Memory, contributions of Battle of the Bulge U.S. Army veteran continue through his family

Henry Cedillo, a housekeeper for 23 years at Table Mountain Casino until a recent retirement, remembers his father’s last words from his hospital bed eight years ago.

“Keep the parade going or I’m going to court martial you!” said Juan Cedillo, a U.S. Army veteran who took part in the Battle of the Bulge as a teenager who was drafted out of his hometown of Cuero, Texas.

“Yes, I’ll take over,” promised Henry, who lives in the same house on Jensen Avenue that his father purchased in 1951 and where he raised five children.

The parade will start with a 9:30 a.m. pre-ceremony on Saturday (Nov. 11) in front of Fresno City Hall, followed by a 10:45 a.m. opening ceremony. The parade will kick off at 11:11 a.m.

The son of the former migrant farmworker has made sure to follow his father’s command. Since 2015, he has entered the Central Valley Veterans Day Parade with posters telling his father’s story and pictures showing a proud veteran decked out in his pea green Army uniform.

Saturday, Henry will be there again. “D-2, No. 17,” he says about where he has been told to prepare for the event, called the largest Veterans Day Parade.

“He made me cry because he told me a lot of things about being in the war,” said Henry. “He instructed me not to sell nothing here on this lot. It’s just me and my brother (Daniel).

“‘You take care of everything, pay the property taxes, do what you have to do or I’ll court martial you,’” Henry recalled his father’s words.

His father would participate in the Veterans Day Parade on a float along other Battle of the Bulge survivors. They have all passed on.

The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensives, was a key turning point in World War II where the Allied Forces thwarted the last major German offensive campaign in a five-week battle in the winter of December 1944-January 1945.

Juan Cedillo recalled his experience in the Janice Stevens’ 2007 book ‘Stories of Service: Valley Veterans Remember World War II.’

He figured he was better equipped for the Army

He was drafted, and decided the Army better suited him.

“I was afraid of heights so I didn’t join the air corps,” he recalled. “I was afraid of sharks so I didn’t join the Navy.

“I chose the Army as a rifleman and became a sharpshooter.

As a technician fifth grade with the 23rd Armored Infantry Division, Juan Cedillo’s job “was to find the enemy and flush them out.”

Cedillo, who was active with the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 509, was hesitant to recount the war with his children until his later years.

“I remember when I went into my first battle. I was scared,” he said in the book. “My buddy to the left of me was killed. Then my buddy to the right of me was killed.

“I wasn’t scared no more. I was mad! Mad was better.”

He recalled traveling 80 miles through the snow. In the book, he described arriving at a concentration camp near Antwerp where the prisoners “were all starving.”

“They were so hungry that as soon as they passed through the gate they fell down and started eating the weeds and grass,” he recalled. “We gave them what food we had with us, and they went into the houses in the town looking for food and clothes.

Henry Cedillo said his father would make him cry “because he told me a lot of things about being in the war.

Dancing and cooking were his passion

He said his father often wore his uniform at veterans gatherings. He also recalls a man who loved to dance and cook.

“He enjoyed a lot of Texas music. Little Joe. Agustin Ramirez. Freddy Fender. Flaco Jimenez,” said Henry Cedillo. His father would dance every chance with his wife, Lydia.

Juan Cedillo also loved to cook, especially cow’s heads where the brain and other parts would be cherished by friends and family who came by to taste the results of the backyard barbecue.

“They would eat the brains and all that good stuff. Beef tongue, also, in tacos,” said Henry Cedillo. “They would boil them real good and make sure everything came out clean.

His daughter Yolanda remembers her father “as an ideal dad.”

“I see him as the greatest role model. I was always looking up to him,” she said. “If he was going to work out in the fields, I would be there with him. He was very hard working.”

But, he also liked to have fun with his children, said Yolanda.

“If he could take us to Disneyland, he would take us,” she said. “At Easter, he would be with his siblings.”

His mantra, she said, was “to be proud of the work that you do.”

That is why Yolanda finally graduated from Fresno City College in 2005 with an associates of science degree.

“I would always think, ‘I hope someday I marry a man like my dad. That’s how much I looked up to my dad,” said Yolanda.

Juan Cedillo had dreamed of going on the Central Valley Honor Flight, which takes veterans to Washington, D.C. to tour war memorials. However, his wife got sick and needed round-the-clock attention and he refused to leave her even when his children suggested they would handle that.

“I have tried to live my life in such a way that (my family) will see me as a hero,” he said in the book. “They are the reason I want to tell this story.

“I want my grandkids to know what we did over there, and to remember ‘No matter how bad things can be, the Lord can carry us through.’”