Tim Gray Media was mentioned at the end of the credits in the recent World War II in HD series airing on the History Channel

The series was produced by Lou Reda Productions out of Easton, PA. Reda is one of the top production companies in the world, specializing in World War II films.

” I was happy to help out at the beginning of the History Channel project, ” said Tim Gray, President of Tim Gray Media. “It was a two-year process for Reda to aquire all this amazing footage from WWII, much of it never seen before. I was in on the initial planning of the project and found it to be a great experinence. It was also very interesting to pour through footage and see many scenes from WWII I had never witnessed,” Gray continued. “It was great to see the end result of all the hard work Lou Reda’s team put into this project and I was honored to be a part of that team effort early on.”

Tim Gray Media is an Emmy Award-winning documentary film company based in Kingston, Rhode Island. TGM specializes in producing films documenting the personal stories of the veterans of World War II.

Bob Kerr: A canteen that connects with the battle

The beach continues to give up its small pieces of history decades after the fighting. The metal rusts and breaks apart, the cloth fades and is reduced to ever smaller shreds.

But the person who searches the sand with a fine eye for detail and a sense of historical connection can still find the well-worn piece of equipment that tells a story. Some of it is obviously part of something much bigger — a tank or artillery piece perhaps. And some of it is from the things a solider carried.

Ed Robinson found the canteen while doing what he has been doing for years. He was walking the beaches in and around Normandy, where he conducts tours and sometimes shows American veterans the exact spot where they did amazing things in 1944.

“They know what they did but not where the hell they did it,” says Robinson, an Irishman who ended up a tour guide after seeing a lot of the world and doing a lot of “little crappy jobs.”

A few months ago, he found the canteen with his metal detector. It belonged to a guy from Newport. It was in two pieces and on the bottom piece, numbers and a letter were scratched into the metal: J 5615. The numbers were clearly part of a service number but not all of it. So Robinson did the kind of research he has learned to do.

He studied battle maps and went to an Army Web site with the partial service number. He knew what unit — the 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division — had fought in that area, and he worked on the assumption that the owner of the canteen had been killed in action.

He found the full service number was 31445615 and the letter J was the first letter in the last name of Thomas James, who lived in Newport when he enlisted in October of 1943.

James was 34 and married. He was a private. He is buried in grave 28, row 7, plot J in the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in France.

Robinson loves being able to make this kind of connection, but he wants to take it still further. And, as soon as he found that the owner of the canteen came from Rhode Island, he thought “That’s Timmy.”

Tim Gray, who has produced fine documentaries on D-Day and Rhode Island veterans who took part, met Robinson when he was filming in Normandy. They have become friends and Robinson visited Gray in Rhode Island.

“Eddie’s a real character,” says Gray. “He goes places others don’t. And he’s extremely knowledgeable.”

So when Robinson determined the owner of the canteen, he asked Gray if he could help locate James’ family. Gray told him he knew this guy at the local paper.

“Our desire is to see if [James] still has anybody here,” says Gray. “Eddie wants to see this canteen go back to the family.

“This man never came home. It would be nice to have a piece of him here.”

This is what they know from the archives Robinson explored via the Internet: James enlisted in the Army on Oct. 6, 1943, in Providence. He enlisted, as did everyone else, “for the duration of the war or other emergency, plus six months.” He died on July 13, 1944. He had completed one year of high school and worked as a salesman.

Now, more than 55 years after James’s death, Robinson would like to bring something pulled from the sand in France back to the family of the man who carried it into battle.

His Web site is BattleofNormandyTours.com.

bkerr@projo.com

Tim Gray Media’s recent airing of its documentary film Navy Heroes of Normandy became one of the first ever locally produced films to air on Rhode Island PBS affiliate WSBE’s HD channel.

The film, which chronicles the building and dedication of the first monument in Normandy, France recognizing the United States Navy’s role on D-Day, aired on Veterans’ Day and for several days following.

“Rhode Island PBS just recently made the switch to an all HD programming channel and it was great to see NHN air on that channel in full high definition, ” said Tim Gray, President of Tim Gray Media.

“What made it even more special was to see color film of the D-Day operation air in HD, some of the footage had never been seen before,” Gray said. “To see the invasion in full HD color was breathtaking,” Gray continued.

Navy Heroes of Normandy was produced and written by Emmy Award winning writer Tim Gray and filmed and edited by multiple Emmy Award winning photographer Jim Karpeichik of Ocean State Video.

Documentary filmmaker puts a human face on D-Day

By Michael Janusonis

Journal Arts Writer

Documentary filmmaker Tim Gray’s “Navy Heroes of Normandy” will make its television debut as a Veterans Day special at 10 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 36.

The hour-long film is as much a monument to the brave sailors who ferried American troops onto French beaches on D-Day, June 6, 1944, as is the actual monument honoring the sailors which was erected at Normandy in 2008 as profiled in the film.

Gray, based in Kingston, traveled to Loveland, Colo., to capture footage of sculptor Stephen Spears’ statue being cast in bronze. It was a long-delayed monument to the 1,068 American sailors who were killed during the initial assault on Nazi-occupied Europe and it was dedicated in September 2008 at the highest point on Utah Beach.

But more than a bronze statue, Gray has also put a personal face on the D-Day invasion and the sacrifices made by the sailors who ferried in the troops and landed on places like Omaha and Utah beaches, in filmed interviews with many of the former Navy men. They are now old men, but they vividly recount the terrors and heartaches and bloodshed of that day more than six decades ago as though it were yesterday, some in very emotional moments.

Richard Fazzio of Woonsocket tearfully recalls the terror of watching soldiers being shot in front of him as the sea turned red. Frank Amalfetano of Warwick remembers wading through a sea of body parts which had to be reported back to headquarters so they could be picked up. Ernie Corvese of Smithfield emotionally remembers how the rest of his boat crew was killed during the assault.

Gray also interviews Manfred Rommel, son of the late Gen. Erwin Rommel, who was in charge of defending Adolf Hitler’s Atlantic coastal defenses. The younger Rommel tells how his father was back in Germany when the Allied invasion began, celebrating his wife’s 50th birthday. He felt he could leave Normandy because the German high command did not believe there would be an invasion during the bad weather of June in the English Channel. (The D-Day invasion was actually planned for June 5, but was delayed a day because of rough seas.)

Gray has pulled together color footage of the D-Day preparations and the landings that were part of the largest air, sea and land assault in history. It has been expertly edited by Jim Karpeichik into a seamless presentation that goes back and forth between June 6, 1944, and the reminiscences of the surviving sailors.

Already shown on June 4, 5 and 6 in Normandy (with French subtitles), “Navy Heroes of Normandy” is a tribute to bravery and courage under extremely difficult conditions.

Bob Kerr: Son’s devotion brings to light a WWII love story

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Vic Del Regno has had his mother’s and father’s letters to one another during World War II bound into volumes, and a documentary film on their narrative is in the works.

Photo courtesy of Vic Del Regno

As he read his father’s words, Vic Del Regno was struck by two things — their passion and their eloquence. He remembers his father as a man with an eighth-grade education who kept a very tight hold on his emotions.

Yet here are the words of Andrew Del Regno in a letter written from the South Pacific on May 8, 1945:

“Yes, many were lost and many more are to be again before the final curtain comes down on all this miserable man-made fury called war.”

It was a time when letters, words on paper, were emotional currency. They sustained and tested relationships. They connected peaceful places to war-torn places. And they allowed a man who never got past the eighth grade to show how precious the language could be.

Vic Del Regno has a treasure trove. He has the letters sent between his mother and father while his father served with the Seabees in the South Pacific for two hard years. And he has treated them with a deep appreciation for their value.

He remembers when he and his sister found the letters in the attic of the house in Nyack, N.Y. They read and they giggled at this unexpected glimpse into their parents’ private lives.

Those letters got moved around some, from attic to closet to garage. Someday, somebody was going to sit down and read them and organize them.

It finally happened two years ago when Del Regno began taking the letters from the small trunk in which his wife, Theresa, had put them.

“It took a few days just to put the envelopes in chronological order,” he says.

The letters are more than 60 years old. Some were fragile, on very thin paper. There were stains, mildew.

“I had to unfold them very carefully,” he says.

Then, he began to read, back through his family’s history and his country’s history. He read his way back to that time when war would take his father, who worked as a house mover, out of Nyack to train with the 35th Seabee Battalion at Davisville before heading to the South Pacific. And it would take him back to a time when Nyack, a small town on the Hudson River, would change dramatically and present a newly married young woman with possibilities she had probably never dreamed of.

Somewhere, amidst that stack of well-worn paper, Del Regno had his “holy cow” moment.

“I said, ‘There’s a story here, a book.’ ”

The book, or books, sit on a table in the beautiful house in South Kingstown where the Del Regnos moved three years ago to be near their daughter Maria, her husband, Michael Mele, and their children.

The books are striking. They are beautifully bound. They are testament to Del Regno’s pride and fascination, his loyalty and diligence. And to turn their pages is to learn a story that is much more than one family’s World War II memories.

“It’s a fairly unique project,” says Beau Jones, whose Image Design Company in Wakefield became Vic Del Regno’s publisher.

Del Regno brought his treasure to Jones when he knew he owed those precious pieces of his family’s past more than just careful arrangement in another set of boxes.

“It took on this life,” he says.

Jones scanned more than 2,000 items — letters, envelopes, pictures, postcards. He laid out more than 1,400 pages.

“It was an exercise in organization,” says Jones.

When he was finished, Jones and Del Regno took the work to W.E. Jackson & Company, the bookbinders in Centredale that have been in business since 1921.

“Who Knew: A World War II Journey Through Love Letters” is not available at your local bookstore. But it will have a rich and devoted readership. It will be a family centerpiece and a piece of history. And probably by the end of next year, it will be available on your TV screen.

“It shows his compassion for what his father went through,” says Jack Sprengel, a retired Seabee who is active in the Seabee museum still taking shape at Davisville.

Sprengel is one of the people Del Regno contacted while putting the book together. Del Regno had not been aware that his father had trained in a place not far from the house in South Kingstown.

Sprengel sees the work Del Regno has done as filling in a valuable piece of Seabee history.

“It’s an account of what Seabees went through in a personal way,” he says. “It’s the human side of what happened.”

It is that. While reading the letters and arranging them in chronological order, Del Regno noticed there were gaps in his mother’s responses. She didn’t write for months. She even missed her husband’s birthday.

“He’s gone for two years and he’s writing these passionate love letters,” says Del Regno. “At one point, he says a friend of his got 12 letters and he didn’t get any.”

What Andrew Del Regno did not know at the time was that Nyack had changed. The Army had taken over a large chunk of the town and built a training base. There were thousands of young recruits looking for the things young recruits look for.

Among the letters is one from a friend back home telling Andrew Del Regno that his wife had been seen with soldiers in various hotels.

“His tent mate then wrote a letter back to my mother saying, ‘How could you do this?’ ” says Del Regno.

Helen Del Regno asked for forgiveness. She and her husband worked it out. After the war, after Andrew returned from the Philippines where he’d been set to prepare for the invasion of Japan, the Del Regnos settled down and raised six children.

“I think I love my parents even more after learning this,” says Del Regno.

Still, he had to arrange a family meeting to convince his brothers and sisters that the book was a good idea.

It was probably inevitable that Del Regno and Tim Gray would get together. Their work intersects in a bunch of places. Gray, the former TV sportscaster who has created his own production company, Tim Gray Media, has produced two fine World War II documentaries: “D-Day: The Price of Freedom” and “Navy Heroes of Normandy.” Now, he will produce a third.

Gray met Del Regno through a mutual friend. He saw the work Del Regno had done.

“To me, it’s an absolute natural,” says Gray. “There are so many different elements. I’ve never seen anything quite like this before — the way he documented everything.”

They have already been back to Nyack and they will go again. Next summer, they will go back to the South Pacific, to Guadalcanal and then to the small island of Banika where Andrew Del Regno spent most of his time.

Vic Del Regno, a retired business executive, is paying for the entire project. It is further proof, if any were needed, of his belief that the story of his parents and World War II is a story that resonates far beyond his family.

He hopes his work will move others to find their own well-worn letters in the attic or the garage and learn history in a personal way.

Del Regno dedicated his amazing piece of work to his parents — to his father for showing a side of himself his children never knew and to his mother for saving the letters.

bkerr@projo.com

Navy Heroes of Normandy, Tim Gray Media’s latest documentary film on World War II, made its RI premiere on Saturday, July 18th at the Warwick Showcase Cinema in East Greenwich. More than 400 people were on hand to see the film, many of them WWII veterans and their family members. The event was free.

The one-hour film chronicles the building and dedication of the first ever monument in Normandy honoring the United States Navy’s role on D-Day.

The documentary recently made its international debut in Normandy, France during D-Day 65th anniversary ceremonies.

Additionally, NHN features the personal stories of navy veterans who took part in operation Neptune-Overlord on June 6, 1944, many of whom are from Southern New England. The film is a follow-up to Tim Gray Media’s Emmy Award winning first film, D-Day: The Price of Freedom, released in 2006.

Interviews with French residents of Normandy who lived through D-Day, as well as Manfred Rommel, son of the famous German Field Marshal, Erwin Rommel, who was home with his father in Germany when the call came in that the Allied invasion of France had begun, are also included.

Thank you to everyone for making the Rhode Island premiere such a great success.

By Russell J. Moore/Warwick Beacon

War Veteran Frank Amalfetano has been trying to forget the carnage of D-Day for the last 65 years.

“I’ve really tried to erase it from my mind, but the flashbacks just don’t go away,” said Amalfetano, now 84 years old.

“Even after [D-Day], I stayed on the beach of Normandy for three months—June, July and August and there wasn’t a day that went by … that we didn’t find body parts in the water.”

Despite their reluctance to recall what were the most traumatic days of their lives, historian and filmmaker Tim Gray is doing his part to make sure the stories of war veterans like Amalfetano, which feature their courage, selflessness and sense of duty, are preserved for all posterity.

Gray, who works full-time for General Treasurer Frank Caprio, has produced Navy Heroes of Normandy a documentary that features Amalfetano and several other Rhode Island Navy veterans.

Navy Heroes of Normandy is as educational as it is emotional. The documentary culminates in the dedication of a Navy Memorial in Normandy on September of last year.

Gray also produced another film, D-Day: The Price of Freedom, which featured Gray bringing five D-Day veterans back to Normandy. That film has won two Emmy Awards for writing and photography.

“Everybody who lived in that time period has an incredible story to share whether they were a civilian or in the service,” said Gray during a recent interview.

“We’re losing so many of these veterans every day. We’re in a serious time crunch here and we need to get these stories out while we can,” said Gray, who has been a World War II historian since the age of 6.

Both movies contain the history of and strategy behind D-Day, footage of then General Dwight Eisenhower, and personal stories of the veterans and their experiences.

Gray said that one of his fondest memories of filmmaking was traveling in Normandy with the veterans in 2006.

“They’re heroes in Normandy. I joke around and say it was like traveling with rock stars,” said Gray.

In addition to Amalfetano, his latest films detail the heroics of Rhode Islanders Ernie Corvese, one of the first men ashore on D-Day, Richard Fazzio, who like Amalfetano was a Navy coxswain, and several others.

The film is deeply emotional.

“There was so much random killing in World War II and these men live with the guilt that many of their friends were killed and it could have easily been them,” said Gray.

Nobody knows that better than Amalfetano.

“We were 18-year-old kids and we didn’t know what was going on. Thank God we’re still here today to talk about it,” said Amalfetano in the movie.

He made similar statements during an interview on Friday.

“Those were real bullets they shoot at you,” he said.

When Amalfetano enlisted in the United States Navy in 1943 at the age of 17, he and the millions of others who answered the bell for their country had no clue that they’d soon be part of the largest sea borne invasion in the history of the world.

Amalfetano, who most know as the owner of Jennies Ice Cream—a Warwick landmark that was located on West Shore Road—was one of the 85 percent of the troops in that battle that had never seen combat before D-Day.

Trained as a coxswain in the U.S. Navy, he had never even steered a boat before joining the armed forces. It was Amalfetano’s job to perform the all-important task of getting the soldiers from the water to dry ground.

Sixty-five years later, Amalfetano, a personable, affable, jolly gentleman who struggles with his eyesight and hearing, would still rather not think, let alone talk, about World War II.

Despite the traumatic memories, Amalfetano was a great sport during the interview on Friday, trying to recall the least pleasant days of his life. But he was clearly more interested in talking about other, more pleasant subjects.

Amalfetano perked up when given the chance to talk about his beloved Red Sox, sports cars, or golf (which he still plays despite his limited vision).

Amalfetano said he learned something about himself in the war.

“I was pretty darn good at steering a boat,” he said.

Navy Heroes of Normandy will be aired on June 6, at the Sainte/Mare/Eglise, at the Utah Beach Museum. President Barack Obama, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will all attend a ceremony following the film’s showing to commemorate D-Day.

The film will also be screened at the Dwight Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas on June 4-5. On July 18, a free showing will be held at the Showcase Cinema on Quaker Lane in Warwick at 10:30 a.m. Veterans will be given a preference. Amalfetano gives the film rave reviews.

“I think [Gray] has done a wonderful job,” said Amalfetano.

Victoria, his wife whom he will celebrate his 55th wedding anniversary with in November, also liked the film.

“While he was watching it, he said ‘Victoria, I’m in France,’” said Victoria.

For a moment, Victoria thought he was having flashbacks, but soon realized he was referring to his interview with Gray, which was spliced in during footage of France.

“It’s a good movie,” said Victoria.

Providence filmmaker to land at Normandy — honoring the Navy’s unsung role in D-Day

Providence filmmaker Tim Gray’s lifelong fascination with World War II will fittingly land at France’s Utah Beach on June 4-6, for the 65th anniversary of D-Day. His documentary, “Navy Heroes of Normandy,” is screening as an official part of the ceremonies.

Gray, who is making his fourth consecutive trip to commemorate D-Day, shares his thoughts on this honor with New England Film Junkie readers:

Guest Blog by Tim Gray

I was six years old when I picked up one of those think encyclopedia books on World War II. Not average reading for a kid that age, but full of drama. After all, what 10-year old asks for cassettes of Edward R. Murrow’s broadcasts from the German “Blitz” of London in 1940, as a birthday present?

Over the next three decades, many of them spent as a television news journalist, my focus on a career may have been covering sports teams and news stories all around the country, but my fascination with World War II and the amazing stories of the people who fought and lived through it, never wavered. I certainly read my share of books and devoured films and documentaries on the topic, yet have only skimmed the surface of one of the most important periods of time in the history of the world.

As I was transitioning away from life in TV news and started a new company focusing on documentary films, there was no doubt my first project would be on the Second World War. I hit the pavement and did some serious begging (the professional word is “fund raising”) and found some great sponsors who were willing to send me and five D-Day veterans from New England back to Normandy in 2006 to recount where they were and what they saw on June 6, 1944.

My first film, “D-Day: The Price of Freedom,” was well received and aired nationally on over 140 PBS stations. It even won a couple of Emmy Awards in New England. Not bad for the first one out of the box.

To stand on Omaha Beach and look into the bluffs above with five men, now in their 80’s, was like opening up that book I first read when I was six and having it come to life. To hear their stories of survival and see these men cry when talking about the death that surrounded them, was to understand what happened on that day.

The one thing about war is that it is unique to every man who fights. No two stories in battle are ever the same. It’s something that I can never truly understand, even though I’ve read hundreds of books on the topic, viewed as many films, and stood in dozens of places where the battle was actually fought.

About 1,500 World War II veterans pass on each day and with them, some truly amazing stories of courage, sacrifice and dedication. It was a different time and they were a special group.

The first film led to a second project called “Navy Heroes of Normandy,” which chronicles the building and dedication of the first monument in Normandy honoring the contribution of the United States Navy on D-Day. Every other branch of the U.S. Armed Forces had monuments in Normandy, but for 64 years, the Navy had been neglected.

Now on Utah Beach, there is a beautiful 14-foot-high memorial to the Navy’s efforts on D-Day and the over 1,000 sailors who died in the initial three days of the invasion to liberate Western Europe. My high-definition film brings the story to life.

In addition to Navy D-Day veterans and French civilians who lived through D-Day, we also interviewed General Erwin Rommel’s son, Manfred, for the film. He was at home with his dad when the call came in that the Allied invasion was underway; a 15 year old German boy witnessing history in the making as he looked into his father’s shocked and sullen eyes.

This June, I’ll be making my fourth trip to Normandy’s shores in the past four years. This time, I will be taking part in 65th anniversary ceremonies for D-Day, our new film making its European debut in the historic town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise (the first town to be liberated on D-Day) and at the Utah Beach Museum. It’s truly an honor for me.

We’ve added French subtitles to the documentary so that those who benefited from what the United States did on June 6, 1944 will once again have the chance to hear from the men who landed on their shores and parachuted into their fields, as 18 and 19-year-old kids 65 years ago. The French still remember and honor these men as heroes when they return.

They still see them as young liberators, even though they are now elderly men. The 9,386 crosses and Stars of David in the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer are one reason why.

President Obama, French President Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Brown will be in the area somewhere. They’re welcome to stop in to see “Navy Heroes of Normandy.”

While I’m in Normandy this June, I’ll probably look back and see that picking up that World War II encyclopedia when I was six years old was probably one the most important things I ever did in my life and certainly, the most rewarding.

Tim Gray is president of Tim Gray Media, a documentary film company which focuses on films about World War II veterans.

Bomb expert Ernest Corvese among first ashore on D-day

Tim Gray is making a documentary film, Navy Heroes of Normandy, that features Ernie Corvese.

By Mark Patinkin

I asked Ernest Corvese whether he planned to travel to Normandy in two weeks to mark the 65th anniversary of the invasion. It would be his day as much as anyone’s; Corvese was among the first Americans on the beach — earlier even than the infantry featured in the iconic landing scene in Saving Private Ryan.

He is 83. I was sitting at his dining table in Smithfield. We were joined by Tim Gray, a Rhode Island documentary-maker who will be making the trip to France to debut his new hour-long film called Navy Heroes of Normandy. It includes dozens of interviews with veterans like Corvese, most of whom have Rhode Island connections because so many were trained at the bases here.

Gray said few people realize the first troops on the beach were demolition experts sent to blow up obstacles. Corvese was among them.

He was barely 17 on D-Day, having left high school in February 1944 to sign up. He only got a few weeks’ training before being sent overseas. He was a seaman first class, soon assigned to an eight-member Naval Combat Demolition Unit (NCDU).

On the morning of June 5, after a short time at an American base in Falmouth, England, he was sent along with thousands of Americans across the channel for the invasion. Around 1 a.m. on June 6, they pulled among other U.S. ships about 14 miles off Omaha Beach.

Five hours later, at dawn on June 6, Ernie Corvese and dozens of others jumped into a Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel — an LCVP. It was like the Higgins Boats that would soon put infantry on the beach, but bigger. The LCVP also carried inflatable rafts filled with explosives — mostly foot-long sticks. Corvese’s job would be to use them to blow apart “Hedgehogs” — the X-shaped welded-steel obstacles set on the beach to stop tanks. The flat-bottomed boat bounced with each wave. Aside from a few men reciting the rosary, no one talked.

Corvese was a long way from the West End of Providence, where he grew up. He had decided to join the Navy because he didn’t like the idea of carrying a heavy pack in the infantry. Now, between his rifle, web belt, ammunition and extra explosives, he was weighed down with over 100 pounds. His unit of eight men readied themselves.

As they got close, shells from German artillery guns called 88s began landing nearby. Although Corvese couldn’t see them, the barrels of the 88s stuck out like tank barrels from concrete bunkers above the beach.

Corvese knew they were almost there when he began to hear the zip of machine-gun bullets. The boat came in fast and lowered the front ramp. Corvese was one of the first to leap off. He jumped to the side so the ramp wouldn’t run him over. The water was waist deep, but his equipment toppled him. Just at that moment, an 88 shell directly hit his LCVP boat. Corvese believes it likely struck one of the rafts, and ignited explosives. By the time he surfaced, there was such chaos, he did not even look back to see the damage. He would later learn that everyone still on the boat had been killed, including all seven others in his unit. He crawled through the shallow water onto the beach, and pressed himself into the sand. There was no cover. Men who knelt or sat up were targeted.

Corvese had lost his equipment and rifle coming off the boat. His inflatable was gone. He looked for other Navy demolition people, but saw none of their signature blue-striped helmets. Army demo units were by now on the beach, some going after the obstacles, but most men ashore simply tried to take cover. As planned, it was low tide, so that the Americans would be as far as possible from the bunkers, but that also left a 400-yard beach to cross.

Soon, the first wave of infantry landed. Ten feet away, Corvese saw two medics tending to a wounded soldier. Just then, an 88 landed among them. It killed both medics, though Corvese could see the wounded man was still alive. A piece of shrapnel from the 88 the size of a finger hit him below his back. The shrapnel didn’t penetrate his thick uniform. He picked it up and it burned his hand.

The infantry kept landing, but because everyone was pinned down, they began to bunch up. At one point, Corvese saw a half dozen GIs behind a Hedgehog. He started to make his way toward them, but they waved him off. They’d gone there for cover, but only ended up drawing German fire.

“You couldn’t move,” Corvese would later say. “They had you.”

Then an officer nearby shouted: “There’s two kinds of people on this beach, those that are dead and those that are gonna be dead. Let’s move.”

Corvese began to crawl forward. He ran into barbed wire and couldn’t get past it. Then some Army demolition people slid a Bangalore torpedo — a long metal pole filled with explosive — under the wire. It blew a hole through it. Some GIs went through and Corvese crawled after them.

Other Army units were trying to blow up the Hedgehogs. Just before they’d set off each charge, they would yell, “Fire in the hole.” Soldiers around would duck their faces into the sand.

At one point, a GI flopped next to him. As he did, Corvese’s gas mask rolled out of his grip and onto the man’s back. Just then, an 88 hit nearby and a piece of shrapnel slammed into the mask. Without that protection, the GI would have likely been killed, and he seemed to know it. He asked Corvese if he could keep the damaged mask as a souvenir.

“Yeah,” said Corvese. “You can have it.”

The tide began to rise and flood up the beach to where Corvese was lying, soaking him to his chest. He crawled forward to get ahead of it. He would stop when machine gun bullets began to kick up sand near him. The bullets made a “spack, spack” sound.

As he went, he passed bodies of other soldiers. Many were blown apart by 88s. He passed wounded GIs. He remembers two bleeding from the chest and shoulders. Mostly, Corvese lay with his head down.

“If you stood up,” he would later say, “you were gone.”

Corvese looked back toward the water to see boats bringing in tanks. The tanks had been rigged with buoyant “curtains” to float them ashore, but it was so rough most tilted and sank. He saw one tank making headway onto the sand when an 88 hit it directly and destroyed its turret.

Omaha Beach proved to be one of the toughest for the Allies to take. Movies about D-Day, like Saving Private Ryan, give the impression the fight went 15 minutes or so. In Corvese’s area, the Americans were pinned down for 12 hours.

The battle began to turn when U.S. destroyers that had been miles offshore sailed to within 800 yards of the beach and started firing at the German bunkers. Corvese saw the shells flying overhead.

Gradually, the fire from the German 88s subsided. It enabled teams of GIs to move forward and attack the pillboxes on the bluffs.

By dark, Corvese heard no more 88s coming at all. But there was still occasional German sniper fire. So he stayed where he was all night. He didn’t sleep. For him, it would be a 24-hour ordeal on Omaha Beach.

It wasn’t until morning that he at last felt safe enough to move around. It was quiet. Other Americans were walking, too, but few spoke.

He found some other Navy demolition people, but later learned that over half of the 180 NCDU’s at Omaha suffered casualties — among the highest rates of any unit during D-Day. Sixty were wounded and 31 killed. Someone told Corvese the body of his beloved lieutenant, whose last name was Vetter, was on the beach. He went to have a look, but by then soldiers were cordoning off that area.

After a few days, Corvese was told he would be given a Purple Heart. He assumed it was because he had been hit by shrapnel. He told them he hadn’t been wounded by it, and declined.

With his unit’s mission finished, the Navy sent him back to the States. Soon, the war for Corvese was over.

He got married and had three girls and a boy. He worked for 30 years as a photoengraver for The Providence Journal. Today, he has five grandchildren.

As we sat in his dining room, he chatted with Tim Gray, the filmmaker. The new documentary can be seen by anyone on Gray’s site, timgraymedia.com, and perhaps in time on PBS stations. Gray will be leaving soon to go to the 65-year commemoration in France. Many dignitaries, including President Obama, will be there as well.

Ernie Corvese will not be joining them. “Once was enough,” he said.

His wife, Dolores, said he considered it for a few years, but decided it would be too difficult.

I asked why.

He began to answer, then was unable to go on. For long seconds, he worked to compose himself as his mouth trembled.

“I lost some good friends,” he finally said.

Earlier, he had brought out an old photograph of himself in Navy uniform when he was still 17, standing with two buddies. Now, he stared down at the image of his younger self.

His thoughts seemed very far away.

mpatinkin@projo.com

Navy Heroes of Normandy, Tim Gray Media’s latest documentary film project, has been added to the list of 65th anniversary commemoration events at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was Allied Supreme Commander for the D-Day landings on the coast of France on June 6, 1944. He later went on to serve as President of the United States.

Navy Heroes of Normandy will be shown on Friday, June 5 at 11:30 A.M. and on Sunday, June 7th at 1:30 P.M. in the Eisenhower library auditorium.

“It’s a great honor to be included in the 65th anniversary D-Day ceremonies at the Eisenhower Presidential Library,” said TGM President Tim Gray. “Anyone who knows the history of D-Day and the events leading up to Operation Neptune-Overlord, are well aware of the role Eisenhower played. He was the perfect leader at the perfect time in history. For the staff there to take an interest in showing the film as part of the ceremonies is truly one of the highlights of my film making career.”