who tended to him
after his jeep was hit
Veteran meets medic
who tended to him
after his jeep was hit
BY SHERRY CONOHAN
Staff Writer
WEST LONG BRANCH — Sixty years after he nearly died during the Battle of the Bulge when a shell struck his jeep, Peter Rubino met the Army medic who came to his rescue and got him the attention he needed.
Rubino, of Fulton Avenue, met Walter Kamarz, who lives just across the state in Trenton, on the rooftop of the Maurice Hotel in Paris when both men were in France for the 60th anniversary observance of D-Day.
Rubino, who’s 82, told the story of their encounter after he and Jack Campbell, a Coast Guard veteran who lives on Poplar Avenue, were presented certificates recognizing their service in the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, at the July 7 Borough Council meeting.
Campbell also went to France for the D-Day observance and he, Rubino and Kamarz are three of the four New Jerseyans among the 100 veterans of the historic attack who were awarded the French Legion of Honor medal while there and given the red carpet treatment during their stay in France.
Mayor Paul Zambrano noted how two of the four New Jerseyans given the honor to be among the 100 vets receiving the medal were from the borough.
"We owe these gentlemen a great deal of honor," he said.
Rubino said that during a cocktail party on the roof of the hotel, he heard Kamarz, whom he had not yet met, mention that he was with the 106th Division at the Battle of the Bulge.
"That caught my ear," he said, because after he had served with 29th infantry during the D-Day invasion, he was moved to the 106th Infantry Division.
"He said, ‘I was a medic.’ I said, ‘That’s a funny thing; let me tell you something. That’s where I was hit.’ He said he saw a shell come in and hit a jeep and three bodies flew out to the left and one body flew out to the right."
Kamarz said the three on the left were dead but there was some life in the body on the right so he attended to that soldier, Rubino related.
"That was me," he told those in the council chamber, his voice cracking and tears welling in his eyes. He spent months recovering from his injuries.
Both Rubino and Campbell wore their Legion of Honor medals for the award ceremony at Borough Hall.
Rubino came ashore at Omaha Beach. He said they didn’t know how deep the water would be where they were going to be dropped off, which worried him because he didn’t know how to swim even though he had grown up at the Shore. Then two tall Texans said, "Dago, put your arms around our shoulders and we’ll take you to where you can walk," he said in telling his story earlier.
"But when we got on the ramp, the fellow on my right got hit," he said. "He had taken my rifle, so I came aground with no rifle. But there were plenty on the beach so I grabbed one."
Rubino got across the beach and then climbed up a cliff, a scaling in which many of his comrades in arms died.
Campbell served on the water in an 83-foot-long wooden patrol boat, one of 60 the Coast Guard had assigned to the invasion. A gunner’s mate, Campbell and his fellow crewmen and the other Coast Guard vessels plucked from the water the wounded and those drowning under the 100 pounds of gear they carried. He said other boats were charged with recovering the dead bodies floating in the water.
He worked off the Juno, Gold and Sword beaches — English beaches.
"We were into the beach almost," he said of how close they were to the front line. "That was the idea of it — doing the job as close as possible."