By BILL McKINNEY
Morning News staff reporter
Emma DiTullio doesn't know to this day exactly how or where her brother died or who is buried under the marker that bears his name in a military cemetery at Long Island, N.Y.
Officially,
she knows only that Staff Sgt. Leo J. Ferretti's death came on June 6, 1944 - D-Day - from wounds inflicted by the enemy in the European Theater of Operations.
It wasn't until Nov. 10, 1944, that family members
received the dreaded Western Union telegram notifying them that the 29-year-old Erie man had been killed.
The telegram followed two letters in October stating that Ferretti had been seriously wounded in action but
that no further information about his wounds was available.
Because of the differing reports, Emma said, her father found it especially difficult to believe his son was dead. The grief that filled the house that
day was profound, followed by more than a week of mourning.
""Until that telegram came we still had hope that he was alive,'' she said. ""We wanted to believe he'd be coming back.''
His
was a close family. His mother and father were Italian immigrants and his sister, Emma, still lives in the family's home on E. 28th Street, the same home Leo lived in before he left for the war.
He grew up in a
family of three boys and three girls. His two brothers were also in the U.S. Army, also assigned to the European Theater.
Leo had just married Sue Sivillo but they hadn't even had time to set up housekeeping
together; a world at war had intervened.
When it appeared that Leo was missing in action, one of his brothers in Europe left his unit - risked being Absent Without Leave - to try to find him.
""He didn't
fear anything. His mission at that time was only to find Leo,'' Emma said. ""When the Army caught up to him they shipped him to the Pacific.''
Fortunately, the war ended before he found himself battling Japanese.
Worried family members had been writing to the War Department for months trying to get information about Leo Ferretti, without success.
The
last time they had seen him was when he returned home in 1943 to attend his mother's funeral.
""Mother was laid out here at home,'' Emma recalled. ""He was no sooner in the door when he went
over to her and said, "I'll be with you soon.'''
Ferretti was a member of Company B, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division.
That division attacked Utah Beach.
Emma said a friend of her brother's
visited Erie later and told her that Leo and his unit had been ""blasted'' as soon as the ramp came down on their assault boat.
She wasn't sure whether that meant they were hit by artillery fire or raked by
machine guns, only that the man said very few of the men aboard the landing craft survived.
Asked how she feels about what happened now, 50 years later, she shrugged with resignation. ""I just pray for
them, that's all.''
Additional letters were sent to the War Department later asking for more information but did little good.
Rev. Walter J. Conway, pastor of Holy Rosary Church, also wrote, noting that the family
was having trouble reconciling earlier letters about Ferretti being wounded with the later notice that he died the same day he was wounded.
In February 1945 a general replied to Conway, writing, ""Sgt.
Ferretti was wounded on 6 June and died of the wounds the same date. The original report that he was wounded was prepared prior to his death and when he died the second report was completed.
""It is
deeply regretted that the two reports caused additional grief and confusion to the family. I am also sorry that neither report disclosed the extent of the wounds nor the circumstances under which they were
incurred.''
That was the last report of that nature the family received.
More than a year after the war, Emma said, the family was notified that bodies from France were being brought back to the United States for
burial in military cemeteries in either Washington, D.C. or Long Island.
""I picked Long Island because it sounded closer and we had friends there. I thought we'd get to visit more often if he was
there. Of course that never works out the way you think it will,'' she said.
She and her husband attended the joint burial service. She remembers there being about 10 caskets.
""The tags (Army
dogtags used for identification) they gave me weren't his original tags.
""I asked the person in charge if that was really my brother there. He said, "Just pray for the person who's in there!'''
