Marching Drum Corps Fueled Patriotism during World War Two
By Bob Cudmore, Daily Gazette, 5-08-04
After all these years, Sylvia Zimolka Stock and Frank Yazum remember the colors their rival Amsterdam drum corps wore during World War Two.
Stock and the other young women of the St. John’s Fife and Drum Corps looked sharp in blue and gold uniforms while the co-educational Polish National Alliance (P.N.A.) Drum and Bugle Corps took the field wearing maroon and white. Yazum was glad his P.N.A. corps contained boys and girls. “We had it made,” he said.
The separate musical organizations came from adjacent Polish neighborhoods. Park Hill was home to the St. John’s corps and the church of the same name. Originally, the group was known as the Seventh Ward Fife and Drum Corps. The P.N.A. Hall is located at Reid and Church Streets and most members of its drum corps were drawn from Reid Hill, the parish of St. Stanislaus Church. One of the P.N.A. buglers, Frank Ratka, went on to a career as business manager for symphony orchestras in Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Oklahoma City and Atlanta.
Another martial music group of the 1940s was the all-female Fort Johnson Fife and Drum Corps, who wore bright red uniforms.
The three organizations were led by local musicians and were taught marching by military veterans. The groups competed against each other and corps from out of town in appearance and performance. Inspections and competitions were held at Sanford Field, now Veterans Field on Locust Avenue. Competitions also took place out-of-town with groups such as the Tioga Cadets from Johnstown. Mike Wancewicz, who belonged to the P.N.A corps, said the Johnstown unit wore dressy black uniforms and were tough competitors. Troy had a corps that dressed in green, the Mighty Callahan, and the local groups competed against other Upstate New York and Massachusetts drum corps
Marge Vertucci Habla was filling in as a flag bearer with the Fort Johnson Fife and Drum Corps during one Memorial Day parade in the 1940s. Habla and majorette Grace Bender had received conflicting marching orders. Habla took a turn and starting marching toward the Old Fort, with soldiers saluting along the way. However, the music was getting fainter and the crowd was beginning to laugh. Behind Habla, Bender had not taken the turn and was leading the instruments in a different direction.
“It was during the war and something that was very patriotic at the time,” Stock said in explaining why she joined the St. John’s corps at age 11. Stock began as a flag bearer then played drums. Yazum joined the P.N.A. corps in 1937 and played a bugle.
Stock and Yazum said their groups played traditional marches plus some current popular music set to a march tempo.
“We would go down to New York City for the Thaddeus Kosciusko day parade,” Stock said. Kosciusko was an American Revolution war hero from Poland.
Stock added: “We would go to Fort Smith near Peekskill where Company G of the National Guard from Amsterdam was stationed. We would go different cities to parade.” Yazum said the P.N.A. corps also traveled to New York City and to Massachusetts.
When V-E Day occurred on May 8, 1945, the Allied victory in Europe, Stock said of the St. John’s group: “We marched through the streets of Amsterdam because everybody was out celebrating. It was a great day.”
Yazum did not recall if the P.N.A. corps marched that day, but said: “We just went around kissing all the girls.”
After the end of the war, the local drum corps disbanded within two or three years, Stock and Yazum recalled.
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