Thomas Vitale receives Navy medal for 1943 sea rescue
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Coast Guard Cmdr. Richard Timme, right, presents the Navy and Marine Corps Medal to Thomas A. Vitale, 90, at the American Legion hall in Belle Vernon on Friday.
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The passing of 69 years has faded most of his memories. But when asked what he remembers of that night, Feb. 3, 1943, aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Comanche in the icy water of the North Atlantic, Thomas A. Vitale has the answer ready.
"Those lights," he says. "All I could see were all those red lights."
The red lights were the salt-water activated beacons on the life-preservers being worn by the hundreds of men struggling for their lives after the USAT Dorchester, the transport ship they were aboard, was sunk by a German U-boat between Newfoundland and Greenland.
Mr. Vitale and the crew of the Comanche were able to pull 92 men safely from the water. Another cutter in the six-ship convoy, the Escanaba, saved 133 men.
And 674 men died.
The incident has become famous for the "Four Chaplains" who perished after giving up their life jackets to others.
But history seemed to lose track of those who risked their lives to help the men. Until recently.
Lois Vitale was in her Rostraver home with her husband of more than 60 years when the telephone rang two years ago. The woman on the line said she was with the Coast Guard and was trying to locate a Thomas A. Vitale who had served on the Comanche during World War II.
Mrs. Vitale had no idea.
"He never talked about it," she said.
Well, they were talking about it Friday morning in the small wood-paneled room of the American Legion hall in Belle Vernon, where Coast Guard Cmdr. Richard Timme of Pittsburgh awarded Mr. Vitale, now 90, the Navy and Marine Corps Medal during a short ceremony attended by friends, family, veterans and a dozen active men and women serving in the Coast Guard.
"He and his shipmates changed the course of 92 lives by rescuing them from the icy seas at great peril to their own lives," Cmdr. Timme said. "This formal award is long overdue. But these many years, I can tell you, he has not been unheralded or uncelebrated.
"Ninety-two men went on to live lives beyond that night, to make a difference in battle in Europe and then in lives back home with families and loved ones, careers and a post-war America made up of the Greatest Generation."
Shortly after Mr. Vitale, a native of Webster, joined the Coast Guard he found himself in the thick of the war aboard the Comanche, a 165-foot cutter. He was on watch at his gun station just before 1 a.m., 69 years ago Friday, when he saw the flash of the explosion in the side of the Dorchester and was one of the first to notify the officer on watch.
First Published February 4, 2012 12:00 am
