Remembering the professional baseball players who took part in the D-Day invasion, including 5 who gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy.
Seaman Second Class Berra served on a small landing craft support missile boat, which attacked the coast of Normandy during the massive D-Day invasion of 1944.
"When the battle commenced at 6:30 a.m., the LCS [landing craft support boat] sprayed bullets and rockets across the heavily fortified beach fronts before the troops landed," Tom Verducci recalled on Wednesday for Sports Illustrated.
"Berra, then 19, manned a machine gun mounted on a ball turret in his LCS and stood tall with a boy's wonder -- too busy marveling at the tremendous explosions of lights and sound to consider the danger that would end the lives of 2,500 of his fellow Americans. In an LCS, only the steel walls of the boat and the grace of God stood between a sailor and death."
"You better get your head down in here," the officer barked at Berra, "if you want it on."
An Army radio technician originally from McKees Rocks who later lived in Burgettstown, he repeatedly waded into the surf off Omaha Beach despite severe wounds and retrieved desperately needed radio equipment.
Hit by mortar shrapnel, machine gun slugs and finally a sniper's bullet, he died on the beach on his 32nd birthday and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration.
Brewer's unit missed the intended drop zone by two miles, but it regrouped and secured a bridge over the Merderet River. A German counterattack overwhelmed the paratroopers.
Back in America, millions of people had gathered around radios. News traveled slowly, and the Brewer family held its breath for months. This time, there was no celebration.
As Brewer's unit scrambled back toward the river, a bullet hit him in the head. He had died instantly.
Elmere P. "Elmer" Wright, Pitcher
Wright's landing craft made it to the beach and as the ramp dropped the men were met with a hail of enemy fire. Most were killed outright. Others lay critically wounded, screaming for help. Those that could, jumped in to the six-foot of water and desperately tried to make their way to the beach. Wright was killed in the hail of gunfire almost as soon as he hit the beach.
Louis J. Alberigo, Third Baseman
Eight months later, troops of the 116th Infantry Regiment were the first to face the devastating enemy barrage at Omaha Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944. Men leapt from landing craft into waist-deep water and an onslaught of deadly accurate machine gun and mortar fire that virtually annihilated the initial waves of the 116th. Among the 2,200 men who lost their lives that day was 27-year-old Private First Class Louis Alberigo.
Frank P. Draper, Jr., Outfielder
On the morning of June 6, 1944, Technical Sergeant Frank Draper was on a landing craft heading for Omaha Beach at Normandy. Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment were to lead the assault on D-Day.
As the landing crafts approached the beach the enemy opened fire. Draper's craft shook with the impact of an anti-personnel shell that tore off his upper arm as he stood in the middle of the craft. Rapidly losing blood, the young soldier slumped to the floor. The fleet-footed outfielder from Bedford, Virginia was dead.
Maurice M. Williams, Pitcher
t. As the landing crafts approached the beach, the enemy opened fire with artillery, mortar, machine-gun and small arms fire. Maurice Williams was killed in action that day. He is buried at the Normandy American Cemetery in France, and was just one of four men from the village of Fairfax who lost their lives in WWII.
Leon served with a segregated amphibious unit (the 818th Amphibious Battalion), and helped land supplies at Utah Beach on June 12, six days after D-Day. “I‘ll never forget June 12. I lost a lot of good friends,” he said.