My South Philly Review Crime Beat Column: Burglary - The Silent Crime

The South Philly Review published my second weekly Crime Beat column, which covers crime news, crime issues and crime prevention in South Philadelphia. 

You can read the column via the above page or the below text:

Burglary: The Silent Crime

By Paul Davis

The 3^rd Police District sent me a burglary prevention poster that advised South Philly residents that hot weather leads to burglars breaking into homes and business via unsecure air condition units.

The poster notes that as the temperatures rise, many South Philly residents install window air conditioning units.

“Criminals may target unsecure A/C units as an easy point of entry into homes and apartments,” the poster explained.

The poster advises people to secure all window A/C units with mounting brackets and screws. One should also install locks or security bars to prevent windows from being forced open.    

Good advice.

Burglary is defined in Robert Jay Nash’s “The Dictionary of Crime: Criminal Justice, Criminology & Law Enforcement” as illegally entering a building to commit a crime. To break into a premise and steal. Burglary is usually a felony.

Burglary is known as the “Silent Crime” as it is often committed stealthily under the cover of darkness or hidden from view. And the burglar usually slinks away like a rat before the burglary is discovered.   

I’ve discussed burglary with a good number of patrol officers, detectives and security specialists over my many years of covering the crime beat.

All have recommended that residents install an alarm system with cameras, and the placing of a sign in plain sight that states the residence is covered with an alarm system. And one should also install deadbolt locks on doors and good locks on all windows. One should additionally mark all valuables with a UV or indelible pen to help police identify and recover your property.

Burglars prefer to work under the cover of darkness and hate the light, so one should also install exterior lights for visibility. One should also let their immediate neighbors know when they will not be home and ask them to look out for suspicious people walking around the property.

Thankfully, in South Philly most neighbors traditionally and famously look out for one another, and they keep watch on their street.  

One detective told me that he has come across too many burglaries where the resident had an alarm system but chose not to turn it on.

“People get preoccupied with something else or they become complacent and don’t take the time to turn on their alarm systems,” the detective said. “What’s the point of having an alarm system if you don’t use it properly?

“But boy when they return home to see their place burglarized, they sure wish they had.”

The detective explained that there are three types of burglars. There are professional burglars, thieves and opportunists.

The professional uses sophisticated tools and targets rich homes and major businesses. The thieves target homes and businesses where there is cash, guns or jewelry on hand. The opportunists are teenagers and/or drug addicts who will break into a place to steal items quickly and clumsily.          

I’ve been out on numerous ride-alongs with Philadelphia police officers when they responded to burglaries.  

I recall how homeowners and apartment renters acted when they found their residence burglarized. The most common reaction initially was outrage that some burglar had entered their home and stole their valuables, some of which had sentimental value and were irreplaceable. 

The most common subsequent reaction was the feeling of being violated. To know that some stranger was in their home and rummaged through their private and personal belongings brought on a physical sickening feeling.  

I remember discussing burglary with former Philadelphia Detective Mark Tartaglia. The detective, like me, a born and bred South Philadelphian, happened to be my good friend for more than 30 years before he sadly passed away a few years ago.

“Burglars are creeps,” I recall Mark Tartaglia telling me. “They are sneak thieves who prowl around and look for weaknesses in the security of people’s homes.

“In the past, people were too trusting, or lacked a healthy fear of criminals, and they often left a window open or a door unlocked, which is an invitation for a burglar to step inside and loot the place. But things are changing. The burglars I’ve known say they fear the homeowner with a gun far more than a cop. They think they are more likely to be shot by the homeowner protecting their home.”

Mark Tartaglia recommended security alarms and locks and lights like other detectives, but he added one additional crime prevention tool.       

“Get a dog,” he said succinctly. “Burglars hate dogs.”

Paul Davis’s Crime Beat column appears here each week. He can be reached via pauldavisoncrime.com. 

American Citizen Pleads Guilty To Working As An Agent For The People's Republic Of China

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information:

Thomas Weir Pauken II, 50, an American citizen who lived and worked in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), pleaded guilty today to acting as an agent of a foreign government within the United States.

“In effect, Pauken admitted to being part of a conspiracy to obtain sensitive information from the U.S. government for the PRC,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg. “His actions are a betrayal of this Nation and pose an unacceptable risk to our national security. NSD remains committed to safeguarding information essential to our national security, including through appropriate prosecution.”

“By his own admission, not only did Thomas Pauken attempt to infiltrate U.S. political circles at the direction of China’s Ministry of State Security, but he gathered intelligence on his American targets and reported it back to his Chinese intelligence handlers,” said Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division. “This case illustrates the lengths to which the Chinese Communist Party will go to undermine our democratic institutions and degrade our political freedoms, but it also demonstrates the FBI’s resolve to defend the homeland from threats to our national security. Let this plea serve as a clear warning: If you attempt to help a foreign adversary as an unregistered agent in the U.S., the FBI will find you and bring you to justice.”

According to court documents, from at least 2019 until February 2026, Pauken worked at the direction and control of people he knew worked for the PRC, including a person he met in 2017 identified as “Cathy.” Cathy provided Pauken with taskings, including meeting with potential intelligence assets, providing them with devices such as a laptop and cellphone to communicate with Cathy, providing taskings for the assets on what information was required, and providing Cathy with reports from the assets.

Pauken received at least $100,000 for his work with Cathy. Cathy also paid for Pauken to travel several times between 2019 through 2025 from China to meet with individuals in the United States who could provide Pauken, and ultimately Cathy and the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS), with information.

Pauken worked for two other people in China whom he met in 2017 and knew as “Richard” and “William.” They told Pauken that reports he wrote for them went to Japan, but Pauken believed they worked for the PRC government.

Pauken also sold reports to a group of Chinese individuals from Wuhan who sought information about technology and the U.S. Department of Justice. The Wuhan clients wanted Pauken to find an expert to help them engage in cyber espionage.

Pauken is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 1 and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

The FBI Philadelphia Field Office investigated this case with assistance from the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

Trial Attorney Eli Ross of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Gavin R. Tisdale for the Eastern District of Virginia are prosecuting the case.

Note: The Assistant Attorney General's quote has been updated from the previous version

                                                                                                    

My Crime Fiction: 'Villotti'

Below is my crime fiction short story Villotti.  

The story originally appeared in American Crime Magazine. 

Villotti

By Paul Davis

Joseph Villotti was called “Crazy Joe” back in the late-1960s in South Philadelphia for a very good reason. He was criminally insane.

Joe Villotti was insanely sadistic. He was insanely manipulative. He was insanely violent.

Villotti was 6’2”, lean and muscular with a rough face and dark brown hair. He had a raspy voice and a madman’s laugh. He reminded me of a somewhat thinner version of the actor Marlon Brando in the film On the Waterfront. (See above photo of Brando).

In South Philadelphia back in the late-1960s Crazy Joe Vilotti was legendary. Everyone in South Philly at the time had a Villotti story. I had several, including one story that I recently recounted. I wrote of the time that I witnessed Villotti murder a hoodlum in 1968 in a dispute over drugs.    

I also recall when I was walking down Oregon Avenue in South Philly when I was 15 in 1968. Villotti, who was 19 at the time, pulled his car to the curb and offered me a ride.

“Thanks, Joe, but I like to walk and my house is only two blocks away.”

Villotti, well known for not taking no for an answer, yelled, “Get in, for fuck’s sake. I’ll drive you.”

I got in the car. Villotti swung out onto Oregon Avenue and sped past a red light and headed west. I heard the police sirens behind us and then I saw two police cars swing across the four-lane avenue and block Villotti’s car.

Two additional police cars came up behind Villotti and blocked him from backing up. A plainclothes detective rushed up on the driver’s side and stuck a .38 snub nose revolver in Villotti’s face.

“Keep your hands on the fucking wheel, Joe,” the detective said. “Don’t fucking make a move.”

I was struck by the familiarity of the detective addressing Villotti by his first name.

A second detective opened my passenger side door and pointed his firearm at me.

“No, no,” Villotti said to the detective. “He’s just a kid I picked up.”

The detective looked hard at me and then said, “Get lost, kid.”

I got out of the car as Villotti was yanked out of the car and handcuffed. I walked away as fast as I could.

Back at JP’s luncheonette on 13^th and Oregon, I told everyone the story. There were several theories about why Villotti would stop and pick me up while he was being chased by the police. One was he picked me up thinking that having a passenger might throw the police off from identifying his car. Another theory was that Villotti was plain nuts.

 

Villotti was a member of the Dalton Street and Oregon Avenue street corner gang back then. The teenage street corner gang, known as the “D&O,” was a notorious and troublesome group, well known to the police and other street corner gangs in South Philadelphia.

The street corner crowd at 13^th and Oregon Avenue was not a large or tough group like the D&O and other notorious South Philly street corner gangs, although we had a handful of very tough guys like my older brother Eddie and the Sarcone brothers, Chickie and Stevie. We were known more as a party corner as we always had a crew of local pretty girls who hung out with us.

JP’s luncheonette was located on the corner of 13^th and Oregon Avenue, and we drank coffee and soda and ate cheesesteaks and hoagies in the five booths and at the counter.

We were three block west of the D&O gang’s hangout at George’s Luncheonette. We were friendly with the D&O teenagers as we all went to school together and we freely mixed at the teenage dances.

Villotti began hanging out with us more and more in 1968 as he had worn out his welcome at the D&O. He had a beef with Billy Russo, aka “Samson,” as the teenager was a big, tough guy. Russo was also, by all accounts, a nice guy. Russo objected to Villotti picking on a skinny guy and he confronted Villotti. The two big guys squared off in the Thomas Junior High schoolyard. Russo hit Villotti so hard that Villotti went down. Other D&O guys broke up the fight.

Later, as Russo left his house and walked towards Oregon Avenue, Villotti was waiting with a baseball bat. Villotti repeatedly cracked Russo with the bat and Russo fell to his knees in pain. Villotti continued to strike Russo until several men pulled him away.

Russo was hospitalized with several broken bones and a concussion. Most of the D&O teenagers took Russo’s side as he was a popular guy, but no one confronted Villotti. But Villotti sensed he needed a break from the D&O gang, so he began to hang out with us.

Lucky us.

 

Villotti was sadistic and a bully with a warped sense of humor. Thankfully, he never picked on me as he was afraid of my older brother Eddie.

Although Villotti was “bat shit” crazy, he was sane enough to know that he could not beat my brother, and Villotti knew that Eddie was a lot tougher than Samson Russo.  

Villotti came to spend more time with us after his beating of Russo and his involvement in a romantic triangle. A teenage girl named Jennifer broke up with a D&O guy named Butchie and she began seeing Eddie Dano. Eddie Dano was a good-looking young guy, and girls liked him, but he was a fool for love.

He would date a girl, quickly fall in love with her, and he would go into debt buying the girl an expensive ring. Inevitability, the new girl would grow tired of Dano’s rapt attention and she would drop him. We called Dano “Captain Cute,” and we called his big tan Buick the “Cutemobile,” a take on Batman’s “Batmobile.”

Butchie complained to Villotti about Dano “stealing” his girl. Villotti talked a group of D&O guys into going up to 13^th and Oregon and beating the shit out of this guy “Eddie.” There were three guys named Eddie on 13^th and Oregon Avenue. There was Eddie Dano, Eddie Pellegrini, and my older brother, Eddie Davis.  

My brother Eddie was three and a half years older than me, the average age of the 13th and Oregon Ave crowd. At 15, I was the baby of the crowd. Eddie had stopped hanging with us on the corner in 1968, as he had graduated to hanging out with our “old heads,” the previous generation of guys who were then in their mid-20s and went clubbing throughout the city. My brother was also seeing a girl named Frannie whom he would later marry.

One of the D&O guys held a grudge against my brother from a few years prior when we all went to the South Philly Boys Club. At 6’3,” lean with an athletic built, with long, strong arms and legs, Eddie was a star basketball player. He was also a genuine tough guy, but he was no bully. In fact, he was the champion of the bullied, as he often came to their defense. He never bullied anyone but me, his little brother.

While during a basketball game at the Boys Club, Jason “Jay” Gianni and his older brother Mark doubled-teamed an opposing player and beat him to the court’s floor. My brother stepped in, pulled the Gianni brothers off the guy and he offered to fight both of the brothers at the same time. The Ginanni brothers walked away.

And now Jay Gianni saw a way to get back at my brother, believing the Eddie that Villotti wanted to have beaten up was my brother.

That night Eddie Dano was warned that the D&O guys were coming for him. So he downed several barbiturates, stating, “When they beat the shit outta me, I won’t feel a thing.”   

I stood out on the corner leaning on my brother’s parked car. I was amused by Dano, who had trouble standing. Also on the corner was “Mikey Head” Tabone.

I saw Jay Gianni and four guys walking up Oregon Avenue. One of the guys in the group was my good friend Alex Agnello, whom I’ve known since junior high school. He walked up to me and said hello.

Gianni and the others seemed to ignore Dano, who leaned against the wall. Just then, my brother Eddie appeared on the corner of Iseminger Street, and he turned and was heading towards his car.

“There he is!” Gianni shouted as he and three others ran towards my brother. I grabbed Alex by his jacket, and he grabbed me as we grappled against my brother’s car.

My brother saw Gianni and the others run towards him and he put up his hands and punched Gianni in the face, knocking the hoodlum to the concrete. The other three hoodlums started to swing at my brother and he hit back, knocking each one down with a single punch. The fight was quickly over and Gianni rose from the payment, bloody and bruised, saying in a shaky voice, “We’re going to get, you son of a bitch!”

“Come and get me now,” my brother replied as the other hoodlums rose with black eyes and bloody noses.

Gianni repeated the threat as he and the others walked away quickly and headed back to Dalton Street. Alex and I let each other go and he too headed back to Dalton Street.

Tabone, who had run into the luncheonette when the fighting started, now came out.

“I went in to get a butcher knife,” Tabone explained as he tried to catch his breath.

My brother just shook his head in disbelief.

I explained quickly to my brother that the D&O guys were after Eddie Dano and not him. My brother just shook his head and drove away.

The next morning, I sat in JP’s drinking a cup of coffee before heading to the South Philadelphia High School, known locally as “Southern.” I was telling my good friend Chickie Sarcone about the fight when my brother walked in. He stopped in before going to work for the Electric Company as he wanted to see Chickie. Sarcone, like my brother, was a genuine tough guy who was respected by the D&O.

“Make sure no one bothers my brother,” he said to Chickie.

“No one will.”

“Thanks.”

That night Villotti and a big fat guy came into JP’s. Thankfully, Dano wasn’t there, as he would have had a heart attack. Villotti sat at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee. A minute or two later, my brother stopped in to buy a pack of cigarettes.

Villotti jumped up and explained to my brother that the previous night had been a misunderstanding and that he was sorry. He said he told Gianni and the other D&O guys that Eddie Davis was not to be bothered anymore.

My brother shrugged as he placed coins in the cigarette machine and extracted his pack of cigarettes.

“It’s all over,” my brother said.

Villotti laughed. “Yeah, it’s over. I heard you knocked down Jay and his boys all by yourself. Good for you.”

Villotti put out his hand to shake, and my brother shook his hand, and then walked out the door.

 

But it was not quite over for Villotti.

The next day after school I went to the Oregon Diner with Eddie Dano and Harry “Bud” Keitel, also known as “Bud the Dud.”

After we ate our cheeseburgers and French fries, we got into Dano’s big Buick and started to pull out of the diner’s parking lot. It was a warm day, so we had all of the car windows down. Suddenly, Villotti rushed up to the driver’s window and punched Dano in the face. Another guy appeared on the passenger side and punched Keitel in the face. A third guy opened the back door, and he was about to strike me with a tire iron when Villotti grabbed the tire iron and said, “No, he’s a good kid. I know his brother.”

Villotti and his friends walked off. Dano slumped over and held his broken nose. Keitel held a handkerchief to his bloody teeth. After a few minutes, Dano was able to drive and we headed back to 13^th and Oregon Avenue. No one spoke of what happened.   

Afterwards, Villotti acted like nothing had happened and he began to hang out with us, especially since my brother no longer came around. Villotti was abusive, cheated at cards, stole, and borrowed money from the guys and never paid them back. No one even asked Villotti to pay them back. They were usually glad that he was picking on a new victim. For those who were immune to Villotti’s bullying, like Chickie Sarcone and I, Villotti was a funny guy.         

Later that summer, as we were driving in Bud’s car on the way to Belmar Lake in South Jersey, Villotti saw a hippie hitchhiker on the side of the road. He ordered Bud to stop the car, pull over, and pick up the hippie. Bud was confused, but he pulled over.

Villotti opened the car door and the hippie with long, stringy blonde hair and a big, goofy grin, bent over and began to climb into the back seat, face first. Sitting next to Villotti in the back seat, I saw Villotti hit the grinning hippie square in the face and the hippie’s head reared back and his body followed, collapsing on the side of the road.

“Go, go, go!” Villotti ordered Bud and Bud sped off.

Looking back, this was a cruel and heartless act, and I felt bad for the hitchhiker. But at the time, we all felt this was a spontaneous and outrageous act, and we roared with laughter.

Villotti had that effect on us.  

Villotti was arrested for attempted murder, and he was sentenced to prison in 1973. A heroin addict, he contracted AIDS in prison, and he died there in 1975.

Even after all these years, whenever two old school South Philly corner boys get together, they will invariably tell Villotti stories.

This was mine.

© 2026 Paul Davis             

 Note: You can read my previous story about Joe Villotti, The Seventh Street Shooting, via the link below:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Seventh Street Shooting'

And you can also read my other crime fiction short stories via the link below:  

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction Stories                                                                

My Crime Fiction: 'The Seventh Street Shooting'

Below is my crime fiction short story The Seventh Street Shooting. 

The story originally appeared in American Crime Magazine.

The Seventh Street Shooting

By Paul Davis

After a late evening dinner with my wife, I headed upstairs and took a shower.

I shaved under my neatly trimmed short beard and brushed my teeth. I applied a roll-on deodorant under my arms and splashed a bit of aftershave on my neck. I walked into my bedroom and began to dress. I slipped on a pair of dark gray slacks, a black leather belt, black socks, black Italian leather loafer shoes and a powder blue dress shirt, sans tie.

I placed my reading glasses in my shirt's pocket, and I placed my gold wedding band on my finger, and I slipped on my Rolex Submariner watch with the black leather band on my left wrist. I placed a gold chain over my head, and it fell to my chest under my shirt. The gold chain held the original U.S. Navy dog tag that was issued to me way back in February of 1970 when I entered Navy Boot Camp. The gold chain also held a small, finely carved and detailed Scuba diver.

My beautiful wife, who bought me the Rolex Submariner watch just prior to our wedding, also bought me the gold Scuba diver to commemorate her first Scuba diving experience with me in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

I placed my key ring with my house and car keys and my other Navy dog tag into my left pants pocket, and my cellphone and a pocketknife with a short but sharp blade into my right pants pocket. I slipped a clip-on holster with my .38 hammerless Ruger revolver to my belt on my left side. If need be, I could cross-draw the gun with my right hand.

I put on my black sports jacket and placed my slim, black leather long notebook/wallet into my jacket’s left breast pocket. I placed my mini-tape recorder into my jacket’s right breast pocket.

I was showered, shaved, well-dressed, and armed. I was on my way to meet a murderer.

 

I was meeting Robert “Bobby Buddha” Regalbuto at a neighborhood bar in South Philly. Regalbuto read my crime column in the local paper and emailed me using the email address I listed below the newspaper column. He wrote that he remembered me from school and the old neighborhood, and he wanted to offer me a story for my column.

I remembered Regalbuto as well. I recall that he was a violent and half-crazed hoodlum who became a drug addict and was sent to prison for murder in the 1970s.

As I stood at the bar and sipped a vodka on the rocks, I watched the front door. Mark Terranova, my good friend and a retired Philadelphia police detective, sipped his beer at the other end of the bar. Like me, he was armed. I had mentioned to Mark that I was meeting Regalbuto in a bar, and he insisted on backing me up from a short distance. 

When Regalbuto walked in the bar I recognized him immediately, although he was older, grayer and much thinner than the last time I saw him. He walked up to me and shook my hand. He said that I had changed, but he recognized me from my photo that accompanied my column.   

Regalbuto was a member of the Dalton Street and Oregon Avenue street corner gang back in the late 1960s. The teenage gang, known as the “D&O,” was a notorious and troublesome group, well known to the police and other street corner gangs in South Philadelphia.

I knew Regalbuto as we both attended Thomas Junior High School together in the mid-1960s, although he was more than two years older than me. We had several friends in common as I was good friends with several D&O gang members.

Regalbuto thanked me for meeting me and suggested we take an empty table at the back of the bar. He ordered a Ginger Ale from the bartender, explaining to me that he no longer drank, took drugs or smoked. We sat at the table and Regalbuto began to tell me his story.

Regalbuto said he moved away from South Philadelphia some years ago after he was released from prison. He had served 10 years for shooting and killing a man in a quarrel while both of them were high on heroin. He was guilty of second-degree murder, he acknowledged, and he served his time. He told me that he rekindled his Catholic religion while in prison. And although many years had passed, he now felt compelled to confess to the police about another murder he committed back in 1968.

Regalbuto spoke of the Seventh Street shooting that saw two men murdered and several others wounded.

 

I recall vividly the 1968 murders on Seventh Street in South Philly. I was there.

I’ve seen more than my share of violence. Growing up in South Philly in the 1960s, I saw a young soldier fresh from basic training shoot and murder his romantic rival in a hallway in the South Philadelphia High School. I also witnessed a drive-by shooting that murdered two young men on a corner on Broad Street.

And later, as a newspaper crime reporter and columnist, I’ve been on the scene almost immediately after several murders. I recall drinking in a bar when we heard a car crash. We rushed out of the bar and saw a car that had crashed into a home on Oregon Avenue. The driver was slumped over the steering wheel, two bullets in his head, the latest victim in an internecine mob war in South Philly. And later, while out for a morning walk, I heard police and ambulance sirens close by, so I hurried over to a scene where a notorious mob guy had just been shot to death on his doorstep.

A few years later, while out on a ride-along with a Philadelphia police sergeant, he was called to the apartment of a waitress who had been shot and killed. The young woman had been shot through her mouth, we learned, while playing a sex game with her boyfriend.

But the Seventh Street shootings were the first murders I ever witnessed.  

 

I was 15 years old going on 16 in 1968. I was a half-a-hoodlum hanging on the corner of 13^th Street and Oregon Avenue, three block west of the D&O gang’s hangout at George’s Luncheonette. We were friendly with the D&O teenagers as we all went to school together and we freely mixed at the teenage dances.

Two of the wildest D&O hoodlums liked to come to 13^th and Oregan and hang out in our luncheonette, JP’s. Joseph “Crazy Joe” Villotti was “scary crazy,” as one of the 13^th and Oregon Avenue teenagers described him.

Villotti was tall, lean and muscular with a rough face and dark brown hair. He had a raspy voice and an insane laugh. He reminded me of a thinner version of the actor Marlon Brando in the film On the Waterfront.

The teenagers at both the D&O corner and 13^th and Oregan feared being the focus of Villotti’s attention. Villotti was sadistic and a bully with a warped sense of humor. He would shake down the focus of his attention, taking their money or car, and he would also force the teenager to accompany him on some crazy errand.

Thankfully, he never picked on me as he was afraid of my older brother Eddie. My brother, who stopped hanging with us on 13^th and Oregon Avenue and graduated to hanging out with our “old heads,” the previous generation who were then in their mid-20s and went clubbing throughout the city. Eddie, a genuine tough guy, was no bully and he often defended those who were bullied.

Although Villotti was “bat shit” crazy, he was sane enough to know that he could not beat my brother, and a loss to Eddie would hurt his fearsome reputation.

When Villotti visited JP’s, he was often accompanied by another wild man, a big and heavy teenager named Robert Regalbuto, known as “Bobby Buddha.”

He was given the nickname by a teenager who one day saw Regalbuto’s huge bare belly over baggy swim trunks at the Bellmawr Lake, a man-made lake surrounded by sandy beaches that was a popular South Jersey resort for South Philly teenagers back in the 1960s.

Having earlier seen a photo in school of the statue of Buddha with a huge stomach, the teenager began to call Regalbuto “Bobby Buddha,” and the nickname stuck.

When Villotti and Regalbuto walked into JP’s, many of the guys stiffened. As I was protected by my brother’s reputation, I found the two bruisers to be amusing, although I felt bad for the guys they bullied and abused.

 

One warm evening, as we stood on the corner outside of JP’s, Villotti pulled up in a car with Regalbuto and other D&O hoodlums. Two other cars loaded with D&O gang members pulled up behind Villotti’s car.    

Villotti urged us to get into a car and follow them to Seventh and Edwin Streets, where they were going to “fuck up some black guys.” Villotti explained that the black guys had “jumped” a white guy and put him in the hospital.  

One of the D&O guys opened up his car trunk and handed out baseball bats and pipes to our guys. Michael “Mikey Head” Tabone took a bat, as did Anthony “Big Man” Manfredi. Harry “Bud the Dud” Keitel took a five-inch pipe. I didn’t take a weapon as I was the youngest kid there, and I had no intention of fighting. As an aspiring crime writer, I got into the car and drove to Seventh Street as I wanted to watch the fight.

When the four cars screeched to a halt on Seventh Street, we piled out of the cars, bats and pipes in hand. Several black guys came out of the candy store. In the lead was a big and tough-looking guy. I also saw several black guys come out of a bar from across the street as well as other boys and men from row homes on Edwin Street.

The big, tough looking guy asked Villotti, “What the fuck, Joe?”

Obviously, the hoodlum knew Villotti. Villotti responded by pulling out a .45 automatic and shooting the man in the chest. Regalbuto pulled out a .38 revolver and shot another black guy.

Pandemonium ensued. The white and black guys clashed on the street, swinging fists, bats and other weapons. Tabone, not the bravest of guys, left his car running on the corner and took off running up Edwin Street. Not too brave myself at the time, I followed Tabone. About halfway up Edwin Street, a large elderly black woman stood in her doorway, called me a “white motherfucker,” and threw a large, cast-iron frying skillet at me.

The skillet hit me on the right side of my forehead. I fell to my knees and prayed – “Dear God, please don’t let me pass out.”

Thankfully, I didn’t pass out, and I was able to get up and run for two more blocks. Then I walked several more blocks back to 13^th and Oregon Avenue.

Tabone beat me home. He was telling the other teenagers on the corner about the street fight and how gunshots rang out. He also spoke of beating up a couple of black guys, which was of course a lie.

I too lied, explaining the huge lump on my forehead. I told the guys that I was hit by a baseball bat.

 

“The neighborhood, the newspapers and the TV all said this was a racial thing,” Regalbuto explained as we sat in the bar. “Yeah, race relations were not good back then, but the shooting had nothing to do with race. Me and Joe made a drug deal with Martin King, known as “The King,” a black heroin dealer who hung out at a candy store at Seventh and Edwin Streets.

“We bought heroin on credit from King as we were steady customers of his. We were supposed to sell the dope and then pay King. But Joe and me were stone cold heroin addicts then, and we shot up more dope than we sold.”

Regalbuto said that Joe had the crazy idea of instead of paying King what we owed him, we should just kill him.

“Joe also had the idea of making the murder of King look like a race war between the Italians and the blacks.”          

Regalbuto said Villotti murdered King and he murdered King’s number two, a hoodlum named Billy Jones.

“Villotti was a cold-hearted psychopath,” Regalbuto said. “He often spoke of the murders with great relish and showed no regret. I’m different.”

Villotti died of AIDS some years prior in prison, while Regalbuto said he renewed his faith in Jesus Christ while serving his sentence. He confessed his murder to a priest and now he planned to turn himself into the police the following morning.

There was no statute of limitations on first degree murder.

 

I wrote about the Seventh Street shooting in my next newspaper column. I included my own involvement.

This was the first time, publicly or privately, that I admitted to being beaned with a cast-iron skillet by an elderly woman and not hit in the head with a baseball bat by a gang member.  

© 2025 Paul Davis 

Note: You can read my other crime fiction short stories via the link below:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction Stories 

FBI and "Five Eyes" Warn Of Chinese Espionage Via LinkedIn And Job Platforms

 The FBI, in collaboration with the UK’s MI5, Australia’s ASIO, Canada’s CSIS, and New Zealand’s NZSIS (the Five Eyes intelligence alliance), has issued a joint advisory titled “Safeguarding Our Secrets” warning that China’s military intelligence services are using professional networking and job platforms to recruit Western officials and others with access to sensitive information. 

How the Threat Works

Chinese intelligence officers pose as online HR recruiters or consultants representing fake but legitimate-looking “cover companies” located outside China. They post job ads for roles such as foreign policy and defense analysts, think tank positions, or related fields. 

The recruitment process typically involves:

1.     Initial contact via LinkedIn, Indeed, Upwork, or similar platforms.

2.     Virtual interviews where recruiters probe for access to government contacts, military roles, or sensitive topics like the Indo-Pacific region, international trade, or Chinese foreign relations. 

3.     Initial reports on non-sensitive topics, paid for in cash or via third-party payment services.

4.     Escalation to more sensitive information via encrypted messaging apps, with higher payments for increasingly classified or privileged data. 

Who Is at Risk

The bulletin targets:

·         Security clearance holders in defense, foreign affairs, and intelligence.

·         Military personnel, especially in the Indo-Pacific.

·         Academics, journalists, freelance writers, think tank employees, and others with indirect access to defense, security, policy, or economic information. 

Why It Matters

The goal is to obtain privileged military, political, and economic intelligence that could give China a strategic and tactical advantage over the Five Eyes. Even without classified data, sharing certain information can still be prosecuted under U.S. espionage laws and pose risks to national security. 

How to Protect Yourself

·         Verify identities before sharing any information.

·         Avoid discussing classified or sensitive topics in public or unsecured channels.

·         Use encrypted communication for any sensitive exchanges.

·         Report suspicious activity to your employer’s security office or the FBI via tips.fbi.gov or 1‑800‑CALL‑FBI. 

This is not the first time the U.S. has warned about such tactics; similar LinkedIn recruitment schemes were linked to espionage cases in the past.                                                                                

Voyage To Victory: Novelist And War Correspondent Ernest Hemingway On The D-Day Invasion

In honor of the anniversary of D-Day below is novelist and Collier's famed war correspondent Ernest Hemingway's magazine piece on the D-Day invasion:

No one remembers the date of the Battle of Shiloh. But the day we took Fox Green beach was the sixth of June, and the wind was blowing hard out of the northwest. As we moved in toward land in the gray early light, the 36-foot coffin-shaped steel boats took solid green sheet of water that fell on the helmeted heads of the troops packed shoulder to shoulder in the stiff, awkward, uncomfortable, lonely companionship of men going to a battle. There were cases of TNT, with rubber tube life preservers wrapped around them to float them in the surf, stacked forward in the steel well of the LCV(P), and there were piles of bazookas and boxes of bazooka rockets encased in waterproof coverings that reminded you of the transparent raincoats college girls wear.

All this equipment, too, had the rubber tube life preservers strapped and tied on, and the men wore these same gray rubber tubes strapped under their armpits.

As the boat rose to a sea, the green water turned white and came slamming in over the men, the guns and the cases of explosives. Ahead you could see the coast of France. The gray booms and derrick-forested bulks of the attack transports were behind now, and, over all the sea, boats were crawling forward toward France.

As the LCV(P) rose to the crest of a wave, you saw the line of low, silhouetted cruisers and the two big battlewagons lying broad-side to the shore. You saw the heat-bright flashes of their guns and the brown smoke that pushed out against the wind and then blew away.

"What's your course, coxswain?" Lieutenant (jg) Robert Anderson of Roanoke, Virginia, shouted from the stern.

"Two-twenty, sir." the coxswain, Frank Currier of Saugus, Massachusetts, answered. He was a thin-faced, freckled boy with his eyes fixed on the compass.

"Then steer two-twenty, damn it!" Anderson said. "Don't steer all over the whole damn ocean!"

"I'm steering two-twenty, sir," the coxswain said patiently.

"Well, steer it, then," Andy said. He was nervous, but the boat crew, who were making their first landing under fire, knew this officer had taken LCV(P)s into the African landing, Sicily and Salerno, and they had confidence in him.

"Don't steer into that LCT," Andy shouted, as we roared by the ugly steel hull of a tank landing craft, her vehicles sea-lashed, her troops huddling out of the spray.

"I'm steering two-twenty," the coxswain said.

"That doesn't mean you have to run into everything on the ocean," Andy said. He was a handsome, hollow-cheeked boy with a lot of style and a sort of easy petulance. "Mr. Hemingway, will you please see if you can see what that flag is over there, with your glasses?"

I got my old miniature Zeiss glasses out of an inside pocket, where they were wrapped in a woolen sock with some tissue to clean them, and focused them on the flag. I made the flag out just before a wave drenched the glasses.

"It's green."

"Then we are in the mine-swept channel," Andy said. "That's all right. Coxswain, what's the matter with you? Can't you steer two-twenty?"

I was trying to dry my glasses, but it was hopeless the way the spray was coming in, so I wrapped them up for a try later on and watched the battleship Texas shelling the shore. She was just off on our right now and firing over us as we moved in toward the French coast, which was showing clearer all the time on what was, or was not, a course of 220 degrees, depending on whether you believed Andy or Currier the coxswain.

The low cliffs were broken by valleys. There was a town with a church spire in one of them. There was a wood that came down to the sea. There was a house on the right of one of the beaches. On all the headlands, the gorse was burning, but the northwest wind held the smoke close to the ground.

Those of our troops who were not wax-gray with seasickness, fighting it off, trying to hold onto themselves before they had to grab for the steel side of the boat, were watching the Texas with looks of surprise and happiness. Under the steel helmets they looked like pikemen of the Middle Ages to whose aid in battle had suddenly come some strange and unbelievable monster.

There would be a flash like a blast furnace from the 14-inch guns of the Texas, that would lick far out from the ship. Then the yellow-brown smoke would cloud out and, with the smoke still rolling, the concussion and the report would hit us, jarring the men's helmets. It struck your near ear like a punch with a heavy, dry glove.

Then up on the green rise of a hill that now showed clearly as we moved in would spout two tall black fountains of earth and smoke.

That is the only thing I remember hearing a G.I. say all that morning. They spoke to one another sometimes, but you could not hear them with the roar the 225-horsepower high-speed gray Diesel made. Mostly, though, they stood silent without speaking.

I never saw anyone smile after we left the line of firing ships. They had seen the mysterious monster that was helping them, but now he was gone and they were alone again. I found if I kept my mouth open from the time I saw the guns flash until after the concussion, it took the shock away.

I was glad when we were inside and out of the line of fire of the Texas and the Arkansas. Other ships were firing over us all day and you were never away from the sudden, slapping thud of naval gunfire. But the big guns of the Texas and Arkansas that sounded as though they were throwing whole railway trains across the sky were far away as we moved on in. They were no part of our world as we moved steadily over the gray, whitecapped sea toward where, ahead of us, death was being issued in small, intimate, accurately administered packages. They were like the thunder of a storm that is passing in another county whose rain will never reach you. But they were knocking out the shore batteries, so that later the destroyers could move in almost to the shore when they had to come in to save the landing.

Invasion Coast Dead Ahead

Now ahead of us we could see the coast in complete detail. Andy opened the silhouette map with all the beaches and their distinguishing features reproduced on it, and I got my glasses out and commenced drying and wiping them under the shelter of the skirts of my burberry. As far as you could see, there were landing craft moving in over the gray sea. The sun was under at this time, and smoke was blowing all along the coast.

The map that Andy spread on his knees was in ten folded sheets, held together with staples, and marked Appendix One to Annex A. Five different sheets were stapled together and, as I watched Andy open his map, which spread, open, twice as long as a man could reach with outstretched arms, the wind caught it, and the section of the map showing Dog White, Fox Red, Fox Green, Dog Green, Easy Red and part of Sector Charlie snapped twice gaily in the wind and blew overboard.

I had studied this map and memorized most of it, but it is one thing to have it in your memory and another thing to see it actually on paper and be able to check and be sure.

"Have you got a small chart, Andy?" I shouted. "One of those one-sheet ones with just Fox Green and Easy Red?"

"Never had one," said Andy. All this time we were approaching the coast of France, which looked increasingly hostile.

"That the only chart?" I said, close to his ear.

"Only one," said Andy, "and it disintegrated on me. A wave hit it, and it disintegrated. What beach do you think we are opposite?"

"There's the church tower that looks like Colleville," I said. "That ought to be on Fox Green. Then there is a house like the one marked on Fox Green and the timber that runs down to the water in a straight line, like on Easy Red."

"That's right," said Andy. "But I think we're too far to the left."

"Those are the features, all right," I said. "I've got them in my head but there shouldn't be any cliffs. The cliffs start to the left of Fox Green where Fox Red beach starts. If that's true, then Fox Green has to be on our right."

"There's a control boat here somewhere," Andy said. "We'll find out what beach we're opposite."

"She can't be Fox Green if there are cliffs," I said.

"That's right," Andy said. "We'll find out from a control boat. Steer for that PC, coxswain. No, not there! Don't you see him? Get ahead of him. You'll never catch him that way."

We never did catch him, either. We slammed into the seas instead of topping them, and the boat pulled away from us. The LCV(P) was bow-heavy with the load of TNT and the weight of the three-eighth-inch steel armor, and where she should have lifted easily over the seas she banged into them and the water came in solidly.

"The hell with him!" Andy said. "We'll ask this LCI."

Landing Craft Infantry are the only amphibious operations craft that look as though they were made to go to sea. They very nearly have the lines of a ship, while the LCV(P)s look like iron bathtubs, and the LCTs like floating freight gondolas. Everywhere you could see, the ocean was covered with these craft but very few of them were headed toward shore. They would start toward the beach, then sheer off and circle back. On the beach itself, in from where we were, there were lines of what looked like tanks, but my glasses were still too wet to function.

"Where's Fox Green beach?" Andy cupped his hands and shouted up at the LCI that was surging past us, loaded with troops.

"Can't hear," someone shouted. We had no megaphone.

"What beach are we opposite?" Andy yelled.

The officer on the LCI shook his head. The other officers did not even look toward us. They were looking over their shoulders at the beach.

"Get her close alongside, coxswain," Andy said. "Come on, get in there close."

We roared up alongside the LCI, then cut down the motor as she slipped past us.

"Where's Fox Green beach?" Andy yelled, as the wind blew the words away.

"Straight in to your right," an officer shouted.

"Thanks." Andy looked astern at the other two boats and told Ed Banker, the signalman, "Get them to close up. Get them up."

Ed Banker turned around and jerked his forearm, with index finger raised, up and down. "They're closing up, sir," he said.

Looking back you could see the other heavily loaded boats climbing the waves that were green now the sun was out, and pounding down into the troughs.

"You wet all through, sir?" Ed asked me.

"All the way."

"Me, too," Ed said. "Only thing wasn't wet was my belly button. Now it's wet, too."

"This has got to be Fox Green," I said to Andy. "I recognize where the cliff stops. That's all Fox Green to the right. There is the Colleville church. There's the house on the beach. There's the Ruquet Valley on Easy Red to the right. This is Fox Green absolutely."

"We'll check when we get in closer," Andy said. "You really think it's Fox Green?"

"It has to be."

Ahead of us, the various landing craft were all acting in the same confusing manner—heading in, coming out and circling.

The Tanks Were Stymied

"There's something wrong as hell," I said to Andy. "See the tanks? They're all along the edge of the beach. They haven't gone in at all."

Just then one of the tanks flared up and started to burn with thick black smoke and yellow flame. Farther down the beach, another tank started burning. Along the line of the beach, they were crouched like big yellow toads along the high water line. As I stood up, watching, two more started to barn. The first ones were pouring out gray smoke now, and the wind was blowing it flat along the beach. As I stood up, trying to see if there was anyone in beyond the high water line of tanks, one of the burning tanks blew up with a flash in the streaming gray smoke.

"There's a boat we can check with," Andy said. "Coxswain, steer for that LC over there. Yes, that one. Put her hard over. Come on. Get over there!"

This was a black boat, fast-looking, mounting two machine guns and wallowing slowly out away from the beach, her engine almost idling.

"Can you tell us what beach this is?" Andy shouted.

"Dog White," came the answer.

"Are you sure?"

"Dog White beach," they called from the black boat.

"You checked it?" Andy called.

"It's Dog White beach," they called back from the boat, and their screw churned the water white as they slipped into speed and pulled away from us.

I was discouraged now, because ahead of us, inshore, was every landmark I had memorized on Fox Green and Easy Red beaches. The line of the cliffs that marked the left end of Fox Green beach showed clearly. Every house was where it should be. The steeple of the Colleville church showed exactly as it had in the silhouette. I had studied the charts, the silhouettes, the data on the obstacles in the water and the defenses all one morning, and I remember having asked our captain, Commander W. I. Leahy of the attack transport Dorothea M. Dix, if our attack was to be a diversion in force.

"No," he had said. "Absolutely not. What makes you ask that question?"

"Because these beaches are so highly defensible."

"The Army is going to clear the obstacles and the mines out in the first thirty minutes," Captain Leahy had told me. "They're going to cut lanes in through them for the landing craft."

I wish I could write the full story of what it means to take a transport across through a mine-swept channel; the mathematical precision of maneuver; the infinite detail and chronometrical accuracy and split-second timing of everything from the time the anchor comes up until the boats are lowered and away into the roaring, sea-churning assembly circle from which they break off into the attack wave.

The story of all the teamwork behind that has to be written, but to get all that in would take a book, and this is simply the account of how it was in a LCV(P) on the day we stormed Fox Green beach.

Right at this moment, no one seemed to know where Fox Green beach was. I was sure we were opposite it, but the patrol boat had said this was Dog White beach which should be 4,295 yards to our right, if we were where I knew we were.

"It can't be Dog White, Andy," I said. "Those are the cliffs where Fox Red starts on our left."

"The man says it's Dog White," Andy said.

In the solid-packed troops in the boat, a man with a vertical white bar painted on his helmet was looking at us and shaking his head. He had high cheekbones and a rather flat, puzzled face.

"The lieutenant says he knows it, and we're on Fox Green," Ed Banker shouted back at us. He spoke again to the lieutenant but we could not hear what they said.

Andy shouted at the lieutenant, and he nodded his helmeted head up and down.

"He says it's Fox Green," Andy said.

"Ask him where he wants to go in," I said.

Leading in the Seventh Wave

Just then another small black patrol boat with several officers in it came toward us from the beach, and an officer stood up in it and megaphoned, "Are there any boats here for the seventh wave on Fox Green beach?"

There was one boat for that wave with us, and the officer shouted to them to follow their boat.

"Is this Fox Green?" Andy called to them.

"Yes. Do you see that ruined house? Fox Green beach runs for eleven hundred and thirty-five yards to the right of that ruined house."

"Can you get into the beach?"

"I can't tell you that. You will have to ask a beach control boat."

"Can't we just run in?"

"I have no authority on that. You must ask the beach control boat."

"Where is it?"

"Way out there somewhere."

"We can go in where an LCV(P) has been in or an LCI," I said. "It's bound to be clear where they run in, and we can go in under the lee of one."

"We'll look for the control boat," Andy said, and we went banging out to sea through the swarming traffic of landing craft and lighters.

"I can't find her," Andy said. "She isn't here. She ought to be in closer. We have to get the hell in. We're late now. Let's go in."

"Ask him where he is supposed to land," I said.

Andy went down and talked to the lieutenant. I could see the lieutenant's lips moving as he spoke, but could hear nothing above the engine noise.

"He wants to run straight in for that ruined house," Andy said, when he came back.

We headed in for the beach. As we came in, running fast, the black patrol boat swung over toward us again.

"Did you find the control boat?" they megaphoned.

"No!"

"What are you going to do?"

"We're going in," Andy yelled.

"Well, good luck to you fellows," the megaphone said. It came over, slow and solemn like an elegy. "Good luck to all of you fellows."

That included Thomas E. Nash, engineer, from Seattle with a good grin and two teeth out of it. It included Edward F. Banker, signalman, of Brooklyn, and Lacey T. Shiflet of Orange, Virginia, who would have been the gunner if we had had room for guns. It included Frank Currier, the coxswain, of Saugus, Massachusetts, and it included Andy and me. When we heard the lugubrious tone of that parting benediction we all knew how bad the beach really was.

As we came roaring in on the beach, I sat high on the stern to see what we were up against. I had the glasses dry now and I took a good look at the shore. The shore was coming toward us awfully fast, and in the glasses it was coming even faster.

On the beach on the left where there was no sheltering overhang of shingled bank, the first, second, third, fourth and fifth waves lay where they had fallen, looking like so many heavily laden bundles on the flat pebbly stretch between the sea and the first cover. To the right, there was an open stretch where the beach exit led up a wooded valley from the sea. It was here that the Germans hoped to get something very good, and later we saw them get it.

To the right of this, two tanks were burning on the crest of the beach, the smoke now gray after the first violent black and yellow billows. Coming in I had spotted two machine gun nests. One was firing intermittently from the ruins of the smashed house on the right of the small valley. The other was two hundred yards to the right and possibly four hundred yards in front of the beach.

The officer commanding the troops we were carrying had asked us to head directly for the beach opposite the ruined house.

"Right in there," he said. "That's where."

"Andy," I said, "that whole sector is enfiladed by machine gun fire. I just saw them open twice on that stranded boat."

Target for Machine Guns

An LCV(P) was slanted drunkenly in the stakes like a lost gray steel bathtub. They were firing at the water line, and the fire was kicking up sharp spurts of water.

"That's where he says he wants to go," Andy said. "So that's where we'll take him."

"It isn't any good," I said. "I've seen both those guns open up."

"That's where he wants to go," Andy said. "Put her ahead straight in." He turned astern and signaled to the other boats, jerking his arm, with its upraised finger, up and down.

"Come on, you guys," he said, inaudible in the roar of the motor that sounded like a plane taking off. "Close up! Close up! What's the matter with you? Close up, can't you? Take her straight in, coxswain!"

At this point, we entered the beaten zone from the two machine gun points, and I ducked my head under the sharp cracking that was going overhead. Then I dropped into the well in the stern sheets where the gunner would have been if we had any guns. The machine gun fire was throwing water all around the boat, and an antitank shell tossed up a jet of water over us.

The lieutenant was talking, but I couldn't hear what he said. Andy could hear him. He had his head down close to his lips.

"Get her the hell around and out of here, coxswain!" Andy called. "Get her out of here!"

As we swung round on our stem in a pivot and pulled out, the machine gun fire stopped. But individual sniping shots kept cracking over or spitting into the water around us. I'd got my head up again with some difficulty and was watching the shore.

"It wasn't cleared, either," Andy said. "You could see the mines on all those stakes."

"Let's coast along and find a good place to put them ashore," I said. "If we stay outside of the machine gun fire, I don't think they'll shoot at us with anything big because we're just as LCV(P), and they've got better targets than us."

"We'll look for a place," Andy said.

"What's he want now?" I said to Andy.

The lieutenant's lips were moving again. They moved very slowly and as though they had no connection with him or with his face.

Andy got down to listen to him. He came back into the stern. "He wants to go out to an LCI we passed that has his commanding officer on it."

"We can get him ashore farther up toward Easy Red," I said.

"He wants to see his commanding officer," Andy said. "Those people in that black boat were from his outfit."

Advice from a Wounded Ship

Out a way, rolling in the sea, was a Landing Craft Infantry, and as we came alongside of her I saw a ragged shellhole through the steel plates forward of her pilothouse where an 88-mm. German shell had punched through. Blood was dripping from the shiny edges of the hole into the sea with each roll of the LCI. Her rails and hull had been befouled by seasick men, and her dead were laid forward of her pilothouse. Our lieutenant had some conversation with another officer while we rose and fell in the surge alongside the black iron hull, and then we pulled away.

Andy went forward and talked to him, then came aft again, and we sat up on the stern and watched two destroyers coming along toward us from the eastern beaches, their guns pounding away at targets on the headlands and sloping fields behind the beaches.

"He says they don't want him to go in yet; to wait," Andy said. "Let's get out of the way of this destroyer."

"How long is he going to wait?"

"He says they have no business in there now. People that should have been ahead of them haven't gone in yet. They told him to wait."

"Let's get in where we can keep track of it," I said. "Take the glasses and look at that beach, but don't tell them forward what you see."

Andy looked. He handed the glasses back to me and shook his head.

"Let's cruise along it to the right and see how it is up at that end," I said. "I'm pretty sure we can get in there when he wants to get in. You're sure they told him he shouldn't go in?"

"That's what he says."

"Talk to him again and get it straight."

Andy came back. "He says they shouldn't go in now. They're supposed to clear the mines away, so the tanks can go, and he says nothing is in there to go yet. He says they told him it is all fouled up and to stay out yet a while."

The destroyer was firing point blank at the concrete pillbox that had fired at us on the first trip into the beach, and as the guns fired you heard the bursts and saw the earth jump almost at the same time as the empty brass cases clanged back onto the steel deck. The five-inch guns of the destroyer were smashing at the ruined house at the edge of the little valley where the other machine gun had fired from.

"Let's move in now that the can has gone by and see if we can't find a good place," Andy said.

"That can punched out what was holding them up there, and you can see some infantry working up that draw now," I said to Andy. "Here, take the glasses."

Slowly, laboriously, as though they were Atlas carrying the world on their shoulders, men were working up the valley on our right. They were not firing. They were just moving slowly up the valley like a tired pack train at the end of the day, going the other way from home.

"The infantry has pushed up to the top of the ridge at the end of that valley," I shouted to the lieutenant.

"They don't want us yet,"' he said. "They told me clear they didn't want us in yet."

"Let me take the glasses for Hemingway," Andy said. Then he handed them back. "In there, there's somebody signaling with a yellow flag, and there's a boat in there in trouble, it looks like. Coxswain, take her straight in."

We moved in toward the beach at full speed, and Ed Banker looked around and said, "Mr. Anderson, the other boats are coming, too."

"Get them back!" Andy said. "Get them back!"

Banker turned around and waved the boats away. He had difficulty making them understand, but finally the wide waves they were throwing subsided and they dropped astern.

"Did you get them back?" Andy asked, without looking away from the beach where we could see a half-sunken LCV(P) foundered in the mined stakes.

"Yes, sir," Ed Banker said.

An LCI was headed straight toward us, pulling away from the beach after having circled to go in. As it passed, a man shouted with a megaphone, "There are wounded on that boat and she is sinking."

"Can you get in to her?"

The only words we heard clearly from the megaphone as the wind snatched the voice away were "machine gun nest."

"Did they say there was or there wasn't a machine gun nest?" Andy said.

"I couldn't hear."

"Run alongside of her again, coxswain," he said. "Run close alongside."

"Did you say there was a machine gun nest?" he shouted.

An officer leaned over with the megaphone, "A machine gun nest has been firing on them. They are sinking."

"Take her straight in, coxswain," Andy said.

It was difficult to make our way through the stakes that had been sunk as obstructions, because there were contact mines fastened them, that looked like large double pie plates fastened face to face. They looked as though they had been spiked to the pilings and then assembled. They were the ugly, neutral gray-yellow color that almost everything is in war.

We did not know what other stakes with mines were under us, but the ones that we could see we fended off by hand and worked our way to the sinking boat.

It was not easy to bring on board the man who had been shot through the lower abdomen, because there was no room to let the ramp down the way we were jammed in the stakes with the cross sea.

I do not know why the Germans did not fire on us unless the destroyer had knocked the machine gun pillbox out. Or maybe they were waiting for us to blow up with the mines. Certainly the mines had been a great amount of trouble to lay and the Germans might well have wanted to see them work. We were in the range of the antitank gun that had fired on us before, and all the time we were maneuvering and working in the stakes I was waiting for it to fire.

As we lowered the ramp the first time, while we were crowded in against the other LCV(P), but before she sank, I saw three tanks coming along the beach, barely moving, they were advancing so slowly. The Germans let them cross the open space where the valley opened onto the beach, and it was absolutely flat with a perfect field of fire. Then I saw a little fountain of water jut up, just over and beyond the lead tank. Then smoke broke out of the leading tank on the side away from us, and I saw two men dive out of the turret and land on their hands and knees on the stones of the beach. They were close enough so that I could see their faces, but no more men came out as the tank started to blaze up and burn fiercely.

By then, we had the wounded man and the survivors on board, the ramp back up, and were feeling our way out through the stakes. As we cleared the last of the stakes, and Currier opened up the engine wide as we pulled out to sea, another tank was beginning to burn.

We took the wounded boy out to the destroyer. They hoisted him aboard it in one of those metal baskets and took on the survivors. Meantime, the destroyers had run in almost to the beach and were blowing every pillbox out of the ground with their five-inch guns. I saw a piece of German about three feet long with an arm on it sail high up into the air in the fountaining of one shellburst. It reminded me of a scene in Petroushka.

Landing on the Beach

The infantry had now worked up the valley on our left and had gone on over that ridge. There was no reason for anyone to stay out now. We ran in to a good spot we had picked on the beach and put our troops and their TNT and their bazookas and their lieutenant ashore, and that was that.

The Germans were still shooting with their antitank guns, shifting them around in the valley, holding their fire until they had a target they wanted. Their mortars were still laying a plunging fire along the beaches. They had left people behind to snipe at the beaches, and when we left, finally, all these people who were firing were evidently going to stay until dark at least.

The heavily loaded ducks that had formerly sunk in the waves on their way in were now making the beach steadily. The famous thirty-minute clearing of the channels through the mined obstacles was still a myth, and now, with the high tide, it was a tough trip in with the stakes submerged.

We had six craft missing, finally, out of the twenty-four LVC(P)s that went in from the Dix, but many of the crews could have been picked up and might be on other vessels. It had been a frontal assault in broad daylight, against a mined beach defended by all the obstacles military ingenuity could devise. The beach had been defended as stubbornly and as intelligently as any troops could defend it. But every boat from the Dix had landed her troops and cargo. No boat was lost through bad seamanship. All that were lost were lost by enemy action. And we had taken the beach.

There is much that I have not written. You could write for a week and not give everyone credit for what he did on a front of 1,135 yards. Real war is never like paper war, nor do accounts of it read much the way it looks. But if you want to know how it was in an LCV(P) on D-Day when we took Fox Green beach and Easy Red beach on the sixth of June, 1944, then this is as near as I can come to it.                      

Note: You can also read my Washington Times review of Hemingway at War via the link below:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Washington Times Review Of ‘Hemingway at War: Ernest Hemingway’s Adventures as a World War II Correspondent’