flew across the Atlantic in July of 1944 — destination Ipswich, England.
From their air base, the crew flew bombing missions over German marshaling yards, oil fields, air bases, plus aircraft and vehicle manufacturing plants.
Matteis said the closest he came to an enemy aircraft was while flying on the way to a target.
“I'm looking down at a plane, and I can almost read the dashboard. It was flying in our formation. I thought it was an escort. Then I realized it was a Messerschmitt. I shot it. I just fired away. It went down.”
He said gunners from other planes shot at the enemy, so it was difficult to tell who got the kill.
The crew often would fly missions that lasted several days.
“We bombed on the way to Russia, on the way to Italy, and we bombed on the way back to England,” he explained.
The men also flew humanitarian missions.
“We dropped supplies at Warsaw to Polish partisans — food, clothing, ammunition — they had nothing,” Matteis said.
During that mission, the aircraft was pummeled by anti-aircraft flak, and by the time it landed in Russia, one of the engines had been knocked out and the plane “looked like Swiss cheese,” he said.
The men had to spend the night on a Russian airstrip.
“All of us has to stay in that holey plane.”
But before they hit the sack, the men were treated to a little Russian hospitality.
Matteis said after every mission, when the men returned back to their base in England, they were given a shot of bourbon before debriefing.
When their Russian comrades offered up some liquid refreshment, Matteis grabbed a coffee cup and said, “fill it up!”
“It was vodka in the raw.”
It hit him like a ton of bricks, and he started acting out of character.
After some ill-advised flirting with Russian women serving up chow in the mess hall, his buddies picked him up and took him back to his seat — then back to the plane.
Since the weather was freezing cold, their Russian hosts provided each crewman with nine blankets.
Matteis didn't need to use his, he said.
“I was warm from the vodka,” he said, laughing.
After the war, Matteis launched a 42-year career with Johns Manville, a Berkshire Hathaway company that's been manufacturing building materials for more than 150 years.
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II on Sundays. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
