A dwindling generation: WWII veteran aims to preserve the lessons of war's horrors
He was a skinny teenager who weighed 112 pounds when he landed in Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Over the next 11 months, enduring scorching sun and frigid cold, 18-year-old George Ciampa and his companions from the 607th Graves Registration Company were responsible for the dead.
They buried the bodies of German and American soldiers. If they were lucky, they were given gloves. Across five campaigns in France, Belgium and Germany, from the Normandy invasion, through the Battle of the Bulgeacross five campaigns to the end of the war in Europe, Ciampa took stock of the fallen, recovered their personal items, put their bodies in mattress covers and buried them in temporary graves.
Eventually, a couple of weeks after the
