Valley veteran vividly recalls D-Day horrors

By WILLIAM K. ALCORN

alcorn@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

John E. Bistrica’s living room is filled with memorabilia and pictures reminding him of D-Day and World War II.

This year, Memorial Day falls within days of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings along the Normandy coast during World War II. Thousands of U.S., British, Canadian and French troops launched a combined naval, air and land assault as dawn was breaking on June 6, 1944.

Officially named Operation Overlord, the invasion marked the beginning of the end of World War II and the eventual fall of Germany and the liberation of Europe.

Bistrica, 95, was 20 when he landed on Omaha Beach with C Co. of the 16th Infantry Regimental Combat Team, part of the first infantry wave of American troops as part of the Allied Forces. It is estimated that more than 6,000 American soldiers gave their lives on D-Day.

Like Bistrica, most of the youngest D-Day veterans who survived are now in their mid-90s. Despite his years, Bistrica vividly remembers details of D-Day and his march across France and the nightmares with which he was afflicted for many years when he finally came home.

“I just said a prayer to get to the beach if anything was going to happen to me. German snipers were in the trees and hedgerows. We fired at them with grenade launchers attached to our M 1 rifles,” said Bistrica.

“It seemed like you could touch the shells when they were coming in. The first dead GIs I saw were combat engineers,” he said.

It was chaos, he said. There was a lot of noise from exploding shells, but Bistrica said he does not remember a lot of screaming and yelling.

“When I got to the beach, I hit the ground. Guys were running in every direction trying to keep from getting hit. I was just saving my own rear end just like every other GI. If you said you weren’t scared, you were lying,” he said. “It was a bad day.”

When he finally got off the beach, he joined other members of C Co.

The next morning, D-Day plus one, his unit discovered a group of German troops right across the hedgerow from where the unit was dug in. Neither had known about the other.

“We saw them before they saw us, and we captured 14 Germans,” Bistrica said.

He said the hedgerows were a good place to hide but you never went near a gate because the Germans had machine guns zeroed in on them.

Bistrica has a chest full of decorations on his “Ike” jacket, which he still can fit into, but his proudest decoration is a homemade red, white and blue patch given him by a little girl when they were stopped on the road to Paris.

“A woman lifted her up and she said in perfect English: ‘Thank you American Soldier.’”

“I wanted to get off the tank and kiss the woman, but we moved on before I could, “ said Bistrica.

“The French people were pretty good to us. They told us where the Germans were and emptied the water out of our canteens and filled them with cognac and wine,” he said with a smile.

After about four months of fighting, Bistrica’s role in the war ended when a shell exploded near him near Stolburg, Germany, giving him a concussion, damaging his hearing, sending him to the hospital and then home.

Bistrica was drafted into the Army in October 1942 and placed on active duty in April 1943. By November 1943, he was on his way to England. His outfit began training for the Normandy invasion right after Christmas 1943, he said.

He came home on the Queen Mary, arriving in the United States on Dec. 19, 1945, when he was discharged as a private first class. He got to Youngstown on Dec. 22, just in time to celebrate Christmas with his family and friends.

Bistrica was laid off from Commercial Shearing and General Fireproofing before starting a carpentry and cabinet-making business.

He married his high school sweetheart, Anna Marie Misic, on June 11, 1947. She died Oct. 9, 2012.

They graduated from high school in 1942, she from Ursuline and he from The Rayen School. They have three children: Roseann Reames of Eastlake, Ohio; Joseph of Boardman; and Michael of Marietta, Ga.; and four grandchildren. A son, John Jr., is deceased.

He is a member of the Army’s 1st Division Big Red One Association, and has attended many of its reunions, and of American Legion Post 15 in Poland. He has returned to France several times, including the 50th anniversary of the invasion.

“Why go back? I can’t seem to forget. But, how can you forget,” said Bistrica.