Louis J Dallavia
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Navy
Louis J. Dallavia, a former superintendent of sewers for the Duluth Public Works Department, entered the Naval Reserve as an ensign in January,1943 and then was commissioned a lieutenant junior grade with CEC (Seabees).
He served in the Pacific Theater with 75th Seabees at Guadalcanal, New Caledonia and was among engineers landing with the first wave of Marines on Bougainville. He also served in the Mediterranean Theater, North Africa, and Europe. "In the South Pacific, the work is quite different," he wrote, "mainly of construction, since there are no developed ports and landing is simply on the beaches.
In Europe, the job is mainly of cleaning up and reconstruction. Our job is to make the ports usable as quickly as possible, then the French do the finishing touches." He participated in the invasion of Southern France on USS LST 1019, which served as a causeway unit, on Nov. 10, 1944. His unit cleaned the harbor at Toulon, France of floating mines and debris, sunken ships and demolished waterfront for use as Allied supply port. "The day of liberation, mine sweepers entered the harbor, cleaned out the mines and we began our work. It was the scene of the scuttling of the French fleet. Along most of the docks, lay scuttled ships, sunken or overturned on their sides, entirely blocking use of the docks.
Engineers constructed ''finger piers'' large enough to hold trucks, which extended from the dock proper over the scuttled ship to the cargo hatches of allied vessels....A favorite trick of the enemy is to sink ships directly in the harbor channel. Some of them we were unable to lift, so divers went down, cut out a section of the vessel, lifted it, and our landing ships went right on through the middle of the sunken vessel."
Source: Hometown Heroes: The Saint Louis County World War II Project, page 64.
