Bernard Joseph Sabatino was killed in action on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on Aug. 1, 1912, to Louis Sabatino and Vinces Margaret Silvestri Sabatino. His parents were immigrants from Italy.

His father was a shoemaker and his mother was a homemaker to Bernard and his younger sister Maria. His father died in 1915 and Maria died in 1918.

Bernard’s mother married Louis’s brother Joseph and had two more children, Louis and Marie. His stepfather/uncle was also a shoemaker. He died in 1937. The family moved in with Bernard’s maternal grandparents, Louis and Jenny Silvestri.

Bernard was an honor graduate of Forest Park High School in Baltimore in 1930. He graduated in pre-med from Johns Hopkins University in 1934 and from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1938.

He was assistant resident in surgery at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Baltimore at the time of his entry into the Army Medical Corps in 1940. His service number was O-40273. He served as a captain and field hospital surgeon for the 111th Field Artillery Battalion, 29th Infantry Division.

On D-Day, the 111th Battalion landed on Omaha Beach, the most fiercely defended of the Normandy beaches. Of the 16 men in Lt. Sabatino’s amphibious vehicle, seven were killed and three were wounded in the chaos.

Capt. Sabatino was one of those killed. He was 31 years old. He was buried “overseas” (presumably France) and later reinterred in Section 12 of Arlington National Cemetery.

He was survived by his wife, the former Miss Psyche Mary Sittock, of Devon, England, whom he married on April 18, 1944, less than two months before his death.

In 1946, Psyche sailed to New York and visited her mother-in-law Vinces in Baltimore. Psyche remarried in 1952 and died in 1998 at the age of 74.

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Sources:

Find a Grave:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/49307192/bernard-j.-sabatino

Federal Census

U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947

Newspapers.com

Ancestry.com

Google.com

Fold3

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Bernard J Sabatino