Amadeo Robert “Stef” Stefanelli grew up in South Brooklyn, in the neighborhood now called Park Slope, surrounded by Marines. His father was one, his cousin Eddie was his idol, and his younger brother Gregory would follow him in. Stef enlisted at 17, and when a local priest and a family friend found a way to get him out, he chose to stay with the platoon he’d trained with, knowing they were headed for Vietnam. Boot camp started at Parris Island on April 27, 1966, and the drill instructors made sure he learned early that you don’t challenge one of them without facing all four. Before he ever reached Vietnam, his transport plane blew a landing gear over the Pacific and limped onto Wake Island on two wheels, while 180 Marines prayed and Stef counted the seven heads between him and the exit.
In early 1967 Stef came ashore in Vietnam expecting a World War II beach landing and instead heard someone on the beach calling “ice cream!” The quiet didn’t last. As a machine gunner he worked his way north, from minesweeps and mortars at Dai Loc to Phu Bai, Dong Ha, C-2 and finally Con Thien, close enough to the DMZ to watch the puffs from enemy mortar tubes. He lost his buddy PJ Smith, who had just won a drawing for a trip to China Beach and told everyone how lucky he was. To this day, Stef won’t let anyone call him lucky. He carried an M14 when the new M16s were jamming in firefights, was blown out of his fighting hole by a B-52 strike, and earned a spot promotion to corporal in under a year after stopping a security breach on the main gate.
The night that never left him came on a night ambush, separated from his gun team and sharing a hole with a Marine he’d never met. When the firefight opened up, he had to pull seven live grenades back in and bend their pins safe while rounds hit the well beside him. The shooting stopped, then came back for another forty minutes, and then the call ran down the line: “Fix bayonets.” Sgt. Solomon was killed coming to check on them. Stef came home alone in late 1967, kissed the ground in California, and took a three-day train back to New York rather than board another plane. He finished his enlistment with 2nd Recon Battalion, making night landings in rubber boats across the Mediterranean alongside Greek commandos.
Home wasn’t easy. Stef was spit on at Port Authority. When his friend Herbie Rogers didn’t show up to his wedding, he learned Herbie had been killed in Vietnam. He carried nightmares of being bayoneted for years. He married, worked for the phone company, went to advertising school and invented a product called the Stash. Seven years of PTSD group at the VA helped him say out loud what he had been carrying alone, and he still visits the Wall to touch the names of the men he served with. Now 78, with a family and grandchildren around him, he says it simply: “I had a war experience.” And through all of it, he came home.
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