Before Yankees career, Navy gunner Yogi Berra was part of D-Day invasion

Marc Lancaster

Before Yankees career, Navy gunner Yogi Berra was part of D-Day invasion image

Yogi Berra will be remembered by many for his light-heartedness and goofy sayings, but the Hall of Fame catcher participated in one of history's most storied battles while still a teenager.

Seaman Second Class Lawrence P. Berra was on a rocket boat stationed off the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944, barely three weeks after his 19th birthday. He and the other six men in the 36-foot craft provided fire support for the invasion that came to be known simply as D-Day and remained in the area for nearly two weeks after the initial landings. 

MORE YOGI: Great images | His most famous saying | Filip Bondy remembers

As recounted last year in The Jersey Journal by his longtime friend Ed Lucas, Berra was an 18-year-old playing Class B ball in Norfolk, Va., in 1943 when his draft number was called. Rather than taking his chances in the Army, Berra enlisted in the Navy at Norfolk.

After going through basic training, the St. Louis native found a niche for himself almost by accident.

"They asked for volunteers to go on a rocket boat," he told YES Network in 2009. "I didn’t even know what a rocket boat was."

But Berra learned how to crew the small boats, saying the hardest part was learning to handle the twin .50-caliber machine guns in heavy seas: "You ever try shooting a machine gun on a 36-footer? You could shoot yourself."

He eventually got the hang of it, though, and found himself in the middle of the action for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Europe. The rocket boats were carried across the English Channel on a larger ship and lowered over the side before their crews jumped in. The small boats moved in close to the coastline off the beach code-named Utah and were told to be on the lookout for German planes.

"We were told to shoot anything that moved," Berra told author Gary Bloomfield in "Duty, Honor, Victory: America's Athletes in World War II."

"I am not sure if he said 'moved' or 'any plane below the clouds,' but we all shot at the first plane below the clouds and we shot down one of our own planes. The pilot was mad as hell, and you could hear him swearing as he floated down in his parachute. I remember him shaking his fist and yelling, 'If you bastards would shoot down as many of them as us, the goddamn war would be over.'"

That was a relatively light moment, but it was the exception during Berra's time in combat. One of his boat's crew members was killed after going on shore in France, and he witnessed numerous other deaths — not to mention the damage he inflicted while manning the boat's machine guns.

Berra and his crew also participated in Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, in August 1944. He wasn't discharged from the Navy until 1946, when he resumed his nascent baseball career.

The diminutive catcher made his big-league debut with the Yankees on Sept. 22, 1946 — 69 years to the day before he died Tuesday at age 90. He always remained thankful for the opportunity to live the life he did when so many of his peers never got the chance to do so.

"I’m proud of it," he told YES in 2009. "I’m still alive to see it, still alive to hear about it."

Marc Lancaster

Marc Lancaster Photo

Marc Lancaster joined The Sporting News in 2022 after working closely with TSN for five years as an editor for the company now known as Stats Perform. He previously worked as an editor at The Washington Times, AOL’s FanHouse.com and the old CNNSportsIllustrated.com, and as a beat writer covering the Tampa Bay Rays, Cincinnati Reds, and University of Georgia football and women’s basketball. A Georgia graduate, he has been a Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2013.