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Long Islanders Remember V-E Day

By Michael Dorman | Staff Writer

These are but a few of the multitude of people -- aside from government and miltary leaders -- swept into the maelstrom of events history records as V-E Day. Here is the way such people recall that day:

MILTON LIPSON
Lipson, 82, of Sea Cliff, is retired. He has served as Nassau County commissioner of accounts and as an assistant Nassau district attorney. During World War II, he was a Secret Service agent periodically assigned to protect Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.

"On V-E Day, I was assigned to the New York Secret Service office -- doing advance work for expected presidential trips. We actually knew a few days before V-E Day that the war was ending. Word went out on the office grapevine. So, when it was announced in our office that V-E Day had actually come, it was no surprise. President Roosevelt, whom we always called The Boss, had died only the previous month. Our main reaction to V-E Day was that The Boss had known it was coming when he died. He'd gotten information from Allen Dulles, later the CIA director, that the Germans were dealing. It would have been terrific if The Boss had lived to see V-E Day. But at least he had the satisfaction of knowing it was coming."

ERNEST CACCIPUTI
Cacciputi, 72, of Brentwood, is a retired machine-shop worker.

"On V-E Day, I was a Pfc serving in Germany with a combat-medics' unit in the 100th Infantry Division. We saw a lot of combat, especially at the time of the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans pushed us hard on both sides, but we held. We heard about V-E Day on the radio. Everybody was shouting that the Germans had surrendered. Of course, we were very happy. We got our hands on a couple of bottles of champagne from the cellars of local homes, and had a party. We also got into a camp holding forced laborers from Poland. They were so happy to see us they wanted to give us everything they had."

PAT CATAPANO
Catapano, 76, of East Northport, is a retired engineer. He was a sailor aboard a Landing Ship Transport off southern Italy on V-E Day.

"We were making a run across the Messina Strait from Bizerte to Reggio Calabria. We were carrying railroad cars, sitting on specially installed railroad tracks. You know how the scuttlebutt flows on a ship. We kept hearing that the war in Europe had ended. Then the captain made the formal announcement, and there was great cheering and celebrating. We all went on liberty in Reggio Calabria. There was a big parade, with beautiful young girls all over the place. Everybody was asking: ``Where did all these beautiful girls come from?'' We'd been on liberty in Reggio Calabria many times and never seen these girls. All that time, their mothers had been keeping them home until the war ended."

ELMER W. LOWER
Lower, 82, of East Hampton, is a former top news executive at the New York headquarters of NBC, CBS and ABC. He was Life magazine's Paris bureau chief on V-E Day.

"Photographers in World War II often worked in pools, sharing their output. But I always opposed letting Life photographers take part. We were interested in multi-picture stories; newspapers served by the pool wanted single news shots. I received a call ordering Life photographer Ralph Morse assigned to the pool for a secret assignment. I tried to decline, but was told there was nobody else available. We had no way of knowing that he would be part of a pool of 17 -- 15 reporters, two photographers -- who would cover the German surrender at Reims, France. All agreed to hold their stories and pictures for 48 hours. But AP correspondent Edward Kennedy broke the embargo and released the story almost immediately. He had an enormous V-E Day scoop, but also stirred enormous controversy. Both he and AP were suspended temporarily from covering the war. Those of us involved in the pool arrangement were drawn into the dispute. I thought Kennedy was not a dishonest man -- that he did what he did because he had been burned several times by holding embargoed stories during the war."

SOLOMON GOLDMAN
Goldman, 72, of Malverne, is the retired director of the Jewish National Fund's Education Department. He was a prisoner at the infamous Dachau concentration camp.

"Just before the end of April, the guards herded about 2,000 of us together and loaded us in freight cars. We did not think we would live much longer. The train began rolling, then stopped and started several times over the next two days. When we stopped again in early afternoon, we suddenly heard gunfire. It became more intense from minute to minute, but the Germans did not seem to react. American Seventh Army soldiers swept in and overcame the Germans so quickly I can't remember what happened to them. So, even though it was about a week early, that was V-E Day for me. On the real V-E Day, I was on the road toward a displaced-person camp and didn't hear about it. A few days later, when I saw a newspaper story about Harry Truman, I didn't know he was president or that President Roosevelt had died."

DAVID PETERSON
Peterson, 72, of Malverne, is a retired telephone-company employee. Near the end of the European war, he was serving with a Signal Corps outfit in Gen. George Patton's Third Army.

"The Third Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly before V-E Day. I went in to take pictures. I can still see all those corpses -- all those poor people stacked outside the gas chamber. There were deep, bulldozed ditches being used for burying the bodies. Patton was making the German people go there and see it. On V-E Day, I first heard the news when it was announced at company headquarters. Shortly after the surrender, the men in my battalion were given a week at a lake resort in southern Bavaria. Most of us then went to Marseilles, got on the troopship Admiral Benson and sailed to the Philippines."

HENRY LEIDS