NILES - George Corado joined the U.S. Navy with one thought in mind: Fight the Germans.
In late May 1944 with World War II in full swing, Corado and fellow members of the Navy's Special Gunfire Support Group received word that June 6 would bring that vision to reality.
This was D-Day and his life would never be the same.
"I was assigned to Gun Boat 687,'' he recalled recently from his Niles home. "It had two 5-inch guns on it and some 20s. I was a loader on the 5-inch and a gunner on the 20 millimeter."
Seaman 2nd Class Corado, 17 years old, said he stood calmly, waiting for the word.
"We had a bunch of kids aboard the ship. Mostly it was teenaged boys," Corado said. "All of a sudden, the kids weren't kids anymore. We straightened up and got ready to go into battle."
Corado grew up idolizing his two older brothers, John and Don, also military veterans. Now it was the youngest Corado on the front line of history.
As his ship of around 50 men left its base in Scotland and headed toward Omaha Beach, Corado knew this was a pivotal moment.
"We were getting ready for D-Day, and my job was to set the timer on the 5-inch shells on how far you wanted them to land,'' Corado said.
Corado was aboard Gun Boat 687 as it inched through the English Channel and the ugliness of war was all around him.
"We started inland and then you started to see bodies," he said.
Suddenly, bullets pinged off of the boat and the men zeroed in on their target. Boat 687's mission was to take out a church steeple on Omaha Beach, but the fog of war was setting in.
"We hit the beach, and there was so much firing going on, it was hard to tell even what was happening. I don't know if we hit anything, but our main object was to hit this church steeple. The Germans had something set up in there.
"We banged away at it."
In the midst of a heavy firefight, Corado's group commander gave new orders.
"He told us to get off of where we were and to head to Lahare, France, and that the Americans were in trouble. We got ready and broke out the guns."
Once there, Corado saw an American destroyer sitting on the mouth of the bay taking fire. The water was too shallow and the large attack boat was hit.
''My captain was right alongside of me. He was firing away. I was out of ammo, so I got on my 30/30 rifle. We stayed there for quite a while and banged away at the Germans on the cliff.
"There were quite a few German E-boats in there and we took care of those."
The mission was completed and through some of the fiercest action in modern warfare, Corado's boat backed into the English Channel to assess damage and retool.
"All that firing and we only had one man that was wounded," he said. "No one was killed. It was amazing."
With nightfall approaching, Corado and his crewmates decided to hitch the small gun boat to a larger cruiser.
"We thought if we had any problems, it would protect us. What a joke that was," Corado said. "We tied up to this cruiser and there were a lot of small boats tied up to her."
Moments later, the Germans approached the cluster of Alliance boats and opened fire.
"It looked like the Fourth of July 100 times over. All hell broke loose. Two German E-boats opened up on that destroyer," Corado remembered. "If they had lowered their guns just a little bit, we were gone. They weren't interested in us, though, and they just wanted to put that cruiser out of business."
Corado jumped out of his gun tub, grabbed an axe and chopped loose from the larger gunship.
"I cut that thing as fast as I could and we got out of there," he said.
By the following day, the D-Day invasion was over and American ground troops were too far inland to be helped by the gunships. Boat 687's journey through the historic attack had been successful.
Approximately four months later and with the Pacific Theatre now in full swing, Corado was serving in San Diego when his unit received the call to battle once again.
This time, the destinations were Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
"I was with a completely different crew and not the Special Gunfire Support Group that we had in France," Corado said. "We picked up some marines on our way into Iwo Jima and some of them knew they weren't going to make it back.''
In Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Corado witnessed both the destruction of Mount Suribachi and the atrocities of the kamikaze Japanese pilots raining down on American carriers.
"The Japanese went all out in Okinawa," Corado said. "This was their last stand. We were the second ship going into Okinawa. The suicide planes were just coming down right on top of us. I looked over my gun and just saw all of these ships being hit by suicide planes."
Ultimately, the attempts by the Japanese were futile and the dropping of the atomic bombs ended the war. Corado was in Japan when the end came.
"There was such a sense of joy and such celebrations, you can't imagine it," Corado said. "We were all very happy and the people of Japan were also very happy the war was over. They went through hell also."
With the close of World War II, Corado's military service came to an end and he was honorably discharged.
"You get discharged based on your points systems," Corado said. "They calculate your age with your combat duties and what battles you were in. I wasn't too old, but I hit Normandy, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. There weren't too many people in the service that hit D-Day on June 6, 1944, and being in Japan in 1945."
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