Eighteen-year-old Carmen DiPaolo from Rankin was crammed into a landing craft plowing through the surf of the English Channel on a dreary June morning 79 years ago, facing a date with destiny or death at the hands of the German soldiers protecting a spit of French coast during World War II.
Somewhere en route to the Normandy coast on June 6, 1944, DiPaolo recalled, he and his fellow soldiers on a mission to breach the Germans’ coastal defenses were told by their commanders that, “We’re going to see some action today.”
What he saw when the landing gate dropped onto the choppy water off what Allied commanders called Omaha Beach was sort of a hell on earth, as soldiers were killed by German shells, land mines and machine gun placements as they scrambled to get off the beach.
“It was tough. There was a lot of noise and the bombs were falling,” the 98-year-old DiPaolo said Saturday outside his residence at the William Penn Continuing Care Center on Walton Road, Penn Township.
For his service to his country, Blankets of Honor, based in Elizabethtown, bestowed upon him a queen-sized blanket with the United States Army military service mark, featuring a bald eagle holding a bundle of 13 arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other.
“I can’t believe it,” DiPaolo said following the 20-minute ceremony attended by about 100 people. DiPaolo’s extended family was joined by about 50 American Legion Post motorcycle riders and motorists from Jeannette and Unity, as well as fellow residents and William Penn center employees.
DiPaolo and millions like him served in the military “so that danger did not come home to our homefront,” said Manny Acuna, chief executive officer of Blankets of Honor, a nonprofit veteran-owned organization.
DiPaolo served “for the love of country,” said Acuna, whose organization has bestowed similar blankets to 300 veterans, Gold Star Mothers and first responders in the past three years.
DiPaolo was nominated for the honor by Jacki Maxson, administrator at the William Penn Senior Suites, and Michelle Van Horne, marketing director at the senior living facility.
Maxon, the daughter of a Marine and mother of a Navy sailor, said they wanted to honor DiPaolo.
“He talks about it as if it was yesterday,” Maxson said.
Similar ceremonies were held at Newhaven Court at Lindwood in Hempfield and Brookdale Senior Living in Unity, said Don Truxal, director of the American Legion Post 982 Alzheimer’s Ride. The American Legion Post in Unity organized the Alzheimer’s Ride to the three senior living centers.
Post 982 supports the Westmoreland County Alzheimer’s Association because there are veterans who have Alzheimer’s disease, and some of those have living arrangements where they are not being cared for, Truxal said.
The Legionnaires planned to take a collection at their post in Unity on Saturday and donate that money to the county Alzheimer’s Association during its Alzheimer’s Walk on Sept. 9 at Twin Lakes Park, east of Greensburg.
“They are all heroes,” Truxal said.
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