Independence's Frank Pistone receives French Legion of Honor

A sticker on Frank J. Pistone Sr.’s front door bears the American flag and just five words.

“We will pass this test.”

A staff sergeant by age 19, Pistone was a member of the L-Company in the 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division. A bold, honest and often outspoken man, at 85, Pistone narrates his memories as though they happened only hours ago.

Veterans Day was more than a week ago, but to Independence resident Pistone, every day is Veterans Day.

He’s especially proud of his most recent honor, the French Legion of Honor, which Napoléon Bonaparte created in 1802 to acknowledge those who delivered exceptional civil or military conduct.

As far as he’s concerned, the Legion of Honor is equivalent to an A on a test, the test that Pistone passed more than 60 years ago.

“I was only one infantry soldier among the many, many people who fought the forces of oppression and darkness,” Pistone wrote in a thank-you letter to the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. “I will never forget the courage and support of the people of France during this most difficult time. It saddens me to this day that many of these brave people did not live to see their country shining once more in the light of freedom.”

Pistone was 17 years old on Dec. 7, 1941, the historic date in which the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii.

The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 required that men between ages 21 and 25 register with local draft boards, but when the United States entered World War II following the Pearl Harbor attacks, all men ages 18 to 45 were subject to military service.

Either way, Pistone says, he wanted to serve his country. All of his friends joined, too, not one of them staying out.

“Everyone I knew went in; nobody hesitated,” he says. “We wanted to go – how dare these guys attack America? This is our country. We were proud to fight our country. Our feeling was, ‘How dare they attack us? Who the heck do they think they are?’”

In 2003, Pistone began writing his memoirs, detailing his life as a World War II veteran and his years of service between 1942 and 1946. In his foreword, Pistone recalls the “sound of battle, the screams of wounded buddies, the sound of exploding artillery shells, the staccato sound of the hellish German machine guns.”

“But worst of all was the pitiful sight of the mounds of dead bodies of fellow comrades,” he writes. 

The book details graphic memories of Pistone standing in the body of a truck, a dead German soldier in front of him, and the truck drove over the crushed body. He still sees the body – “a nightmare,” he writes – 64 years later.

Another night, he and two other soldiers crawled into a shed to avoid heavy rain. The shed was actually a chicken coop, Pistone writes, and he awoke the next morning covered in bugs and lice.

He served in Italy, the Anzio Beachhead, Southern France, Germany and Austria. For Pistone, he says, the Anzio Beachhead was the big deal, an operation that lasted from Jan. 22 to May 25, 1944.

“I survived. We had something like 30,000 casualties, and I didn’t get a scratch,” Pistone says. “I never got sick.”

Six months after Pistone’s Army service ended, he met Ida. He knew that day he would marry her.

They moved from New York to Independence 15 years ago to be near family.

“I fell in love with her,” Pistone says, his wife of 61 years sitting across from him at their kitchen table. “She argued like heck.”

While in occupation duty from May to October 1945, Pistone would break into homes in Germany, looking for Nazis. One scene plays out in his mind like it happened yesterday.

He climbed the stairs of a building alone, his rifle in hand. He saw a closed door. He opened it and charged ahead with his gun.

“I’ll never forget that,” Pistone says, laughing softly. “There was an old lady, a little gray-haired old lady with a bunch of kids around her. That old lady reminded me of my mother. I said, ‘I’m the biggest dumbbell that ever lived.’”

He backed off, shut the door and apologized profusely. 

“My husband has a very good memory of the war,” Ida says as Frank completes his story. “He’s forgetting a lot of other things, but any part of the war, he remembers it. It’s unbelievable. He remembers every detail, every battle, everything.”