D-Day veteran Vito Mastrangelo recalls harrowing experience in the Battle of Normandy: I just about drowned
Vito Mastrangelo had the somber task of collecting bodies of his fellow soldiers in Normandy.
On the 75th anniversary of D-Day invasion, Army veteran Vito Mastrangelo recalled his harrowing experience in the Battle of Normandy.
Mastrangelo, 20 years old at the time, was a leader in the 607th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company, a group tasked with collecting the bodies of his fallen comrades.
The 25-man unit collected the bodies of nearly 500 men after the D-Day invasion and in the next two years, Staff Sgt. Mastrangelo and the unit made sure 70,000 men received proper burials.
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Speaking to Harris Faulkner of "Outnumbered Overtime," Mastrangelo described landing on Omaha Beach in German-occupied France and nearly drowning when he left the landing craft.
Mastrangelo said landing on the beach was "total chaos" and none of the training the soldiers received could have prepared them.
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He said his unit ended up hunkering down in a trench, pinned down by a German sniper for three or four days before a group of U.S. riflemen killed the gunman.
"I will never forget the young men who died at that time. I'm 95 years old and I haven't forgotten those boys, not one day of my life," he said, choking back tears.
He said he still talks to veterans and is asked how he and his men carried it out the difficult duty.
"It was just the job, things were different in real battle than what saw here in the states, but I survived it. I had 25 good men and that's what we did," he recalled.
Watch the emotional interview from "Outnumbered Overtime" above.
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