Yogi Berra was a native of St. Louis and signed with the Yankees in 1941, age 16, before enlisting at age 18 in the United States Navy as a gunner's mate
He would see France, Italy and North Africa during the war, but it was his involvement on D-Day, at both Utah and Omaha beaches, where he was wounded in the hand by incoming enemy fire; he was later awarded the Purple Heart Medal.
He was a gunner's mate assigned to the attack transport USS Bayfield. As a gunner's mate, Berra was responsible for the operation and maintenance of weapons and other ordnance equipment, as well as small arms and magazines.
During the invasion, GM2 Berra manned a landing craft support vessel from which he said he "sprayed bullets and rockets across the heavily fortified beach fronts before the troops landed."
after completing basic training, Yogi volunteered for what he was told was a secret mission. So secretive, in fact, that he was not permitted to disclose any details to his family. This mission was to serve onboard a rocket boat in support of the first offensive waves of the Allied invasion of Normandy. These 36-foot rocket boats, classified as Landing Craft Small Support (LCSS) boats, were armed with six crew, a dozen rockets, and several machine guns each. Their job was to get within 300 yards of Normandy’s shore and pound the German machine gun nests with rockets so that the soldiers landing could have a better chance of survival. For months before the invasion, Yogi’s LCSS trained with eleven others under the attack transport USS Bayfield to prepare for the invasion.
As gunner’s mate, Yogi was responsible for the operation and maintenance of all weapons and ordinance onboard while also manning one of the ship’s machine guns throughout the mission.
“Being a young guy, you didn’t think nothing of it until you got in it. And so we went off 300 yards off beach. We protect the troops. If they ran into any trouble, we would fire the rockets over. We had a lead boat that would fire one rocket. If it hits the beach, then everybody opens up. We could fire one rocket if we wanted to, or we could fire off 24 or them, 12 on each side. We stretched out 50 yards apart. And that was the invasion. Nothing happened to us. That’s one good thing. Our boat could go anywhere, though. We were pretty good, flat bottom, 36-footer.”
Thanks! I'd never heard this about Yogi Berra.
ReplyDeleteMy all-time favorite Yogism: “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
ReplyDeleteWhat wisdom!