by Neil W. McCabe

Members of the Palmacci family were joined by Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone at the Aug. 9 groundbreaking ceremony for the renovation of Staff Sgt. Charles “Pee Wee” Palmacci Park corner of Skehan and Hanson Streets.

“Since the park was last renovated in 1980-81, there was growing consensus at community meetings to renovate the park so that families with young children would have a safe place to play on a climbing structure, that older children and adults would have an open shady area to sit and chat, read or even play chess,” said the mayor.

“Pee Wee” was killed in 1944, while serving in the Pacific Theater.

“He got his nickname when we still lived in Cambridge. My older brother and I would take him in his stroller to the park and the girls who took care of the garden called him Pee Wee because he was so small, but he kept it even when he got bigger,” said Araldo “Tarzan” Palmacci, one of the surviving brothers at the ceremony.

Tarzan said he got his nickname because he was always climbing and sitting in trees, he said.

“Even my mother would open up the window and call out, ‘Tarzino! Tarzino!’” he said.

In May 1941, when he was 22, Tarzan said he was drafted and sent to Camp Edwards in Bourne for Army basic training. So that Tarzan would have to go to war alone, Pee Wee, who was 20, volunteered to go with him, he said.

Tarzan said the two brothers were assigned to the 101st Infantry Division of the Mass. National Guard, where they were together until Pee Wee made sergeant and then was selected for officer training.

While Tarzan moved around the country with the 101st ID waiting for orders to Europe, Pee Wee decided that he didn’t want to be an officer and volunteered instead to be an aerial gunner in the air force, Tarzan said.

All aerial gunners were automatically promoted to staff sergeants, so Pee Wee added the bottom rocker to his stripes, he said.

Flying on a B-26 Liberator in the Pacific, Pee Wee was highly decorated, earning the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross he said.

While Pee Wee was fighting the Japanese, Tarzan was shipped to England in early 1944 to train for the invasion of Normandy, he said.

Tarzan landed on Normandy on D+6-Day, June 12, but before he left England he wrote a letter to Pee Wee to ask how he was doing and to let him know that he was part of the invasion force.

Once he landed, Tarzan said he was made a point man, which meant he walked in front of the other soldiers looking for German soldiers. The most dangerous part of the job was the practice by German snipers of hiding in the thick terrain and hedgerows while the Americans advanced past them. The Germans would then pick off unsuspecting soldiers from behind their own lines.

On the night of July 25, Tarzan’s birthday, he was on patrol in St. Lo through the hedgerows when he and his sergeant made contact with the Germans, he said.

As the Germans unleashed a brutal artillery barrage from their 88’s, Tarzan and the sergeant dove into a ditch, the sergeant first, then Tarzan on top of him. In the attack, Tarzan said he was hit with shrapnel in leg and buttocks. “They operated on me on the beach, then the sent me to a hospital in England.”

Back in England, Tarzan received a letter from the Pacific. It was his own letter to Pee Wee. Over his brother’s address it was rubberstamped: Missing in Action.

It was not until after the war that Pee Wee’s death was confirmed.

“If he had come back, Pee Wee would have been a sportswriter. He loved baseball and he loved the Red Sox,” Tarzan said.

Although, Pee Wee’s favorite player was the Yankee Clipper, Joe DiMaggio. “Everybody loved Joe,” he said.

The two brothers played baseball together in the parks league, he said. “I was a better player than he was. He played shortstop and was a good fielder, but he couldn’t hit.”

“I think curve balls were his worst enemy,” he said.

When Tarzan said that Pee Wee different from him because Pee Wee was hot-headed and would not take no for an answer, his wife interrupted, “I thought you said he was different from you?”