by ROBERT SHOEMAKER Press Staff Writer  
  
Home is the soldier.  Home from the wars.  Home has come young Dennis with the laughing eyes and ready smile.  Home with honor has come Dennis Delesandro — from. Grocery clerk and now hero for all to praise.  Home he has come—his widower father's only child back for good.  Only Dennis is dead.  Killed in a burst of (gun) fire in a steaming jungle in a foreign land 10,000 miles from Atlantic City's sandy beaches.
Killed in a meaningless little clash less than two weeks before he was due to be rotated home his year-long combat tour completed. Wounded once before but declared fit and returned to duty, time ran out for Dennis on Wednesday, Dec. 28, hours before the New Year's truce went into effect..
New Year's Eve the terse, dreadful government telegram shattered John Delesandro's dreams declaring his only son dead "from hostile small arms fire."
With a speed and efficiency unknown in earlier wars Dennis' body reached home only a few short days later.  In the quiet funeral home he lies—uniform bearing his Combat Infantryman’s Badge, paratrooper's wings and Purple Heart.  ln death, his face solemn and peaceful — hair neatly combed—tie and colar (sic) ridgidly (sic) correct—somehow making him look much older than his 22 years.  Only a small boy's cowlick still refusing even now be tamed reminds the visitor how young he really is.  The crowd of visitors and friends seem subdued by the large room in which the coffin rests.  Friends of his youth, awed by the nearness of death and still not believing Dennis dead, talk of old times.  Of swimming from the beaches, of walking in the summer nights on the Boardwalk and watching the "tourists of schoolboy days at the Massachusetts Avenue School, of all the things enjoyed by young men in the full flush of life. 
They have come seen him for themselves but still deep down they don't recognize the stranger in the coffin as their Dennis.  Men and women from various veteran's groups, wearing their overseas caps, mill about the funeral home talking not about Dennis but about their own and distant past wars.  A hard-eyed friend of Dennis', himself a combat veteran, (Joe Tarsitano) says, "They all come but nobody really knows what it feels like to be over there.  Maybe a few of those old vets can though," he adds as an afterthought.
John Delesandro, eyes still haunted by shock, hurries from group to group perhaps feeling like a nervous host making sure everybody is satisfied.  Questions about his son bring only half sentences — sentences left unfinished as his mind gropes for answers.
This afternoon a small group will accompany Dennis on his last trip — a trip to Arlington National Cemetery to rest among America's soldier dead from many wars.  There in the cold January air the traditional trumpet call for taps will echo in the Virginia hills and the crack of a final rifle salute will mark the closing of Dennis' life story — a story ended before it really began.
Only John Delesandro's unanswered question will hang in the air — "Why my son, my only son? "
Article courtesy of Steve Dunn