EDITORIAL: Las Vegas D-Day veteran finally gets his Purple Heart

Today, we offer a break from political controversies, partisan warfare and social media sniping to highlight the story of Las Vegas resident Onofrio Zicari, a true American hero.

Mr. Zicari, 98 years old, was among the hordes of soldiers sent into a storm of German machine-gun fire on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, better known as D-Day. The offensive faced difficulty from the start when strong winds blew the landing craft astray. The first wave of combatants stood little chance with the fortified enemy perched on the bluffs looking down on the open beaches.

“Able Company has planned to wade ashore in three files from each boat, center file going first, then flank files peeling off to right and left,” military historian S.L.A. Marshall recounted in a harrowing 1960 piece for The Atlantic. “The first men out try to do it but are ripped apart before they can make five yards. Even the lightly wounded die by drowning, doomed by the waterlogging of their overloaded packs.”

Mr. Zicari, an Army private barely old enough to vote at the time, was in the 1st Infantry Division and hit Omaha beach as part of the fifth wave thrown into the mayhem. He sustained shrapnel wounds to his knee and shoulder and was pinned down by German fire but made it through the landing zone. The medic who took care of him later that night was killed soon after, and Mr. Zicari’s injuries were never documented.

Mr. Zicari later saw action at the Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive of the war. He returned to Normandy in 2019 for the 75th anniversary of the landings.

For more than seven decades, however, the military never knew about the physical sacrifices endured by Mr. Zicari during his service. But that changed this year.

Mr. Zicari had been featured on “ABC News Tonight” thanks to his status as a surviving D-Day veteran. Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman wrote to network anchor John Muir in April to point out that Mr. Zicari had never been properly honored. “I am sure it did not come up in your conversations with him because he is a very modest man,” Ms. Goodman wrote, “but it troubles me greatly that he never received the Purple Heart that he’s entitled to due to wounds sustained in battle for our country.”

On Wednesday, the military made amends, and Mr. Zicari was presented with his medal during a ceremony in the Las Vegas City Council chambers. Several retired and active military members were in attendance. “I’m just overwhelmed with everybody here,” Mr. Zicari said, “and I wish you all good luck and God bless you.”

They don’t call it the Greatest Generation for nothing.