By Tom Mountain

Nobody would have blamed Domenic Marrocco if he had decided to sit this war out. If anyone deserved a life of peace and solitude surrounded by family and friends in “The Lake,” it was Dom. He had already been through some of the most gruesome battles in World War II and lived to tell the story.

To give a hint at some of the combat he endured suffice it to say that his commanding general was George S. Patton. He served in the 10th Armored Infantry Battalion of the legendary 4th Armored Division, which more often than not spearheaded Patton’s brilliant-and bloody-campaigns across Europe.

There was the stalemate in Normandy, the breakout at Falaise, the dash across France, the misery of the Battle of the Bulge. Then came the daring, almost suicidal, mission that Dom led to liberate an American POW camp in Germany. Of the battalion of tanks and 300 soldiers, none made it back. Including Dom, who was captured in the last tank standing. And it was off to captivity to the very POW camp that he tried to liberate.

After he was freed near the end of the war Dom returned to The Lake, along with his brothers Roger and Gerry, and his brother’s-in-law, Joe and Sam. At his parents’ home at 109 West Street there had been five stars on the doorway for each of the sons serving in the war. Now his parents, Pasquale and Giovanna, could take them down, safe in the knowledge that all of their boys were finally home.

Although Dom stayed in the Army after the war, at least he was back in America, and, the country was finally at peace. Then something happened in Korea. Something that President Truman saw as an ominous threat to freedom. The Stalin-Mao communist horde attacked with a fury, threatening to overrun the whole of Korea, and maybe even Japan, just as they did a year before in China.

The President appealed to the honor and patriotism of Americans to pick up the rife once again in the defense of freedom.

It was a call to duty that Domenic Marrocco, already 32, had answered before. There was no question that he would join the fight. Even though he was offered a coveted position as a weapons instructor at West Point, he chose to go with his unit to Korea.

Because that was where he knew he belonged, leading his men into battle against the enemies of freedom.

So for the second in his life Domenic Marrocco went off to war overseas.

After eight months in some of most horrendous combat, Dom wrote a letter to his family telling them that by the time they read it he’d be on his way home.

Then it happened. Just a few days later on April 9, 1951, Master Sergeant Domenic Marrocco of Newton was killed in action just south of the 38th parallel at a place called Chunchon, South Korea when his battalion was decimated by an overwhelming Chinese Communist
force. He was 33 years old.

As was the custom in those days his wake was held at his home in The Lake. His family was devastated. Dom’s mother died two years later at just 58, likely as a result of the heartbreaking loss of her son.

Domenic Marrocco was among the 33,574 servicemen, including 18 from Newton, who were killed in the Korean War. Remember them. Honor them. As we commemorate our fallen servicemen on Memorial Day.

Tom Mountain is a member of the Sons of the American Legion, Post 440 Nonantum.