Neither Joe Audino nor his mates aboard the Merchant Marine vessel SS Christopher Flanagan knew what lay ahead when they pulled away from Southampton, England’s docks on the afternoon of June 5, 1944.
But if someone had told the 19-year-old purser and pharmacist’s mate from Buffalo, N.Y., they were about to join the greatest armada ever assembled, to prepare the way for the liberation of Europe, and in President Roosevelt’s words, “to set free a suffering humanity,” the news would not have phased him.
Like young men always and everywhere, Audino did not fret his mortality.
“I was young enough that it didn’t bother me. I had sort of a fatalistic view towards the thing. If anything happened, it happened. I took it very casually, actually,” Audino said.
Today, 72 years removed from that day and half a world distant from the beaches of Normandy, the events are etched indelibly on Audino’s 92-year-old memory, and will no doubt be with him on Saturday as the City of Auburn hosts its 51 annual Veterans Day Parade downtown.
Born in Buffalo in 1924, Audino graduated from Annunciation High School in 1942. By late 1943, he was enrolled in a premedical course at the University of Buffalo, for which he had a deferment.
But while war raged across the globe, Audino grew increasingly restless.
“I was about to turn 19 and felt I wanted to do something, I wanted to get involved with the actual war. A friend said, ‘Hey, Joe, how’d you like to join Merchant Marine? You don’t have to go to boot camp or anything, just go right to sea.’”
That friend was wrong, and between December of 1943 and April of 1944, Audino was in boot camp in Sheepshead Bay.
From this point in the narrative, Audino’s life takes sudden, unexpected, harrowing turns.
“All of a sudden, we got notification that they wanted to get everybody graduated early and get out of there. We had no idea what was going on. Nonetheless, we were assigned to a liberty ship that had just come up from Texas, the SS Christopher Flanagan,” Audino said.
The Christopher Flanagan was one of the few liberty ships in that era that was armed and carried a Navy gun crew. It had a 3-inch, 50-millimeter gun, a 5-inch, 50-mm gun, several 20-mm guns and depth charges.
The ship sailed from Brooklyn, N.Y., across the North Atlantic to Great Britain, where its crew loaded support cargo from Britain. When that job was done, the ship sailed up Scotland’s Clyde River, where it stayed for a few weeks.
“All of a sudden, we were directed to leave, and when we left, we assembled in the Southampton area,” Audino recalled. “All of a sudden, there were thousands of ships around us — our Navy, of course, and different nationalities, and our merchant ships.
The next afternoon the ship sailed to the Normandy area. Still none of the crew knew what was up.
“We went to Utah Beach, where we off loaded cargo and picked up 100 troops. We were immediately dispatched to Omaha Beach, and we arrived early in the morning of D-Day. That was when we knew what was going on,” Audino said. “The troops were transferred to amphibious craft and deployed to the beach. That evening there were all kinds of explosions and fireworks. Amphibious boats came and picked the troops up. By then we knew what was going on; we were invading Normandy. That basically is how we got into that thing.”
As Audino recalled, the sights and sounds of allied and enemy forces blasting away at each other, rough seas with waves six feet high and above, and German machine gun fire made the assault extremely hazardous.
“The troops involved in that landing and the assault behind enemy lines experienced a living hell,” Audino said. “We had extensive damage to our bow and limped to port for repairs. Prior to our arrival in Brooklyn, we encountered hurricane weather and numerous warnings of German wolf-pack submarines in the coastal area.”
Audino stayed in the Merchant Marine until June of 1949 when he received a commission in the Navy Supply Corp. From there, it was on to Korean waters aboard the carrier USS Bataan and the USS Chauncey DD 667, a destroyer.
Back home
In 1950 he met and married his wife, Elaine. They have three grown children, Linda, Russell and Nancy.
Audino directly supported the war in Vietnam and was deployed in the Caribbean during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962, conducting the replenishment of the Second Fleet while President Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev were negotiating an agreement to prevent missile warfare and conflict with Cuba. He served through Vietnam and retired from the Navy in 1971. His final assignment was as director of Procurement at the Ships Parts Control Center in Mechanicsburg, Penn.
Among Captain Audino’s commendations were the Presidential Award of the Legion of Merit and the Joint Service Commendation Medal from the Department of Defense.
In 1948 he earned his degree in biology and chemistry from the University of Buffalo, and in 1962 his MBA from the Harvard Business School. His professional specialties were mobile logistic support, shipboard supply and weapon systems procurement.
After retiring from the Navy, Audino held several management positions, among them the development of the logistic system for the then-newly-launched Mark 48 Torpedo. He also specialized in project management and construction contracting for the Weyerhaeuser Company.
Today he is heavily involved with VFW Post 1741 in Auburn, “a dedicated source of help and support to veterans and their loved ones,” he says.
“To further that effort we see the importance of augmenting our membership with youthful military veterans. They need our help, and we need theirs. We want to remain vigorous and useful, so we are engaged in that process,” Audino said.
