We were in very deep water with all our equipment. “Somebody was yelling in the loudest voice I’ve ever heard: ‘Get off this beach!'” I made private first class a week or two before the invasion.” Today, a plaque on Omaha Beach marks the spot where he and his fellow GIs began the liberation of Europe. “It was widely known that we were preparing for an invasion of Europe,” he said, “but no one knew where the invasion would take place. Moretto arrived in Liverpool, England, in November 1943 and joined the 1st Infantry Division as a replacement. I went to Camp Wheeler, Ga., for 13 weeks basic training.” “I was in the first group of 18-year-olds to be drafted, on Feb. “Soon after Pearl Harbor, which happened when I was age 17, they lowered the draft age,” said Moretto. Bob Wright (later killed in action) at Bütgenbach, Belgium in December 1944. Born in 1924 in New York City, he grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan. It was the fight that had been coming Moretto’s way all his life. The German infantry never did break through our lines, but two tanks did.” They broke through our line, but our artillery slaughtered the infantry who were accompanying them.

There would have to be something wrong with you if you weren’t frightened. Said Moretto: “The battle began for me with German tanks emerging from snow and fog, coming over a rise with machine guns firing. There would have to be something wrong with you if you weren’t frightened.” “The battle began for me with German tanks emerging from snow and fog, coming over a rise with machine guns firing. 16, 1945, some 24 German divisions, 10 of them armored, launched a massive counterattack in the Ardennes and that the Big Red One held the crucial shoulder of the “Bulge” at Bullingen, “destroying hundreds of German tanks in the process.” A diminutive figure who looks barely larger than his M-1 Garand rifle, Moretto later remembered the war not so much for the pitched trauma of combat but for the long hours of being sleepless and cold.Īn Army history of Moretto’s division says that on Dec. Moretto belonged to Company C, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, “The Big Red One.” He came ashore on Omaha Beach in the second wave during the JNormandy invasion. “Rocky” Moretto was one of only two men in his infantry company who’d landed on D-Day and fought through to victory without being killed, wounded, or captured. When Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, Staff Sgt.

Tank battalions battle of the bulge