How many people can fit into an outfit they wore in 1942?

Art Kitzan can. In fact, the Bismarck veteran can still fit into his old Marine uniform. And two photos of Kitzan in that same uniform, then and now, show a remarkably unchanged face. Few lines give away his age. Maybe it's because he never smoked, instead selling his wartime ration of cigarettes to others. Maybe it's his unflappable perspective.

Kitzan was a hardy farm guy from the Hebron-Antelope area who, at age 21 or 22, was looked up to almost as a dad by his 17-year-old comrades with the 2nd Marine Division in the South Pacific at Saipan and Tinian.

Kitzan was the No. 1 loader of 105mm howitzers, handling the 45-pound shells and setting the fuses. When they went ashore, they'd dig in their artillery, plus a foxhole for themselves.

Saipan was rough, he said. When they landed, Kitzan had insisted they dig into the dirt headfirst for protection. But the same shrapnel from a Japanese Zero that riddled Kitzan's back killed one of those 17-year-olds right next to him, the shrapnel hitting the young man with disastrous accuracy in the small opening between pack and helmet, behind his ear.

Kitzan's wounds brought him a Purple Heart and sent him back stateside to work at Quantico, Va., training officers, since in his early 20s, he was by then a seasoned vet of battle, he said. He'd seen guys make the stupid mistakes, like firing a rifle at a Zero overhead, giving away their position.

He never talked about his experiences when he got back. He figured nobody was interested in hearing them. With one brother serving in Europe, the other in the Aleutians, his parents simply accepted that he and his two brothers would go to fight.

He figured that was what he was supposed to do.

Pieces of shrapnel have occasionally resurfaced from his body over the years, a relic of that strafing. He still can't undergo an MRI for fear of the shrapnel migrating to his kidneys, he said.

(Kitzan farmed at the family farm until 1982 and also was the head custodian with the Bismarck schools. He married in 1951 and has three boys, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.)

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So why did so few returning veterans talk about their experiences?

For one thing, the men who returned to wives and children didn't want to pass along images that would create nightmares. And further, said C. Emerson Murry of Bismarck, an Army sergeant then and survivor of the Battle of the Bulge, modesty was a silencing hand.

"Nobody wanted to seem like they were making themselves out to be heroes," he said.

Especially not with the weight of the dead on their hearts. Comrades, brothers-in-arms, forever left behind.

Gen. Omar Bradley had talked about the infantry, Murry said, how it goes on and on, with no rest except for the litter or the grave.

Their casualties were terribly high, some exceeding their outfit's numbers three times over, as the ranks would fill, thin, refill, thin, refill.

Nineteen- and 20-year-olds became sergeants leading platoons into life-and-death. Before the draft or enlistment, many had never been 200 miles away from home. Seen an ocean. Flown on a plane or owned a car.

Christmas Eve 1944, Murry was in Belgium, a 20-year-old from Dunseith serving with the 17th Airborne's paratrooper glider outfit. Two-thirds of the division had not been in combat before, they were riflemen against armor. By the end of February, 22 of the 220 people with Murry remained.

They were on the offensive for 60 days and finally there were not enough men left to put in replacements, Murry remembers. After that, what remained of the regiment was parceled out among other units in the division for the airborne crossing of the Rhine.

Murry talks about the camaraderie, the loyalty, that combines and binds diverse people in those places.

"You'd die for them. You'd never let them down," he said. "You tried never to let them die alone. A 19-year-old, when he's in danger of death or nearly there, will sometimes call for his mother," Murry said. Then his fellow soldier will hold him, not as a mother could, of course, but giving the only thing a comrade has to give - his human presence.

A few years ago, Murry walked in Belgium, where he had fought as a young man. And he stood by the grave of a good friend, and the tears came, finally, he said.

He'd carried the sorrow all those years between. Now there was time and place to weep.

(Murry married and had five children. He graduated from the University of North Dakota in business administration and with a law degree. He practiced law in Rugby, was director of the North Dakota Legislative Council from 1951 to 1975, a member of North Dakota National Guard, 1953-75, manager of the Garrison Diversion Project from 1985 to 1993, and retired in 1993 as a major general.)

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If you've seen the movie, "Saving Private Ryan," the images were dead-on, said Melvin Gertz of Steele.

Gertz was in the Army, at Normandy at D-Day plus 1, and the water there was red.

When the landing ships put their flaps down in the water, the guys stepped off laden with their packs - ammo, extra clothing, a blanket.

And those that stepped off into underwater shell holes were held there by the weight of their packs.

"Some you didn't see again," Gertz said.

Gertz made it to shore, under some fire; there the men spread out and kept moving inland.

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;Gertz was 24, had graduated from high school in Driscoll and was working in a service station in Steele in 1942 when he was drafted. He'd tried to enlist and had been rejected; the draft, apparently, was less particular.

Gertz's parents had six sons, all in various branches of services. They had sons in the military for 13 consecutive years, Gertz said.

With several thousand others, he, the oldest, was sent to Abilene, Texas, for training, basically living in a tent with a wooden base. Later, they built up the sides, but it still had a canvas top.

"We woke up every morning covered with sand," he said. And then there were the chiggers that liked to bite.

Gertz was with the 90th Infantry Division, the Tough Ombres, starting out mostly with guys from Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Minnesota, and later filled in with guys from back East, he said.

After Texas, it was training in Louisiana, then the California desert, where the men were trained at the firing range, with calisthenics and three-hour, 25-mile hikes with progressively heavier packs, "run, walk, run, walk," he said.

Then to Fort Dix, to New York, and aboard ship for England, then Wales, then Normandy.

Moving inland from Normandy, the guys had stopped in a rock quarry. It was midnight, July 9; he'd had no supper. Gertz remembers he was opening a can of rations. As he was opening the lid, a stray bullet hit his hand. With his other hand, he touched the wound; he could feel the sinew inside his bleeding hand. He remembers calling for a medic.

And the next thing he remembers, he was being wheeled out of an operating room, awakened by being bumped into another patient at the field hospital.

From there he was taken to Hereford, England, inland to a tent hospital. Hospitalized until September, Gertz went home on a Liberty Ship.

Since he was ambulatory, he was housed down toward the bottom, right on top of the screw, he said.

He'd been a little nauseated on the trip across the Atlantic. This time the seasickness "was the sickest I've ever been," he said.

Back home, he said, "I fit in like Ihad never been gone. People didn't ask questions, maybe because so many were coming and going."

Though his wounded hand still doesn't function fully, "Iwas one of the lucky ones," he said.

(After the war Gertz attended college at Wahpeton. He was a rural mail carrier for 30 years, city auditor for 12 years and after retirement he was the city assessor. He also volunteered for the city fire department for 25 years. He married Florence 59 years ago and has three children, nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.)

Click here to view a slideshow of the veterans.

(Reach reporter Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@bismarcktribune.com.)