Former Navy radioman Peter Orlando has a clear memory of June 6, 1944, when American soldiers waded ashore in World War II to liberate Europe from the Nazis.
“If I had to do it again,” he said in a recent interview, “I definitely would.”
Born in Boston to Italian immigrants, Orlando had enlisted in the Navy in 1942. His father served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, and his grandfather had served in the Italian navy. “Troops were put ashore in huge amphibious assaults, and the transporting ships and craft sustained damage and required salvage service. Landing craft and ships required an entirely new kind of salvage,” Charles A. Bartholomew and William I. Milwee Jr. wrote in their 2009 book “Mud, Muscle, and Miracles: Marine Salvage in the United States Navy.”
Orlando and his crewmates readied for Operation Mulberry, a top-secret plan to assemble floating concrete harbors at two landing sites off Normandy. The artificial harbors provided protection from the sea so landing craft and barges could unload supplies and soldiers for the advancing Allied armies. Orlando’s tug removed explosives and obstacles along the shoreline so the concrete forms could be sunk in place without damage.
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