Ladies and Gentleman, Good evening. My name is Perry Piwowarski I am with the West Hudson Detachment Marine Corps League, Kearny, N.J.
With me tonight is Major John Chacka
Inspector/Instructor, Golf Co. 2nd Bn 25 Marines
Also with me are several members of our detachment who have know Frank for about 30 years and color guard members Sgt. John Cleary and Sgt. Matt Buccerier. We were formed in 1976 and Frank is a charter member of our detachment.
So Frank has been a charter member in our det for 32 years and we as a detachment are very honored to be here tonight to part take in this celebration.
Also with us is Doc Watkins who served with Frank in Hotel Co. in Vietnam. Another one of his Vietnam buddies was to be here tonight but I received this e-mail yesterday afternoon and like to read it:
Dear Perry.
I’m sorry to inform you that due to a family medical emergency I will not be able to attend Thursday night. I was committed to come and if the restaurant charges you for my reservation please advise me as to what the cost is and I will gladly reimburse you.
Please read this email at the roast.
More then 40 years ago I met frank when he came to California to join up with the newly formed Hotel 2/7. I don’t have any funny stories to tell mainly due to a loss of so many brain cells over the years. What I do recall about frank was that he never complained. Thru all the hill humping in California, running in the 100 degree weather in Yoshida on Okinawa and finally all the tromping thru rice paddies, monsoon rain, patrols and setting up night ambushes. Frank never complained. He followed orders to the T and never questioned them. He was one hell of a good Marine. If I ever had to go back into combat and was able to hand pick the men to go with me. You can take it to the bank that frank would be at the top of that list. Frank I'm sorry we lost contact since the last reunion. I am even more sorry that my plans to come see you were disrupted by my wife's sudden hospitalization with chest pains. She appears to be ok but they are keeping her a few days for tests. I have never forgotten you nor will I ever forget you.
It has been my Honor to serve with you in the greatest fighting force the world has ever known.... THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS.
Please email me if you can. I would like to come up sometime in the near future to visit with you.
God Bless my friend and Semper Fi.
Always.
George Coraluzzo
I am not here tonight to roast Frank or talk about our friendship or about him being my brother-in-law; I am here tonight to talk about Frank as a United States Marine, this bond that we have as Marine, and what makes a marine a marine.
I have know Frank for over 37 years as his brother-in-law and in all those years we had only one incident. I don’t think he, his sister or wife even remember this. We were at his house one night and we got into how can I say, “An INTENTS discussion” I cant even remember what it was about, but things got heated frank and I both stormed out of the house to say the least pretty pissed. I don’t remember if it was the next day or a few days later I was at his parents house sitting on the stoop, (I am from Jersey city and we call it a stoop not steps) anyway frank pulls up in his car and start walking up to the house, now I cant tell you if his parents or sister were looking at the window and saying, “Oh no” thinking that we may have a fight. So I got up walk towards frank, we both hugged each other at the same time and said, SEMPER FI! We never ever had issue for the next 37 years.
The point is the bond of a marine meant more to us then anything, I will explain how Marines get this bond.
“What makes a Marine a Marine”
Ask a Marine what's so special about the Marines and the answer would be "esprit de corps", an unhelpful French phrase that means exactly what it looks like - the spirit of the Corps, but what is that spirit, and where does it come from?
The Marine Corps is the only branch of the U.S. Armed Forces that recruits people specifically to Fight. The Army emphasizes personal development (an Army of One), the Navy promises fun (let the journey begin), the Air Force offers security (its a great way of life). Missing from all the advertisements is the hard fact that a soldier's lot is to suffer and perhaps to die for his people, and take lives at the risk of his/her own.
Even the thematic music of the services reflects this evasion. The Army's Caisson Song describes a pleasant country outing. Over hill and dale, lacking only a picnic basket. Anchors Aweigh, the Navy's celebration of the joys of sailing, could have been penned by Jimmy Buffet. The Air Force song is a lyric poem of blue skies and engine thrust. All is joyful and invigorating, and safe. There are no land mines in the dales nor snipers behind the hills, no submarines or cruise missiles threaten the ocean jaunt, no bandits are lurking in the wild blue yonder. The Marines Hymn, by contrast, is all-combat. We fight our Country's battles, First to fight for right and freedom, We have fought in every clime and place where we could take a gun, in many a strife we have fought for life and never lost our nerve. It is the oldest official song in the military
When ever A marine hears the Hymn no matter were he is, if he is sitting down he will stand and come to attention, if he is walking, he will come to a halt and stand at attention until the hymn is over. This is a gesture of respect
The choice is made clear. You may join the Army to go to adventure training, or join the Navy to go to Bangkok, or join the Air Force to go to computer school. You join the Marine Corps to go to War! But the mere act of signing the enlistment contract confers no status in the Corps. The Army recruit is told from his first minute in uniform that "you're in the Army now?, soldier. The Navy and Air Force enlistees are sailors or airmen as soon as they get off bus at the training center. The new arrival at Marine Corps boot camp is called a recruit, or worse, (a lot worse), but never a MARINE. Not yet, maybe never. He or she must earn the right to claim the title of UNITED STATES MARINE, and failure returns you to civilian life without hesitation or ceremony.
In Vietnam the Marines were taking two hundred casualties a week, yet Drill Instructors had no qualms about winnowing out almost a quarter of their recruits. Every one of those who were dropped had been passed by the recruiters as fit for service. But they failed the test of Boot Camp, not necessarily for physical reasons some were outstanding high school athletes for whom the calisthenics and running were child's play. The cause of their failure was not in the biceps nor the legs, but in the spirit. They had lacked the will to endure the mental and emotional strain, so they would not be Marines. Heavy commitments and high casualties not withstanding, the Corps reserves the right to pick and choose.
History classes in boot camp? Stop a soldier on the street and ask him to name a battle of World War One. Pick a sailor at random to describe the epic fight of the Bon Homme Richard. Everyone has heard of McGuire Air Force Base. So ask any airman who Major Thomas McGuire was, and why he is so commemorated. I am not carping, and there is no sheer in this criticism. All of the services have glorious traditions, but no one teaches the young soldier, sailor or airman what his uniform means and why he should be proud of it. But - ask a Marine about World War One, and you will hear of the wheat field at Belleau Wood and the courage of the Fourth Marine Brigade, fifth and sixth regiments.
Faced with an enemy of superior numbers entrenched in tangled forest undergrowth, the Marines received an order to attack that even the charitable cannot call ill - advised. It was insane. Artillery support was absent and air support hadn't been invented yet, so the Brigade charged German machine guns with only bayonets, grenades, and indomitable fighting spirit. A bandy- legged little barrel of a gunnery sergeant, Daniel J. Daly, rallied his company with a shout, "Come on you sons a bitches, do you want to live forever?" He took out three machine guns himself, and they would give him the Medal of Honor except for a technicality, he already had two of them. French liaison-officers, hardened though they were by four years of trench bound slaughter, were shocked as the Marines charged across the open wheat field under a blazing sun directly into the teeth of enemy fire. Their action was so anachronistic on the twentieth-century battlefield that they might as well have been swinging cutlasses, but - the enemy was only human; they could not stand up to this. So the Marines took Belleau Wood. The Germans called them "DOGS FROM THE DEVIL"
Every Marine knows this story and dozens more. We are taught them in boot camp as a regular part of the curriculum. Every Marine will always be taught them! You can learn to don a gas mask anytime, even on the plane in route to the war zone, but before you can wear the Eagle Globe and Anchor and claim the title you must know about the Marines who made that emblem and title meaningful. So long as you can march and shoot and revere the legacy of the Corps you can take your place in line. And that line is unified spirit as in purpose. A soldier wears branch of service insignia on his collar, metal shoulder pins and cloth sleeve patches to identify his unit. Sailors wear a rating badge that identifies what they do for the Navy. Marines wear only the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor, together with personal ribbons and their CHERISHED marksmanship badges.
There is nothing on a Marine's uniform to indicate what he or she does, nor what unit the Marine belongs to. You cannot tell by looking at a Marine whether you are seeing a truck driver, a computer programmer, or a machine gunner. The Corps explains this as a security measure to conceal the identity and location of units, but the Marines penchant for publicity makes that the least likely of explanations. No, the Marine is amorphous, even anonymous, by conscious design.
Every Marine is a rifleman first and foremost, a Marine first, last and Always! You may serve a four-year enlistment or even a twenty plus year career without seeing action, but if the word is given you'll charge across that Wheatfield! Whether a Marine has been schooled in automated supply, or automotive mechanics, or aviation electronics, is immaterial. Those things are secondary - the Corps does them because it must. The modern battle requires the technical appliances, and since the enemy has them, so do we, but no Marine boasts mastery of them. Our pride is in our marksmanship, our discipline, and our membership in a fraternity of courage and sacrifice.
"For the honor of the fallen, for the glory of the dead", Edgar Guest wrote of Belleau Wood, "the living line of courage kept the faith and moved ahead". They are all gone now, those Marines who made a French farmer's little Wheatfield into one of the most enduring of Marine Corps legends. Many of them did not survive the day, and eight long decades have claimed the rest. But their actions are immortal. The Corps remembers them and honors what they did, and so they live forever.
Dan Daly's shouted challenge takes on its true meaning - if you lie in the trenches you may survive for now, but someday you may die and no one will care. If you charge the guns you may die in the next two minutes, but you will be one of the immortals. All Marines die in the red flash of battle or the white cold of the nursing home. In the vigor of youth or the infirmity of age all will eventually die, but the Marine Corps lives on. Every Marine who ever lived is living still, in the Marines who claim the title today. It is that sense of belonging to something that will outlive your own mortality, which gives people a light to live by and a flame to mark their passing.
Frank has had a tough life medically speaking, four bouts with cancer and two brain aneurysms. Some people say well he is like a cat and has nine lives, other say he is like the DURACELL rabbit he just keeps on going. Frank is neither a cat nor rabbit, what he is, a United State Marine.
We have a saying in the Marine Corps, Pain is weakness leaving the body, and no one has suffered more pain than frank, and I believe this with all my heart that, his marine training, his marine mind set, his marine tenacity is what got him through these difficult times. One thing I know for sure, his spirit will never break, his esprit de corps will never waver, and Frank is one tough Marine.
They say the most important thing to marine is his weapon. A weapon is important to a Marine but I don’t believe it’s the most important. To me the most important thing to a Marine is his foxhole buddy.
When you are dug into a position and are waiting for the enemy to attack, you get as we say “VERY TIGHT” with your buddy. You talk about your family, friends, you tell each other things you wouldn’t tell someone else, you eat together, sleep together, you fight together, you get to know your buddy better then anyone else including their family.
When you make contact with the enemy and you are in a firefight, at that point you aren’t fighting for a cause, you aren’t fighting freedom, you aren’t even fighting for your country, what you are fighting for is your buddy!
One of the Marine Doctrine is, “We never ever leave our dead or wounded on the field of battle”. Many Marines have died or been wounded trying to save their buddies. The “esprit de corps” kicks in and a Marine will crawl, or run through heavy enemy fire to pull his buddy to safety.
Frank as a Marine to a Marine, I would be your foxhole buddy in any war at any time.
Frank joined the Marine Corps in June 1964 and was discharged in June 1967. Attaining the Rank of Cpl. He served with Hotel Co, 2nd Battalion 7th Marines from July 1965 until July1966 in Vietnam. After Vietnam Frank was transfer to Marine Base, Quantico, VA.
Frank's battalion along with other units of the Marine Corps landed in Vietnam July 1965. They were the first combat marine units in Vietnam.
Frank participated in 18 major operation while in Vietnam.
After operation Blue Marlin in November 1965 Frank's Co. Hotel moved down into Chu Lai and this is where he received he wounds in combat.
Steve Cone who is the Historian for the 2/7 Association is writing a book called the “Loss of Innocence” which is in the editing stage. Frank's wounding is written in his book, which took place near Chu Lai and it reads as follows:
“While on listening post the night of the 20th and into the morning of the 21st, those in Frank Dumschat’s defensive position threw two grenades at two-suspected VC in front of their foxhole. While this is not in and of itself spectacular, the fact that the VC threw them back was. There are only about 4 ½ seconds from the time the spoon flies to detonation of an M-26 fragmentation grenade. A piece of shrapnel embedded itself in Dumschat’s left leg. Dumschat’s partners that night threw a few more grenades into the night and received no more in return.”
Frank was wounded 21 November 1965 and the wound was shrapnel to the left leg (according to the Corps).
Frank and I talked about Vietnam over the years but never mentioning dates, I didn’t know the date of Frank’s wounds until I read this only last week. Besides November 21, 1965 as being the date of his wounds, November 21 is also my birthday, I turned 17 the day Frank was hit.
The Miracle Man
Distinguished & refined
A man with a path re-defined
Skilled in the travels of uncertainty
He always guides you with a force of kindness & sincerity
He is a man unlike any other
One who will help all of the worlds’ sisters & brothers
Words can not play the sounds of gratitude
Unspoken by the ones whose wounds were deepest
in which he helped heal
He is a man who walks the road of hardship with grace
A leader, an inspiration
A soldier in life’s battles against human temptation
He is a gentle reminder of dedication & devotion
A man who has risen against the challenges brought upon him
Whose determination is like a fire burning bright & never dim
He is a man with a soul of an angel, a heart strong as steel
A man whose love for his family & friends is always revealed
He is a father, a grandpa, a brother, an uncle, and a friend
He is a hero to us all
The miracle man we will never forget
~Amy Piwowarski
END NOTE:
The idea to have the event was inspired by an e-mail sent to Robert DeVita, River Restoration Manger. After reading this heartfelt e-mail two local employees Donna Piscopo and Lisa Kobuszewski decided to get involved and make this a ceremony to celebrate and honor the life of Frank Dumschat. Both women worked long hours to put the event together.
They organized and planned, calling places to negotiate a price for reservations, ordered “live strong” bands to put together as favors, and wrote the poem included with it.
The duo worked on handmade fresh flower centerpieces, created invitations, sold tickets to raise money to have the event, put a collage together and did this all working with a tight budget, according to Vanessa Dominguez.
