Posts with the 319th Medical Battalion tag

Barris Beat

Tony Mellaci – first responder for two generations

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Sergeant medic Tony Mellaci overseas 1945.

He saved my father. Then, he saved me. In fact, he saved both of us multiple times. The first instance occurred 80 years ago this December. Just before Christmas of 1942, both Tony Mellaci and my father, Alex Barris, arrived at Camp Phillips – a U.S. Army training facility in Kansas. The army had posted them there to train as medics in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Then, something happened Christmas Eve.

“They told me to go to the headquarters barracks and pick up a soldier who was sick, and deliver him to the hospital. So, I and another ambulance driver picked up your father (although I didn’t know him at the time) and we took him to the hospital,” Mellaci told me. “But we never saw the sick soldier. We stayed in the cab while other medics loaded him into the ambulance.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Tony Mellaci – first responder for father and son

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
S/Sgt. Tony Mellaci in France, 1944.

He saved my father, and he saved me. In fact, he saved both of us multiple times. The first instance occurred 77 years ago this December. Just before Christmas of 1942, both Tony Mellaci and my father, Alex Barris, arrived at Camp Phillips – a U.S. Army training facility in Kansas. The army had posted them there to train as medics in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Then, something happened on Christmas Eve.

“The lieutenant told me to go to the headquarters barracks and pick up a soldier who was sick, and deliver him to the hospital. So, I and another ambulance driver picked up your father (although I didn’t know him) and took him to the hospital,” Mellaci told me. “But we never saw the sick soldier. We stayed in the cab while other medics loaded him into the ambulance.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Wounds a dressing can’t heal

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Al Theobald was raised in a home in Borg, Germany, used in 1945 as a first-aid station for U.S. medics.

We walked in single-file behind our guide. The street in Nennig, Germany, opened into a market square as the young man leading our tour painted a wartime picture of this town 72 years ago. He pointed to the homes tucked neatly around the intersection. Then, he said because of the battle being waged between German and U.S. forces here during the Second World War, that civilians had been evacuated.

“Well, that’s not entirely true,” a quiet voice said behind me. I turned and a man I didn’t know, but who was travelling on the same tour, added, “Some of the civilians refused to leave.” (more…)