Memories--and Comradeship--March On at VFW Post

Mostly, VFW Post 2805 is a bar.

By noon it is full of smoke, and World War II vets Bert Silverstein, Herb Casella and Don Berkshire have already claimed their bar stools. Deadbolt and Gumball Eddie will be in later, crowding the shuffleboard table, along with the others--the painting contractors, builders, butchers and salesmen who make this place their second home.

They are members of the West San Fernando Valley Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. They come here, some every day, some once a week or so, to talk, to drink, to sip a cup of coffee and watch TV.

Each has survived service in a war on foreign soil or seas. Some still wake up at night, fighting off cold sweats and memories. Some don’t.

Post 2805 is a place where the ordinary lives of these men--and a few women--intersect with their experiences as soldiers, where some seek to make sense of war, even if they never talk about it. Most of the talk, like at any bar, is of everyday events: caring for a sick child, falling in love again at 70 or 80, selling a house, winning a bet, taking a fishing trip. Quitting drinking. Quitting smoking. Starting up again.

Outsiders may see VFW halls as remnants of the past, places for old World War II vets to reminisce while their numbers dwindle. But at this post in Canoga Park, at least, the ranks actually are growing as Vietnam vets, now in their 50s, enroll as life members and fill leadership spots--much as veterans of World War II once took over as post commanders from those who fought in World War I.

White-haired Paul Evenson is a regular at Post 2805’s bar. “I saw a little combat,� the World War II vet says in the softest of voices.

“We had six weeks of basic training. Then the Battle of the Bulge started up and they sent me over there as a replacement for somebody who had died.�

He was 17.

Evenson still carries the patch from his division--70th Infantry--in his wallet. Only 10 of his group from basic training came back alive, he says.

“We went up in a 2 1/2-ton truck at night,� he recalls. “They told us to dig a foxhole. I didn’t even know I was on the front line. So my buddy and I dug a foxhole and in the morning I woke up and he had a piece of shrapnel in his head. That’s what saved my life. That’s when I knew what a war was.�

His buddy, Evenson says, used to carry a Bible. They were friends because they both came from religious families.

“All the way from New York, he had a Bible. And when I saw him dead with a Bible in his hand, I stopped believing in everything except me.�

The German soldiers were so close, Evenson says, he could see their faces as he shot at them. Some, he would learn later, were only 13 years old. But killing wasn’t so hard after his buddy got killed, he adds.

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One time, after the war was over, Evenson’s unit was guarding some German troopers. They got word that the SS men among them were planning to escape.

“We went around the corner and waited for the SSers to come out and we just mowed ‘em down,� he says. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.�

After Germany surrendered, Evenson’s unit spent two days liberating a concentration camp near Frankfurt. “I saw what you see on TV,� he says. “I saw dead bodies. And the ones that were alive, they looked like skeletons walking around.

“I still dream about it. It was only two days of my life, but it stays with you forever.�

Roy Nussbaum got drafted in 1967, when the war in Vietnam was at its height. He sometimes annoys the other Vietnam vets at the post by talking about the war so much--when he’s not fielding calls on the bar phone from his 80-something mother.

“We got off the plane and it was hotter than hell,� he recalls. “Everybody was walking around with weapons. Rifles slung all over ‘em. Welcome to the war.�

Nussbaum can still name every place he served: Plei Ku, Dak To, an old Michelin rubber plantation dubbed the Oasis. . . .

He was a foot soldier on the front lines, carrying an M-16 and scouting out North Vietnamese army regulars. On Thanksgiving Day, 1967, he was heading to the mess tent when the North Vietnamese let loose a mortar barrage.

In the bar, these many years later, he notes how a mortar sounds like a popping cork. He puts his finger in his mouth and pops it--that’s what a mortar sounds like, he says.

“We had one guy named McCoy,� he says. “He did long range reconnaissance patrol. They would drop him out there for a couple of weeks by himself. He’d go looking for Vietnamese. He’d come back with ears.

“He liked that kind of life. Not me, man. . . . It takes all kinds to win a war.�

You realized when you got home that you had become a different person, he says.

“The first day back my ex-wife and I stayed at the Sportsman’s Lodge’ [in Studio City]. The next night, we went to dinner at my mother-in-law’s.

“I said, pass the [expletive] salt. At my mother-in-law’s house! They all looked at me.�

Listening in at the bar, John Pelligrino, who served in Korea, interrupts to say that returning home was traumatic for everyone.

“We had to come in the back door just like you guys did,� he tells Nussbaum, who had been complaining about the reception Vietnam Vets received.

“War stinks,� Pelligrino says. “No matter what it is.�

“Coming back was the hardest thing,� Paul Evenson says. “I had killed people, and I didn’t know what I would do. I couldn’t even pick up a cup of coffee without my hand shaking. . . .

“I tried to jump off the train coming back. I just consider myself crazy from some of the things I did.�

He married a 15-year-old girl and raised their child alone after she left him. He remarried when the boy was 5. Then he divorced again. He worked at the Budweiser plant in Van Nuys for 28 years, until his retirement. He flew planes as a part-time job and hobby until a recent stroke.

Now, he raises parrots. He proudly relates how one, an African gray he inherited when his girlfriend died, is doing particularly well, having fully recovered under his care from the neurotic habit of picking out his own feathers.

Herb Casella, who took shrapnel in his back on Mad Dog Hill in the Philippines during World War II, is “pushing 75� now. He still smokes unfiltered Camels but quit booze three years ago. So he sips only coffee at the bar.

After two divorces, he is in love again.

“This girlfriend I have now,� he says, “she is one of the best friends a man can have other than his mother. She’s one month younger than I am. But she could pass for her middle 50s. We look good together. We dance good together.�

Like the fraternal lodges that seem foreign to many Americans these days, the no-frills VFW post draws a mostly working-class crowd looking not only for comradeship but an opportunity to perform old-fashioned kinds of service. At Post 2805, when a member loses a job, he or she can tend bar for a while to make some cash. A member who has Alzheimer’s is looked after by his fellows. A couple who stood to lose their home last month now have a clean little apartment, thanks to the efforts of members.

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Harold Brenner, the sergeant-at-arms for Post 2805, has been volunteering at the Sepulveda and West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs hospitals for 15 years, ever since his brother died at the VA in Chicago.

Brenner, who lives in Boyle Heights with his wife of 50 years, takes three buses to get to the Sepulveda VA hospital. Last week, he sold raffle tickets to raise money for the hospitalized vets.

“It’s important,� he says, “to help the less fortunate.�

A few years ago, post members brought coffee and doughnuts to returning Desert Storm troops. After the Northridge earthquake, they gave food and blankets to families made homeless.

And under the stewardship of member John Endres--for the past 20 years, a meat department manager for Ralph’s supermarkets--Post 2805 helped start a program encouraging youngsters to put lights on their bicycles.

Wayne Beach, a painting contractor and former Navy man who served in Vietnam, is the group’s current commander. Last week, after finishing his beer, he pulled a clean soldier’s cap over a fresh haircut and prepared to lead the post’s monthly meeting, the last before the annual Veterans Day dinner, held Saturday night.

About 50 men gathered on metal folding chairs in the meeting room decorated with pictures of post members over the years--including former Mayor Sam Yorty. They rise, and offer sharp salutes, when Beach tells them it is time to salute the colors.

“I pledge allegiance,� they recite, “to the United States of America.�

Veterans, John Endres said earlier, “learned this in the heat of battle: that we share each other’s blood. We share each other’s life. We share each other’s food.

“And it’s a damn shame that war had to teach us that.�