D-DAY ANNIVERSARY Two Valley veterans recall horrors of Omaha Beach

The nightmare of D-Day haunts Valley veterans who were on that bloody beach 60 years ago.
By LEONARD CRIST
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
When "Saving Private Ryan," a movie that graphically depicted D-Day, was released in 1998, veteran John Bistrica initially balked at seeing it.
"Why should I go see it?" asked Bistrica, 80, of Youngstown. "I was there."
Pfc. Bistrica, a rifleman with the First Infantry Division's 16th Regiment, landed on Omaha Beach at 7:10 a.m. -- 40 minutes after H-Hour. H-Hour was the Army code name for the moment when assault units first touched down on the beaches.
Sixty years later, Bistrica remains haunted by nightmares of D-Day.
The allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France on June 6, 1944, is considered the turning point in World War II in Europe. Less than a year later, Hitler was dead and Victory in Europe was proclaimed.
American, British and Canadian troops assaulted five beachheads that day. But the bloody battle for Omaha Beach was the hardest fought.
Tom Perjol, 82, of Brookfield was also on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France.
Perjol, a noncombatant medic with the 61st Medical Battalion, landed on the beach four hours after the battle started.
Perjol described the landing as easy, but soon, "hell exploded" around him.
"There was death and dying everywhere," he said. "It was a horrifying scene."
Here was the scene
When Perjol arrived, the American troops controlled only a 100-yard stretch of beach. The litter of war was strewn all around -- obstacles, land mines and barbed wire placed by the Germans, abandoned equipment, the bodies of dead and dying soldiers.
"I thought, momentarily, if I could just fly away from the place, if I could fly away and get out of this thing -- but that thought quickly passed as the cries of 'Medic! Medic!' were heard," Perjol said.
"The medics no longer gave thought to themselves. We were busy treating the wounded."
A storm had hit two nights earlier, delaying the invasion by a day. In the cold and choppy English Channel, the waves were 5 feet high.
On the small boats that brought the soldiers ashore, called LCVPs, men around Bistrica became severely seasick. He waded through knee-deep water, bullets whizzing past him, to get to shore.
He thought to himself, "When's the first rifle bullet going to hit me?"
"The six-barrel mortar that the Germans used roared like a lion," Bistrica said. "You could hear the rounds from the battleships in the air whistling."
On the beach, Bistrica saw American casualties for the first time. As the soldiers walked through the minefields, one GI's leg was blown off in front of Bistrica. Then he spotted a rifleman from his company named Jacobs.
"I kept hollering. 'Jacobs! Jacobs!' There was no answer," Bistrica said. "He had a bullet through his head."
Casualties
Most of the combat medics from the 16th Regiment either were killed or wounded in the initial assault. When Perjol and his medical battalion arrived four hours later, they worked hard at treating the wounded.
The 61st treated and evacuated 1,000 wounded soldiers on D-Day and 1,500 more June 7.
After the invasion, Bistrica and the 16th Regiment chased the Nazi army all the way back into Germany.
A carpenter for the last 47 years, Bistrica still occasionally does small jobs. He has returned to Omaha Beach twice since the D-Day battle.
He has given interviews for many books about D-Day. He sometimes speaks about his war experiences to pupils.
After the war, Perjol spent 35 years as a newspaper reporter. In 1996, a fellow medic from Perjol's battalion brought him sand from Omaha Beach.
Perjol said every once in a while, especially around June 6, memories of D-Day stir inside him. "It's deeply embedded."
lcrist@vindy.com