Dominick M. De Tommaso

Hailing from Jersey City, New Jersey, a young Dominick M. De Tommaso enlisted in the U.S. Army. His daughter, Roseanne, described her father’s greatest fear upon joining the Army was to never see his mother, father or sisters again.

As a member of Company B of the 294th Combat Engineers, Tech Sgt De Tommaso saw combat in the European Theatre from 1943 through 1945. He participated in several operations including at Utah Beach on D-Day, the Battle of St.-Lo and the Battle of the Bulge during the Ardennes Counteroffensive.

Tech Sgt De Tommaso was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds he suffered during the Battle of the Bulge.

While he suffered from PTSD for most of his life and rarely spoke of his time in combat, he did relay to his family that the worst experience for him was seeing his best friend, Larry, being blown to shreds in front of him on Utah Beach. The incident would cause De Tommaso to never go near water and he suffered horrible flashbacks and nightmares. During another instance, De Tommaso described to his daughter the conditions he saw first-hand at the Nordhauser concentration camp in Germany. He said, “I saw so many dead, murdered Jews being pushed in a big ditch with a tractor.” The memory of that incident would haunt him for his entire life. De Tomasso stressed to his daughter, “Rosanne, these were human beings, starved to death and shot to death.” He said every soldier in his unit was crying.

De Tommaso’s family would later recount his description of returning from the war in 1945, making him feel “like a superstar.” De Tommaso said, America welcomed all of the WWII veterans’ home like they were celebrities.

De Tommaso and his wife, Mary, were married for 64 years. The couple raised two children, Rosanne (Romano) and Philip De Tommaso.