Joseph Pocoroba was born in Newark, New Jersey in August 1919. He attended Good Counsel grammar and high school [Annotator's Note: Our Lady of Good Counsel in Newark, New Jersey]. He had one sister. Pocoroba's father was Vice-President of a few corporations. During the Depression he would start businesses, but they did not hold his attention for long. His grandfather was the one who made a very good living. He was the sole agent for De Nobili Cigars for New Jersey. His family did just fine during the Depression. His uncle was a horse trainer and he had a stable. Pocoroba was taught by him to ride horses at about age 12. After high school, he worked for an engineering company in charge of the stockroom, but did not like it very well. He then went into real estate and became a broker. He was also a licensed insurance broker and then he went into industrial real estate, Garibaldi Real Estate. He did not like it and went back to residential. He knew he would likely be drafted so he enlisted in the Army and joined the Essex Troop [Annotator's Note: first organized as a private group for civic occasions, it was absorbed into the 102nd Cavalry Regiment] so he could ride a horse. [Annotator's Note: The camera pans up past his face.] His unit [Annotator's Note: 102nd Cavalry Regiment] went to England in 1942. After he had been in the military for one year, two men from the FBI [Annotator's Note: Federal Bureau of Investigation] came to his father's house looking for him. He had not answered his draft notice and they were there to arrest him. [Annotator's Note: Pocoroba laughs at the story.]

Joseph Pocoroba went to Columbia, South Carolina for basic training. He found it easy. When he first went in, he had KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen police or kitchen patrol] duty a lot, the hardest work he ever had in his life. He said that the Army is like every other place, if you do not know anybody you get nowhere. [Annotator's Note: The camera bounces around.] He realized he was very independent. Once he found the right group of fellow troops life got easier. He had enlisted in 1940. Training was about 17 months. In September 1942, he received orders to leave from Jersey City, New Jersey to England as part of the 102nd Cavalry Regiment. [Annotator's Note: A phone rings.] Half of his regiment went to the 117th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized) and he went with them. [Annotator's Note: Pocoroba asks the interviewer to repeat himself several times throughout the interview.] He was assigned to Troop E which was the assault gun troop. They had M8s, 75mm guns [Annotator's Note: M8 75mm Howitzer Motor Carriage]. Later they got the M7s with the 105mm [Annotator's Note: M7 105mm Howitzer Motor Carriage, 105mm Self Propelled Gun, also referred to as the Priest]. They trained in Africa after about three months in England in the fall of 1942. They landed near Algiers, Algeria. Barrage balloons were all around the city of Algiers to protect from Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: German Air Force] raids which happened almost every night at first. [Annotator's Note: Bad tape issues.] They then went to Marrakesh, Morocco to provide security for Eisenhower's [Annotator's Note: General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe; 34th President of the United States] headquarters. They would patrol the perimeters. They knew little of the progress of the war through news. Pocoroba ate well while there and he liked his officers. He was able to go into town and make regular stops. [Annotator's Note: Tape gets very out of synch]. They would stop at the beach and have a swim. Entertainment was a problem and they mostly entertained themselves. He went out with girls in Algiers. They received free cigarettes while there, which he both smoked and traded. The nights were pretty cool. He had a stove in his tent, and they burned coal for heat. They had buckets of water in each tent to put out any fires.

Joseph Pocoroba said the march to Marrakesh, Morocco from Algiers, Algeria was around 1,200 miles. [Annotator's Note: Pocoroba asks the interviewer to repeat himself several times throughout the interview.] They trained all the time when they arrived in Africa, as they had not had much training with vehicles. He was often picked for missions. He went to the West Point for the French troops in Nancy, France. He would greet the incoming troops from 7th Army and give them the information for the rest camp. He got a commendation for his work there. Pocoroba was in Marrakesh while Stalin [Annotator's Note: Russian Premiere Joseph Stalin], Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt], and Churchill [Annotator's Note: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill] were there. He stayed roughly two weeks then went back to Algiers. From Algiers they went Naples, Italy. On the trip there, their ship was attacked by the Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: German Air Force]. There is nowhere to hide from the ricocheting bullets on a ship. Pocoroba did not want to be below decks in case of a torpedo hit. He never received a scratch despite being in many near misses. [Annotator's Note: Tape gets out of sync.] He also worked as a forward observer and he would be sent alone to search out targets with different troops and a tank. One night he went to sleep, and enemy artillery started firing at them, so he crawled under a tank. That next morning, he saw that 15 or 20 feet away from him was a large, unexploded shell in the ground. Luckily it was a dud.

Joseph Pocoroba says you never know how you are going to react in battle despite your training. [Annotator's Note: Pocoroba asks the interviewer to repeat himself several times throughout the interview.] His fellow soldiers were all very good. They were always at the front to find out what the enemy weaponry was and more. Pocoroba was with the guns most of his time. Once in Montravel, France they lost a whole troop. Pocoroba was on a hill waiting for a call to fire but he never got it. He never had a problem with his troops. The Germans would always commend the captured soldiers for their fighting abilities. He had friends but he took care of himself primarily. He was firing the gun one night and he had a loader. They pulled a trailer with all of the ammo and he pulled the lanyard to fire the gun. They fired for about four hours. Once he pulled the lanyard and the guy who loaded the gun did not move away quickly and barely missed being killed by the recoil. Pocoroba was the rear guard for a mission near the town of Bitche, France and he received a Bronze Star for his actions. There was a dirt road the Germans would have to come down to sneak up from the rear. He went down the road about five miles and got a call that said a platoon was stranded and surrounded. The sergeant in the group gave him the map coordinates and he fired a smoke shell for help with guidance. The sergeant did his job well and his shooting was so accurate that the whole platoon was able to escape. His driver was very good at his job as the M7 [Annotator's Note: M7 105mm Howitzer Motor Carriage; 105mm Self Propelled Gun, also referred to as the Priest] was not an easy thing to maneuver and the road was not wide, but they got out and rejoined their outfit by morning.

Joseph Pocoroba first landed in southern France and then went straight up past the French Alps. [Annotator's Note: Pocoroba asks the interviewer to repeat himself several times throughout the interviewer.] He encountered a lot of resistance on the way up. He was one of the first troops in Rome, Italy. He could see the Leaning Tower of Pisa and then was pulled back to ready for the invasion of southern France. They started fighting at Cassino, Italy which was pretty well bombed out. At Anzio, Italy they helped get the troops out from being surrounded. He fought all through Italy and it was rough fighting. They got a nice welcome in Rome. Most of the time people stay in their homes as it's the safest place to be. In the Rhine River area of France, he was sent to shoot targets. He went alone and there was a house right on the Rhine. It was winter and very cold. The next morning, he looked out and saw the Germans on the other side. He heard boats and thought they were coming for him. The Germans knew he was there, and he had to use the bathroom. He went into the lavatory off of the first floor and he had to remove his uniform pants. The Germans started shooting with armor-piercing shells and knocked the toilet right out from under him. There were three soldiers from a different outfit in the same house and Pocoroba told them he was getting out of there. They told him the back was a deep swamp, that would be hard to get through, so he decided to wait until nightfall to try and leave. The Germans had an 88 [Annotator's Note: 88mm multi-purpose artillery] trained on the road. Pocoroba went down the road and got out.

Joseph Pocoroba’s unit [Annotator's Note: Troop E, 117th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mecz)] was sent to reinforce a flank where the Germans were expected to attack from. It was as cold and he was on a frozen stream. Another sergeant came up to speak to him and while they were talking, Pocoroba heard a pop and he saw the snow flare up. The bullet went right between the two of them. He cannot remember all of the similar incidents that happened to him. He says he never really thought much about being killed during those moments, only afterwards. The one worst time was when a dud shell landed very near him. If it had exploded, it would have killed him. He says his 105mm shells would bounce right off the turret of the tank, so he would aim for the treads so they could not move. All of his battles were tough, and he cannot choose the worst one. The thing he feared the most was being on the beach at Anzio, Italy. You just kind of get used to combat after a while, but he never thought he was going to get hit. He would get apprehensive at times. In Europe, there were ditches on each side of the road and that is where the Germans would throw their dead. Pocorboa feels that Italy had the most destruction. His initial fighting was in Italy. He arrived in a little town and he saw a major riding in a jeep. Pocoroba was watching from his assault gun. The major had to go over a small bridge and was fired on. That was the first he had seen of enemy attacks. The jeep turned over on the bridge, killing the driver and injuring the major. Pocoroba moved in with his gun [Annotator's Note: M7 105mm Howitzer Motor Carriage; 105mm Self Propelled Gun, also referred to as the Priest] and the Germans took off. There was a sniper in a tower who shot at them and Pocoroba blew the tower apart. That was Pocorboa's baptismal fire.

[Annotator's Note: Pocoroba asks the interviewer to repeat himself several times throughout the interviewer.] Joseph Pocoroba says that the civilians stayed in their houses which was the safest place for them to be. In Montreval, France the civilians helped the Americans quite a bit. A very good friend of his had just made lieutenant and asked Pocoroba to go down into the town and get some combat action. Pocoroba told him that he was in reserve and would stay put in case he was needed. A German panzer division [Annotator's Note: armored division] kept the units in town trapped. His friend went down and was captured. He was in a prison camp and escaped. He found his way back to the unit and was then shipped out to the infantry. Another time Pocoroba was alone in France on a road and three American paratroopers were leading some German prisoners. Pocoroba told them to take the prisoners to their unit. As he walked up the road a bit, he heard shots. The paratroopers had shot them instead. He would not have let them shoot the prisoners. [Annotator's Note: He feels his memory is not good all the time.]

[Annotator's Note: Pocoroba asks the interviewer to repeat himself several times throughout the interview.] Joseph Pocoroba's outfit [Annotator's Note: Troop E, 117th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mecz)] wound up in Austria but he was discharged before that, he does not remember when. He was so happy to get back to his outfit. He went to Frankfurt, Germany for about a month. He was one of the soldiers who had been in Europe the longest, so he went back earliest. The war had just ended when he got back. They were all in a big house and he was happy he could take a shower and get clean. Pocoroba remembers being sent to a Lucky Strike camp [Annotator's Note: Camp Lucky Strike, temporary staging camp named after popular cigarette brands; Lucky Strike was between Cany and Saint-Valery, France]. They were going to fly him home and that's when he heard Germany had surrendered. Then they decided to put him on a boat instead. He went to Paris, France with another guy. They had exchanged their money to dollars. The guy he was with went into an alley with another person. He asked him what he was doing, and he had exchanged his dollars for German money. Shortly after that he went onto a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of cargo ship] to cross the Atlantic to New York City. He remembers being moved by seeing the Statue of Liberty. He says when you were overseas and saw anything American you are thrilled. Back in Europe, he would pull to the side of the road to watch the infantry to walk by. He says he never saw anybody he knew. [Annotator's Note: Pocoroba talks to someone named Joe offscreen.] From New York he went to Fort Dix in Trenton, New Jersey and there he was put on a train or bus into Newark, New Jersey. He lost all of his money gambling on the ship over. He took a cab to his parent's home. His parents were surprised to see him and were happy the war was over. He feels the war made him more self-sufficient and confident. He never had bad memories about the war. Close to the end of the war, he thought to himself that his luck could not hold out forever and thought he was going to get hurt or killed. Seeing all of the dead Germans got to him as they did not retrieve their dead. He was in France once and the American dead were piled up like cord wood. He can still see that in his mind. He said the stacks were at least five feet high. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer tells him a story of dead animals being bad for some soldiers to see.]