CULTURE & history Purple
CULTURE & history Purple Heart Awardee Peter Essa is a National Hero BY CRYSTAL KASSAB JABIRO It is no surprise that Peter Essa was interested in cars as a teenager growing up in Detroit. Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors dominated the auto industry by the time he was born there in 1925, bringing 296,000 manufacturing jobs to the city. At 18, he had bought a used 1936 Oldsmobile for about . At 18, he was also drafted into World War II. There was a mix of emotions. Some people thought it was an honor. His mother, Susana, who had come to America when she was four, was terrified, as he was the only son with six sisters. His sisters, he believed, were secretly happy because he was tough on them, he joked. “I was scared to death,” said Essa. Private 1st Class Peter Essa was first sent to Fort Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan for a two-week training. Then he was shipped to Camp Vandorn in Centreville, Mississippi for basic training. After 11 months, he traveled to Fort Meade, Maryland for recruit training - that is, an intense physical and psychological process that truly prepares them for combat. It was his first experience with heavy weaponry. A month later, he ended up at Camp Shanks in Orangeville, New York, the largest U.S. Army embarkation camp, where he practiced with new armaments. It was known as “Last Stop USA” and for Essa that was true. He ended up on the SS Luxembourg to Europe, thinking he was going to do some more training. “We didn’t know we were going to invade. None of our division knew,” Essa recalled. “They don’t want you to know.” That is because Essa was being groomed for “Operation Overlord,” a secret mission that had started a few weeks before on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Essa remembers General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who later became the 34th president of the United States, announcing on the loudspeaker: “We’re an invasion force.” And from there, they received some directions and were transferred to landing crafts, barge-like boats made out of wood that carried about three dozen troops at a time. When they got close to the shore of Normandy, France, a ramp dropped down from the landing craft, and they sunk down into the water, holding their rifles and other provisions over their heads. Once it became really shallow, they started crawling to the shore. On land, Essa and the rest of his unit continued to slither through the sand of Omaha Beach, the U.S. military’s codename for a stretch of land on the Douvre River facing the English Channel. There were four other sections the Allied forces had set up for their invasion of Germanoccupied France. “We dug foxholes to fortify ourselves,” he relived. “Two to a foxhole. It was rainy and there were a lot of mosquitoes.” Normandy was like a big apple orchard, Essa remembered. The Germans were up in the trees hiding, and they had already put barriers up around the shore. The Americans had to wait for further orders from the general. Thousands of Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy to face thousands of German troops. Omaha Beach, where Essa recalls he fought, was heavily fortified, and American bombs failed to take them down. The gunfire was intense. Essa and the other soldiers were advised by First Sergeant Durham not to help each other if one got hurt. They were told to keep going. “All I knew was that I was shooting into the trees. That’s where all the snipers were,” Essa looked back. “I was thinking… I’m shooting and killing children my age.” Fearing for his life while trying to defeat the enemy, Essa got shot by a wooden bullet to his left ankle. It went in and out, forming a sort of crater. He screamed for medics. The First Sergeant ran to him, carried him on his back, and left him to the side. In a letter to his mother, Essa wrote: “We heard screaming and then they opened up with every weapon they had. We ran like mad dogs. My buddy was killed. He had about four holes through his back. We kept running until we came up to a hedgerow. This is where a machine gun got me, right in the ankle, breaking all the bones, and when I tried to take a few more steps, the ankle buckled up and I stepped on the broken part. It didn’t hurt at first. It felt like an electric shock.” Medics put him on a stretcher to take him to the field hospital where there was no bombing. Since it was a serious injury, they flew him to another field hospital in England. The mountain of dead bodies piling up is forever etched into his memory. Though they persisted, 2,400 Americans either died or were wounded at Omaha Beach, including Sergeant Durham who had been killed hours after he carried Essa to safety. 28 CHALDEAN NEWS NOVEMBER 2020
Essa’s mother had received a telegram saying he had been “slightly wounded” and that she would be later advised. In a letter he had previously sent her before being shot, he expressed his uncertainty about coming back home. He had told her to sell his 1936 Olds to his best friend Charlie, so she did, fearing that may have been her son’s last request for her. Fortunately, she also received word that he was coming back to the US to heal at a hospital one state away. In England, the doctors performed some surgeries on Essa’s ankle, and then he was sent to Crile Military Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio for more. After six surgeries for the harsh wound, the Army presented him with an honorable discharge in 1945 before the war ended. A serviceman drove Essa home to Detroit 13 months after he arrived in Ohio. The family threw a little party and had some friends come by. He received the Purple Heart and took advantage of the GI Bill to learn to be a butcher. Thereafter, he went to Iraq to find his bride. He has been married to Samira for 62 years and has five kids. Peter Essa was also awarded the Bronze Star and the Combat Infantry Badge, as well as the European-African-Middle-Easter Campaign Medal. He is 95 years old and lives in metro- Detroit. Though the Battle of Normandy raged on for another month without him, Essa was still part of liberating France from the Nazis and is a true American hero. NOVEMBER 2020 CHALDEAN NEWS 29
