It was 71 years ago when Tom Scardino and Ray Vaz landed on Utah Beach in successive waves as part of the U.S. Army 90th Infantry Division during the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944.
They were living in Mineola a few miles from each other when they met, 60 years after hitting that Normandy beach under heavy German fire and realized their shared experience. Scardino said they’ve been “inseparable” since they met.
“It was like finding a brother,” Scardino said.
Both D-Day survivors were each wounded twice in the ensuing action that earned them the Purple Heart with oak leaf cluster. They each also both earned the Bronze Star, the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.
Last month, Scardino and Vaz both became members of the New York State Senate Hall of Fame, which recognizes outstanding veterans from the state who have distinguished themselves both in military and civilian life.
On June 5, on the eve of the 71st anniversary of D-Day, state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola), who nominated the distinguished veterans, held a local ceremony to honor the men, who were unable to make the trip to Albany.
“It is fitting that we take the opportunity to honor these two individuals, and all those who were there,” Martins said, noting the D-Day anniversary during the ceremony in his Mineola Boulevard offices. “They were in their teens when they were asked to storm the beach.”
Scardino, 91, and Vaz, 90, are still doing service as members of Adolf Block VFW Post 1305 in Mineola, Scardino as the post’s commander.
Martins presented both with citations noting their membership in the state Senate Hall of Fame and posterboards with their pictures and summaries of their war records.
“When they came back, they never forgot their service,” Martins said. “And what we sometimes forget is that they came back and built this country, built these suburbs.”
Scardino has been visiting veterans at the Veterans Authority Hospital in Northport for the past 18 years. He finds that hospital duty and the work he does as post commander is “therapy” to keep his mind at peace.
“It takes my mind off any physical problems and my thoughts about the war,” he said in an interview when he became commander three years ago.
Asked recently what he was thinking about the war on the eve of the D-Day anniversary, Scardino said he has never erased the sight or the smell of the carnage he saw when he landed on Utah Beach.
“You never forget it. This is the time of year when memories come back. It hurts and it’ll never go away,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion.
“That day going in on the [landing craft], when we saw all the smoke and the pillboxes and the machine guns, I said my prayers and accepted my death,” Scardino said.
Vaz said, when he thinks of the war he immediately recalls the day his unit liberated the Buchenwald death camp.
“Buchenwald will stay in my mind,” an emotional Vaz said. “I never thought that I would ever see anything like that.”
He recalled people in the camp begging the GIs for water, with the GIs unable to help them because of the former prisoners’ conditions.
One month into the Normandy campaign in a battle for the strategic town of St. Lo, Scardino was hit by machine gun fire in the right arm and hand. He was taken to a farmhouse that had been set up as a medical aid station for treatment. A German counterattack eventually destroyed the farmhouse and Scardino was wounded again, struck by shrapnel in his right thigh and elbow. He passed out and his next conscious memory was riding in a jeep, lying naked in a stretcher.
Scardino ultimately earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for his World War II service — medals that he received in 2008 through Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s office. Vaz received his medals after following Scardino’s lead and contacting McCarthy.
On his second day in combat, a German sniper’s bullet struck Vaz in the leg. He was shipped back to England, eventually rejoining his unit in France in time for his 19th birthday on July 30. He was also in time to take part in fierce fighting as the 90th Division—part of Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army—broke through the German defense at St. Lo, encircling 27,000 enemy troops in the effort.
Patton’s army raced 20 miles a day until it hit the defensive Ziegfried Line and faced crossing the Moselle River into Germany itself.
“We had to take the Moselle River at night,” he said. “The thing I hated most was night patrols, and I went on a lot of them.”
Ordered to check the rear after landing on the other side of the river, he found his way into an outhouse as German shells began whistling overhead. Vaz recalled a blinding red flash. He was knocked out and woke up hours later in the light of morning, bleeding from shrapnel wounds in his leg, right arm and hand. He woke up a medic, who had also sought shelter in the outhouse, who patched him up.
He was sent back to England to recuperate, but his arm was never the same. To this day, Vaz cannot straighten his arm.
Vaz ended his 11 months of service on the front line, from the D-Day landing, as an MP in Germany when the war ended.
Meanwhile, Scardino was recuperating in the U.S. throwing lightweight baleens—target balls used in bocce—in a Norfolk, VA bowling alley to rehab his elbow. He graduated to regulation bowling balls as his arm strength improved and he became adept at throwing strikes.
Scardino got so good that between 1963 and 1967, while still in the garment business, he went on the Professional Bowlers Association tour with such stars as Don Carter, Dick Webber and Lou Campi. He said he didn’t hit the “big money,” but enjoyed competing.
Scardino believes surviving the war was no coincidence. He said he thinks his late mother, Giovanna, who died at age 26 when he was 7 years old, was his “angel,” looking out for him.
“I was blessed. From that day on, I stole 70 years. Every day to me is a blessing,” Scardino said.
Vaz took things easy when he got back home, returning to his former love of tap dancing and eventually appearing on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, and taking the top prize. He eventually had a successful career in sales.
”I had a couple of nice dancing partners,” he recalled.
But his future wife, Ann, became his favorite dancing partner and they’ve been married more than 60 years in the home they built on Hampton Street in Mineola, where they raised three children.
Two of their children and several grandchildren attended the ceremony last Friday.
“He never spoke about any of his war experiences,” Ann Vaz said, crediting her daughter, Carol, with encouraging him to tell his story to her Hampton Street School students.
Now he visits his daughter’s middle school class each year and he and Scardino—also reluctant to talk for years—recently visited a grade school class in Elmont. Scardino said he told them about shooting and killing a German soldier at a distance of about 15 feet during one close combat melee.
“I can still see his face,” he said, staring into the distance.
