Bay Shore Vietnam War veteran Bill Barto honors his family's centuries of U.S. military service

Returning to the United States after his service in Vietnam, lifelong Bay Shore resident Bill Barto recalled boarding a flight home from San Francisco to New York, a man seated next to him demanding: "Did you burn down a lot of villages? Did you kill a lot of kids?"

This was July 1970, two months after National Guardsmen opened fire on student protesters at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine — America, locked in a generational battle over the morality of the war in Vietnam.

Barely into his 20s, Barto was in full uniform on the flight, having served with a U.S. Army military intelligence unit headquartered in Saigon.

His service appreciated

Now 77, Barto, who became a technical illustrator for Grumman, recalled to Newsday how a kind flight attendant stepped in to intervene on his behalf, then took a moment to tell him how much his service had been appreciated.

On Tuesday, Barto spoke to dignitaries gathered for Veterans Day ceremonies at the Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage, including New York State Sen. Steven D. Rhoads, Armor Museum trustees Jon Greenfield and retired Army Col. Jason M. Halloren, Town of Oyster Bay council members Andrew A. Monteleone and Vicki Walsh and Oyster Bay Town Supervisor Joseph Saladino, who called it a "sacred day of remembrance."

Barto told the story of his father, William Willet Barto, who served as a cavalry soldier — yes, on horseback — during a little-known chapter of American history in World War I: the elder Barto was stationed in Brownsville, Texas, part of a U.S. Army contingent patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas in search of German saboteurs.

But the Barto history of military service goes far deeper.

In fact, since his family arrived to the New World from Paris in 1645, Barto said family members have served in most major conflicts in U.S. history.

Answering the call

"People forget," Barto said, "that men and women answered the call to defend this country throughout history, that some gave their all, that some did not come home — and that they did so to make this a better country, to make us who we are. ... That it’s not some fairytale; that it’s not just a story. Some just don’t get it."

Arriving in the 17th century, the Bartos, their last name originally spelled Barteau, settled in New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement on Manhattan Island.

According to genealogical research, Barto said he learned his seven-times great-grandfather fought with George Washington at the Battle of Long Island during the Revolutionary War, while two relatives — one fighting for the Union Army, the other for the Confederacy — fought in the Civil War. Barto’s father, born on the family farm in Bay Shore on Oct. 27, 1893, served with the 16th Cavalry Regiment in World War I. 

And Barto’s late older brother, Ash Barto, was a multiengine aircraft mechanic working on B-24, B-25 and B-29 bombers in the Mariana Islands during World War II.

Barto said two nephews also served: one with the Army Corps of Engineers, the other as a colonel in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

Family history, military heritage

"We are fortunate that Long Island has many households where there have been generations of those who have served," Armor Museum spokesman Gary Lewi told Newsday. "But, I don’t know of anyone who has the military legacy of the Barto family that extends to centuries. On one hand it’s remarkable. But, not if you know Bill Barto. His family heritage is literally a personal history book about America’s military."

As Halloren, an Iraq War veteran and retired deputy commandant of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said of the Barto family legacy: "Veterans Day is a day to celebrate the war-fighting capacity of so many, those like the Barto family, who have defended this nation since before it was even a nation ... Families like that make me proud to be an American."

The Bartos moved from Manhattan to Flushing, Queens, then to Islip and finally to Bay Shore, where Bill Barto said his grandfather Ashbell Barto was a homebuilder and farmer, owning two horses — one to plow the farmland, the other to pull the family carriage, since, Barto said: "It’s not like Henry Ford had invented the Model T yet."

A 1966 graduate of Bay Shore High School, Barto said he’d known his father’s story and that of his seven-times great-grandfather fighting in the Battle of Long Island.

But he was surprised to learn of his family’s service in the Civil War.

Family on both sides

Barto said a member of his paternal grandmother's family was a Union soldier. And he later learned another relative, Col. Clark Russell Barteau, born to a branch of the Barto clan living in Ohio, fought with the 22nd Tennessee Cavalry with Confederate Army Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. A controversial figure in U.S. history, Forrest later was selected to lead the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan as its first Grand Wizard.

Barto has paperwork from the Sons of Confederate Veterans attesting to the service of Col. Clark Russell Barteau. 

Still, Barto remains most proud of the service of his own father, who died in 1971.

Growing up on the family farm, the elder Barto loved horses and when then-President Woodrow Wilson announced the U.S. entry into World War I, William Willet Barto found himself a volunteer in the cavalry. He trained at Fort Ethan Allen in Vermont, then was sent to join military patrols along the Rio Grande.

In the years immediately after the Mexican-American War, the U.S.-Mexico border was a hot spot for trouble; the Texas State Historical Association notes that not only were Mexican revolutionaries urged to fight to retake land lost to the United States, but Germany was plotting against Americans there too. That followed the Zimmerman note, a secret telegram transmitted by the German ambassador in Washington to the president of Mexico, urging Mexico to join the fight in World War I — promising the return of its former territories in the U.S. Southwest if successful.

Border saboteurs

"German saboteurs were coming over," Barto said his father recalled in stories, noting: "He was stationed at the old wooden International Bridge, and he and the other cavalry officers would have their swords ready and they would see the hay wagons coming, take their swords, run them through the hay. My father said how one soldier stuck his sword in — and the response came back in German. My father said: ‘Well, that doesn’t sound like Spanish to me.’ And they caught this German spy."

The elder Barto had a chance to shift to a mechanized armor division at the end of the war, with horses having been phased out in favor of a new battle tool: the tank. On Tuesday, the Armor Museum unveiled a working replica of one of those F17 tanks, hand-built by a fabricator in California.

The unveiling brought to life the bridge between World War I-era cavalry units under the command of Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing and World War II-era tank battalions led by Gen. George S. Patton. "My dad said when he heard the word tank his reaction was, ‘Nah, I don’t think I want to do that,’ " Bill Barto recalled, adding, "He was like, ‘I’ll be damned if I’m going to ride around in a tank.' "

As Saladino said of the reaction of William Willet Barto: "It gives us a personal glimpse into the human side of history. It reminds us that every advancement in warfare carries a deep human story and all too many times tremendous human sacrifice."

The elder Barto became the 10th member of the fledgling Town of Islip Police Department in 1933, then joined the newly formed Suffolk County Police Department in 1960, retiring in 1963.