Small Town America in World War II: War Stories from Wrightsville, Pennsylvania

Chapter 11: MSgt. Edward “Tarp” Reisinger

Chapter 11 MSgt. Edward “Tarp” Reisinger 4th Signal Co., 4th Infantry Division Born on 1 September 1919, in Wrightsville, Edward “Tarp” Reisinger was a child of the Great Depression who found a home in the US Army. With slim economic prospects in Wrightsville, “Tarp” joined the Army on 15 July 1940, and served for twenty-seven years, retiring in 1967 at the rank of chief warrant officer. His specialty was in the field of radio communications. “Tarp” was in the Northwestern European Campaign from the beginning to the end, from the Normandy invasion on 6 June 1944, to the German surrender on 7 May 1945. He participated in the Normandy invasion, the drive through northern France, the Rhineland Campaign, the Battle of the Bulge, and the thrust through central Europe. After his retirement from the military, “Tarp” eventually settled in Wrightsville with his wife and family. He died on 21 January 2002.1 Growing up during the Great Depression and with poor job prospects in Wrightsville, young “Tarp” saw the US Army as an institution that offered both security and opportunity: 208 SMALL TOWN AMERICA IN WORLD WAR II “There were three children in the family in addition to my mother and father. They had lost a son and a daughter before me, evidently from the flu or pneumonia. I had two sisters, and I was the oldest child. My father was a cigar maker—he rolled cigars—when there was a job available. He also worked at the lower foundry [Wrightsville Hardware Company] back in those days as a molder. That molding was a terrible job back then, and it still is, actually. But I think you could primarily classify him as a cigar maker. “I went to Wrightsville High School and graduated in 1937 from the new building that had just been completed by the Works Progress Administration. This was still in the midst of the Great Depression although things had become a little bit better, but not really too much. So, I would take almost any work I could find. “I lived at home until I was twenty years old, which doesn’t speak too highly of me, but that was the thing to do back then until you got married. I don’t know what motivated me to go into the service, but it might have been—I can’t say for sure—heavy thinking about living at home and all that. But it sort of made me decide that I had to get away, so that’s what I decided to do—join the Army. Besides, economic prospects and advancement in Wrightsville were pretty slim to non-existent, so the service offered a viable alternative, plus there might have been a little bit of wanting to experience something different. I can’t say it was wanderlust, but I wanted to get out and to see maybe what the rest of the world was like. The Army pay was seventeen bucks a month, so it wasn’t all that great. “Tarp” officially enlisted in the Army on 15 July 1940. Very shortly after joining, he started training in radio operations, a specialty in which he would serve with distinction during his twenty-seven-year Army career: “The draft had not yet started, but the Army had decided to expand, and they were looking for people who could enlist for a particular unit and a particular kind of job. At this time they were looking for people MSgt. Edward “Tarp” Reisinger 209 for the 4th Signal Company, which was part of the 4th Infantry Division . I went directly to Ft. Benning, Georgia, and that’s where I took my basic training—I guess you could say infantry training—and then I also advanced to the Signal Corps, climbing poles and splicing wires and all that stuff. The 4th Signal Company serviced the 4th Infantry Division with communications, which meant radio, wire, teletype—whatever was necessary. We had to lay wire lines to the infantry regiments and to the special troops, like, the medics, the engineers, and the rest of them. As a result of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, the routine for “Tarp” and his comrades changed drastically: “After Pearl Harbor, everything changed. For example, I had originally signed up for a three-year enlistment. Now I was in for the duration plus six months. It didn’t matter to me very much because...