← Back to the front page

40 Insights into the Lives of Famous War Veterans

Khalid Elhassan July 13, 2019 26 min

39. Yogi Berra fought on D-Day

USS Bayfield loading up landing craft for D-Day. Wikimedia

Yogi Berra was signed up by the Yankees in 1942, but he interrupted his career to serve in the US Navy, and wound up as a gunner’s mate aboard the USS Bayfield, an attack transport. On D-Day, June 6^th, 1944, Berra served on detached duty aboard a Navy rocket boat, lobbing missiles and firing machine guns at German positions on Omaha Beach. He was also sent to Utah Beach, to support the GIs there. Berra’s craft came under enemy fire, but luckily for him and for baseball, he escaped injury.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.