SKETCHES ARE RECORD OF WWII SERVICE.

Byline: Andrew Moyle Staff Writer

RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. - The fingertips of Frank Vecchio's right hand taper firmly, shaped by nearly eight decades of holding the implements of art. Pen, charcoal and paintbrushes have left their mark. Creases cut across his fingers, which now - at 83 - bear only the slightest tremor.

But this artist's hands are still wiry and quick, a hint of the two years they drew war.

In the home he shares with his wife, Mary, in the hills off Country Club Drive in Rancho Cucamonga, Vecchio's hands dug into his artist's folio, seeking out a 60-year-old watercolor of a small landing craft burning in the shallows off the Italian coast.

``See this, I made this in England. When we hit the beach in Salerno, we come alongside a little LCM. This would be able to carry one tank and a couple jeeps and a truck. I remembered it, and I made this sketch,'' he said, and moved on to another painting.

``This one I made right on the spot, off of Utah Beach. That's one of our ships, see. It hit a mine. I didn't have time to finish the sketch over there, and I forgot the ship number. I have another one here, Cherbourg Harbor ...''

The paintings - quick pen sketches later filled in with paint - are a record of Vecchio's time serving as a gunner's mate on LST-389, a transport ship that was the now semiretired graphic artist's home and art studio for two years.

From his battle station atop the 40 mm gun platform at the bow of LST- 389, 21-year-old Gunner's Mate Frank Vecchio first took in combat with an artist's eye in May 1943.

The ship was lumbering toward Sicily, resistance unknown. It had stopped off in French Morocco and Bizerta, Tunisia, to pick up elements of Patton's 3rd Army and ferry them halfway across the Mediterranean for the invasion of Sicily. Bizerta had treated Vecchio well, aside from regular German bombings. His brother Sam, who joined the Army the same day Vecchio signed up for the Navy in August 1942, was stationed briefly there. The brothers from Rockford, Ill., saw each other when they found time, before shipping out again for the invasion.

The LST, the largest landing ship in the Navy at the time, carried 36 Sherman tanks on the covered tank deck and 50 weatherproofed trucks and jeeps on deck - the machinery of the mechanized infantry and tank crews who powered Allied beach assaults.

The infantrymen and the mechanized crews who shared Vecchio's floating art studio were the true heroes of the war, he insists.

``The guys I always felt sorry for were the infantry guys,'' he said. ``We had plenty of backing and stuff, but ... the guys we brought to shore were the guys I always worried about. They were the ones, boy. They faced the guys shooting at them, right on.''

Recognizing that, Vecchio did his best to comfort the men riding with him into that first battle. One day, he saw a kid from Brooklyn having a tough time of it.

``He was sitting against the bulkhead there. I was walking by, just got through cleaning the gun. I saw him sitting there and he was kind of sobbing. I sat with him. I said, 'What's wrong?' He's kind of sobbing, crying, and he says, 'I've only been in the service four weeks and they put me in this platoon as an infantryman. I've never even had any infantry training at all,''' Vecchio said.

``Poor guy. So I said, I'll sit here and say a prayer with you. Poor guy.'' Resistance was feeble, and that first amphibious assault went well.

Using techniques the assault group had practiced in North Africa, Seabees extended pontoons from the LST's bow loading ramp to shore. Tanks, vehicles and men poured ashore.

Its primary mission complete, LST-389 spent the rest of the assault ferrying ammunition to the island to support Patton's campaign.

LST-389 was part of the flotilla hitting Agropoli, to the south of Salerno. Smaller craft led the way in for the dawn assault, and LST-389 was supposed to follow a flagship to shore as part of the armored assault wave.

But the flagship radioed that her engines had gone sour, and LST-389 had to lead the way in, with Vecchio at the bow.

``All the foothills, it was like looking at the foothills here,'' Vecchio said, pointing out the window toward the hazy San Bernardino Mountains. ``I said, Gee, this looks so beautiful, and it was. You could see the cows and the horses grazing up there in the land, vineyards and all. I said, It doesn't look like there's any action, except the cruiser Savannah was blasting away with her big guns on the beach. Then ... I would say about four miles out ... all of a sudden, you could hear shells coming by.

``The Germans were shooting at us from the hills ... with their Tiger tanks, blasting away at us.''

Amid the fray of whistling shells, Vecchio had a perfect view of passing antiship mines chained to anchors on the sea floor. As the ship neared the beach, he was joined on the bow by a Lt. Wilson, commander of the Seabees who would orchestrate the landfall and deployment of the pontoon system.

``Before we hit the beach, we got orders from the flagship to pull out because we were losing the beach,'' Vecchio said. ``Lt. Wilson, he cussed up and down. He says, 'Let's keep this damn ship on the beach.' It was stupid. We couldn't pull out anyway because we hit a sandbar."

The Seabees deployed the pontoons, and the Shermans began rolling up to join the infantry that waited for their support.

``You look up the beach, and all you can see is infantrymen. Must've been 3,000 to 4,000 infantrymen, sitting there, waiting. They couldn't move. They couldn't go in, because they had no support,'' Vecchio said. ``So when our tanks came off our ship, you could just see those guys moving right with the tanks, right up into the vineyards and up there to combat those German soldiers. The Germans didn't stay there very long.''

The operation took 2 1/2 hours, during which the ship took two direct hits from large-caliber guns, obliterating the starboard aft 20 mm cannon and the captain's quarters.

Freed of the weight of its cargo, the ship began backing out of the shallows. And just then, disaster struck.

``Just as we pulled out, a shell hit Lt. Wilson, killed him instantly,'' Vecchio said, admiration heavy in his voice.

Once again, LST-389 took on ammunition duty, as it would after the June 1944 D-Day landings on Normandy.

The only other threat to Vecchio's life came later in the war, one night during the misty return trip down the Seine River after LST-389 had dropped off a load of supplies in Le Havre.

Around 4 a.m., Vecchio and three other crew members were sleeping in crew quarters near the bow. Out of the murky night, an unseen liberty ship ripped into the hull.

``When the ship hit, it went all the way through our compartment, about four foot from me,'' Vecchio said.

The liberty ship's prow came to rest, and the two ships were briefly lodged together.

``The lucky thing for us, right below that compartment was our ammo locker. Those 40 mm shells and 20 mm high-explosive shells were right there. Lucky for us, nothing went off. I thought we were torpedoed when it happened,'' Vecchio said.

``I looked up, and you could see the ship pulling out. There were men on the liberty ship's deck. They were hollering. My two buddies, I forget their names now, they crawled up in their shorts, and they were OK. They didn't have a scratch on them.'' But the third man was gone, having been crushed, ripped out into the waters of the Seine, and lost.

``I forget his name, poor kid. He was only about 18 years old,'' Vecchio said.

That tragedy wouldn't be the last loss of the war for Vecchio. When he returned to the States, he learned that the bulk of his sketches, which he'd taken pains to secure, were gone.

``I couldn't send the sketches home, because it had the day I sketched them on there and where it was and everything else,'' Vecchio said. ``So I sent them to a priest friend of mine, a chaplain in the Navy, in Norfolk. I put a note on there that said 'Please send them to my home.' He sent them to Life magazine. They're lost.''

The greatest reward of Vecchio's God-given talent is his wife, Mary.

Before the war, in Rockford, he was friends with Mary's cousin, George. Vecchio saw a photograph of Mary - Guidera at the time - and from it painted her likeness. She received the unexpected painting at her home in Cucamonga, and the pair began a correspondence that prompted his postwar exodus to California and their marriage in 1946.

To this day, that painting hangs on the wall in their home.

Vecchio still sketches occasionally, working on logos for local companies, or tossing around duck-stamp ideas.

But none of his work has more meaning to him or to those lucky enough to see them than the handful of watercolors kept safe for 60 years.

Through Frank Vecchio's eyes and his paintbrush, those few fleeting moments of the war live on.

And they are beautiful.