New Eagle veteran recalls D-Day at Omaha Beach
Paul Paterra/Observer-Reporter
Tom Sollosi Jr. has told the story many times, and even though it’s been 80 years since D-Day, the World War II veteran from New Eagle recalls the Normandy invasion with vivid detail.
“My memory is fading, but I can still remember a lot of stuff,” Sollosi said in an interview last week in advance of the invasion’s 80th anniversary.
Sollosi, who will turn 99 on July 16, was at Omaha Beach, the bloodiest of five Allied landing beaches, on June 6, 1944.
As the naval veteran spoke, he frequently disappeared in thought, but quickly returned to recalling events of that historic day, as well as others from his military service, including being shot in the hip.
It wasn’t until recent years that he was able to speak about his experience.
“He would never talk about it until the Iraq War,” said his daughter, Shari Necciai. “When the Iraq War happened, he started talking about it.”
Sollosi still has his Navy uniform. When Necciai pulled it out, he smiled brightly and said, “I was little.”
Sollosi was 16 years old and living in Elrama when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
“I said to myself, I’m going to be drafted into the Army, so I’m going to join the Navy at 17,” Sollosi said.
In June 1943, a month shy of his 18th birthday, Sollosi went to Pittsburgh to join the Navy.
Though Sollosi was in the Navy, it was an Army uniform he wore on D-Day. The Army took over his unit for training in Florida before it was sent to England.
“The big shots in the Army said they wanted 100 of those sailors sent to England,” Sollosi recalled.
Once the sailors arrived, they were told to remove their naval uniforms and wear the Army ones they were given.
“They gave us a rifle and said you’re going to be under our command. The Army is going to take over,” Sollosi said. “They didn’t have time to train their own (soldiers). So they put us under their command.”
The 100 sailors were divided into crews of five and sent to Plymouth to prepare for the invasion. Sollosi was on the same crew as his friend, Joe Session of Elizabeth.
En route to Plymouth, the sailors encountered 750 dead American soldiers floating in the English Channel, victims of Operation Tiger, the deadliest training incident of World War II. They had been in a boat that was struck by a bomb. Sollosi and the troops pulled them from the water and took them for a proper burial.
“They died in that cold water,” Sollosi said. “That was the saddest thing I witnessed.”
Initially, the plan was for the crews to trek to Omaha Beach early in the morning of June 5, but rough waters forced the mission to be moved to June 6.
On that day, Sollosi manned a boat loaded with dynamite.
“The first, second and third waves hit the beach,” he recalled. “They were shooting from the shore. They had a steep hillside. There was a pillbox (camouflaged building) up in the right corner shooting down at these soldiers hitting the beach and killing a lot of the soldiers. Finally, they gave us the signal to hit the beach and unload our dynamite. I looked and said, ‘Boy, what a dangerous place to be.'”
Sollosi recalled stepping over numerous bodies on the beach.
“That was sad,” Sollosi said. “I was 18 years old at that time. When I went to bed, I cried a lot, seeing all those dead bodies on the shore … We didn’t have any help like they had today to be counseled. Every night I went to bed, I couldn’t forget all that. I finally got over it.”
While he escaped Omaha Beach unharmed, he was later injured, struck in the left hip by German fire while crossing the Rhine River. He credited a metal Bible he carried in his pocket for sparing him serious injury.
Sollosi still has that blood-stained Bible.
“He felt that protected him,” Necciai said.
Sollosi also recalled spending a couple of hours in a prison in Paris after being caught carrying a Navy pass while wearing the Army uniform.
“They put me in jail,” Sollosi said. “They thought I was AWOL.”
He returned home in 1945 and married Ruth Clark in December of that year. The couple had five children – Marilyn (Ricci), Tom, Rick, Ron and Shari (Necciai). Sollosi worked for five years at a technical school in Pittsburgh before taking a job with the Norfolk Southern Shire Oaks Yard in Elrama until retiring in July 1986.
“It’s sad to even talk about it,” Sollosi said of his military service. “I sort of got over it on my own. I didn’t get any counseling to help me. But I was blessed. I’m still alive and well.”