The 333rd Harbor Craft Company (TC) was known as McKee’s Raiders after their commanding officer Capt. Charles G. McKee, from Canton OH, and they wore the skull and crossbones patch seen here.
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Benicia World War II veteran recalls years as tugboat engineer
May 28, 2010, By Bethany A. Monk, Benecia Herald, (California)
Tommy Lavezzo graduated from Benicia High School in 1942, back when it was housed in what is now City Hall. A short time later he got the news: He’d been drafted into the U.S. Army. He couldn’t have been happier. “I was in the mood of wanting to go,” Lavezzo, 85, said last week in a visit to The Herald’s office. “My friends were going — I couldn’t wait to get drafted.”
With Allied forces already three years into World War II, and with the U.S. having entered the war late the previous year, news of the atrocities overseas were unavoidable, he said. “Everybody (in the U.S.) got involved. The ladies and the people that were too old to go, they worked in factories. It was a busy time. “We wanted to keep our home safe. We didn’t want the war coming here.”
Not too long after high school graduation, the young Lavezzo boarded a train and traveled across country to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Aberdeen, Md., for basic training. At boot camp, one thing’s for sure, he said: “You learned to how to make a bed. “From then on, whatever they said, you did.”
Following boot camp, Lavezzo got further training at Camp Edwards in Barnstable County, Mass., where he learned to operate tugboats. He would go on to work as a tugboat engineer during the war. After about six months, he went to Camp Gordon Johnston in Carrabelle, Fla., where he remembers living in “crude camp” — a memory that elicits a chuckle. The floors were made of sand; Lavezzo said he recalls how they felt against his feet. And he remembers standing in the mess hall eating meals. “They were simulating the battle field,” he said.
Lavezzo and his company — 333 Harbor Craft Company, comprised of about 100 men — soon boarded a ship and sailed to Europe. They landed in England, where they would stay for a long while as they prepared to “get tug boats going,” he said. That’s what they were doing on June 6, 1944 — D-Day. That morning, Lavezzo and his company were summoned from their tugboats and taken to a hotel. “We couldn’t even go to the window,” he said. “All we could do was sit on our bunks.” On and off throughout the day and night, the sounds of sirens filled the room as ships brought in casualties from the Normandy invasion. Lavezzo said he and the men in his company were lucky. They were kept in their hotel room for two weeks — it was called “being sealed.”
About 30 days after the Normandy landing, Lavezzo and his company moved to France, where they were to play a vital role in moving supplies to the front lines. Their tugboats — which measured about 50 feet and had “big propellers,” Lavezzo said — carried in food, fuel and other necessaries from the United States. They unloaded the supplies and the supplies were taken to the front lines, he said. Some of the time, he and his company lived on the tugboats, which had under-cover living spaces. Lavezzo remembers hearing the buzzing sounds of U.S. Air Force planes cutting through the night air on their way to bombing raids over Germany. Though he never saw battle first-hand, he said, things “could have gotten dangerous at any time.” Lavezzo remained in France until the end of his enlistment, which was over in late 1945 or early 1946, he said.
After the war, Lavezzo stayed in the service with the Army National Guard through the Korean Warm, serving in Texas and Austria. When he finally took off the uniform, he and his younger brother, Tony, opened the Lavezzo Brothers Chevron on the corner of First and J streets in 1953. In 1967, Tommy opened an Enco gas station on Second Street. In 1970, he got a job as a mechanic for the city of Benicia, where he worked until he retired, a senior mechanic, 20 years later. Tony, who passed away in 1995, also served in World War II. He was in the Navy.
Looking back, Tommy Lavezzo said even as a young man he felt from the get-go like he was doing something patriotic as a member of the U.S. Army during the war. Being a World War II veteran, he said, “you get a sense you did your part.”
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From CGJ Orders:
- 333 Hansen Floyd M. Pvt 37479754 9-Feb-44
- 333 Hodges Guy W. 2nd Lt 01035821 9-Feb-44
- 333 Teeple Edward J. Pvt. 20244942 9-Feb-44