France to honor service of local World War II vet

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July 3, 2012

France to honor service of local World War II vet

BY JOE MAHONEY Staff Writer The Daily Star Tue Jul 03, 2012, 03:30 AM EDT

RICHFIELD SPRINGS -- Hit by gunfire from a anti-aircraft weapon nearly 70 years ago, Chester Scerra has old injuries that act up now and again. But for the most part, the highly decorated World War II combat veteran said that he can count his blessings.

"I've got a great family," the 90-year-old grandfather of 14 said as he sat on the deck of the cottage he designed, built and winterized on the shore of Canadarago Lake.

The war is never that far away for Scerra. He has many memories of his highly dangerous assignments while serving in the Office of Strategic Services -- or OSS -- a forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency. His job was to parachute behind enemy lines and gather intelligence on the movements of German troops, providing critical information for the Allies as they succeeded, finally, in stopping Nazi leader Adolf Hitler from conquering all of Europe.

Scerra said he was pleasantly surprised recently to learn that the government of France plans to recognize his service later this year by presenting him with the Legion of Honor. He said the medal is expected to be presented to him in October, although final arrangements are pending.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese forces in December 1941 -- triggering the United States' entry into World War II -- Scerra said he was at a movie house in his native Herkimer with the young woman he would soon marry.

He was drafted into the U.S. Army the following October, just two months after he and his wife, Anne, married.

"I didn't see my wife for 3½ years," Scerra said. While he was deployed, he said, his wife took a job at a parachute factory in Little Falls. Anne Scerra died 27 years ago, and Chester Scerra said he frequently visits her grave in Herkimer.

Soon after joining the Army, he was recruited into the OSS, an elite branch of the nation's defense. Scerra's ticket into the OSS was the fact that he grew up being fluent in Italian as well as English, as his parents were immigrants from Italy.

Italy had become a major theater in the war, with Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini working in tandem with Hitler. Scerra attended OSS training at Camp David near Washington, and paratrooper school at Fort Benning, Ga.

"I was behind enemy lines six or seven months at a time," said Scerra, noting his job was to find the enemy troops without them finding him. For food, he said he foraged for chestnuts. "Sometimes we stole chickens at night -- anything we could get our hands on," he added. "I didn't take my clothes off for three or four months at a time. We slept in barns, and we were covered with lice. At night, we'd pick the lice off our clothes."

The son of a boiler room worker at the Remington Arms plant in Herkimer had quickly become an important pair of eyes and ears in the struggle to stop Hitler.

"We always jumped at night," he recalled. "We were fired upon a lot of times. We didn't know where we were going to land. They would tell us what bridges we had to knock out and what railroads we had to destroy."

Standing 6 feet 1 inch with a rugged build, and equipped with a large machine gun, Scerra said he was frequently selected for the most dangerous missions. Many of his closest buddies, he said, were killed in battle.

The fact that Scerra will be recognized this year by France for helping to break the grip that Nazi Germany had on France resulted from the efforts of Tex Seamon, who retired last year as Otsego County's director of veterans services.

Seamon said his successor, Jack Henson, as well as state Department of Veterans Affairs staffers in Oneonta, can assist veterans in getting medals to which they are entitled but were never awarded because of governmental oversight.

After the war ended in 1945, Chester Scerra was reunited with his wife. The couple would go on to have four children. Chester Scerra worked in construction while his wife ran a lunch counter, Chet's Luncheonette, in Herkimer. Scerra said he sold the eatery after his wife passed away. But he said when he returns to Herkimer it's not uncommon for someone to call out to him, "Hey, Chet, two on a roll!"

Scerra said he doesn't smoke, has a beer only rarely and works out every morning, usually on the deck, after waking up.

"I had to be crazy," he said as he discussed his jumps into close range of German troops. "I'm glad my kids never went through what I went through."

Now he looked out at the lake as a small motorboat sliced through the calm waters.

"I'm happy," he said. "I feel good, and that's all I want in life. I don't ask for anything or want anything."