Steve Antosy gets his Members Only jackets on ebay, according to his daughter, Leslie, which answers one of the many questions I have for her father. His impeccable style notwithstanding, there is much more to the longtime San Marino resident than the iconic outerwear that was a hipster favorite in the 1980s, but apparently survives to this very day among America’s veterans.
He doesn’t wear glasses, takes only preventive medication, walks every day and moves nimbly about with flawless recall of events both recent and past.
And he certainly needs no reminder of his whereabouts seventy-five years ago from Thursday, that’s for certain.
Let’s go back a bit. On June 19, 1943, shortly after graduating high school in his hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania, Antosy was drafted into the Army and sent to basic training in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. World War II was raging. An uncle of Antosy’s had nearly lost his life in Pearl Harbor aboard a repair ship that was tied up to the USS Arizona at the time of the attack.
After two months, Antosy was sent to the New York Trade School, where he studied power generation and electrical engineering. Shortly after Christmas of that same year, Antosy found himself crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Liverpool, England.
“We were at a camp there for a short time before we were sent to Swanson, Wales,” Antosy says, his quick mind recalling every detail. “There, I joined the 348th Engineer Battalion. We knew we were going to land in the invasion of France, but we didn’t know when,” Antosy says. “From January until May, we just practiced going out in boats and coming back in. Not far off shore, but out and back in.”
The unit was relocated to Southern England, near Land’s End, when one day they were assembled for a meeting.
“We were briefed on the invasion,” Antosy says. “We were shown photos of Omaha Beach and Normandy. Photos of Germans working on the beach. Soil samples that had been taken from that area. Notice we weren’t given the photos or soil samples. We weren’t allowed to keep them.”
Whether he knew it then or not, Antosy’s life was about to change. Drastically.
“The problem was, after they briefed us, we were prisoners,” he recalls. “We had guards on us at all times. I was given a hand grenade and if I was captured I was to pull the pin.”
Allied forces believed the Germans would retaliate with chemical weapons, so Antosy and the other D-Day troops wore special, oversized uniforms. He spent ten days on a landing ship—sleeping atop a truck—while waiting to move in and on June 6, 1944—seventy-five years ago—arrived on Omaha Beach at 9:00 a.m., shortly after United States Army Rangers had made first contact.
“I’m not a swimmer,” Antosy says with certainty. “When my number was called I had to go over the side of the landing ship and down a rope net and into a smaller landing craft. I was afraid the water was too deep.”
Overhead, literally, bullets and missiles were flying about from the two thousand ships that took part in the attack and the German counterfire, which emanated from pillboxes on the beach and gunnery nests above.
“The beach was loaded with all sorts of government property and it had been mined by the Germans,” Antosy said. “I was flat on my stomach trying to make it from the beach to the base of the cliffs, where the Germans had a harder time shooting at us. The dangerous part was from the ocean to the cliffs. The Navy was shooting at the pillboxes and the Germans were using flamethrowers to protect the pillboxes.”
“Of course, you pray,” he said wistfully, after a short pause. “There were bodies lying on the beach. They looked alive, but were occasionally swept out to sea by the tide. We dug in on the beach. There were more engineer troops on the beach than infantry as we were trained to clear the minefields.”
“There was a lot of noise,” he added.
Antosy spent a night on Omaha Beach before his unit took over an abandoned pillbox that “had been taken out.”
“This is where we set up our headquarters,” Antosy said.
Soon, the troops were taken off the beach and moved into hedgerows, which had been created to foil German tanks.
“Then it became know as the Battle of the Hedgerows,” Antosy quipped.
But he definitely wasn’t yet out of harm’s way.
“Every night, a German plane would fly over and we would all fire into the sky, everything we had,” Antosy recalls. “We were in our foxholes firing at the German plane with our helmets over our faces. The Navy would shoot at it, too. That was probably more dangerous than anything. The flak that would come down.”
Antosy spent time in Colleville and was later moved to Cherbourg, where harbors that had once been controlled by the Germans were being cleared to bring in more Allied supplies.
“Some of the tonnage they brought across was amazing,” Antosy adds. After three months, he was relocated to Belgium, where more peril waited.
“It was a terrible time when we moved in,” Antosy says, his mind quickly shifting gears. “I later heard that during the Battle of the Bulge, it was the coldest winter in fifty years, reportedly as cold as 30 degrees below zero.”
As they did at Normandy, Antosy and his unit were in charge of establishing communications.
Holed up in a chateau, Antosy frequently worked on the roof with the antennas and other equipment as German bombs sailed through the frigid air.
“It was day-to-day warfare,” he says.
Antosy remembers the Christmas of 1944.
“It was during the Battle of the Bulge,” he says. “It was cold. I had one blanket. The missiles were going overhead and bombs were going off all around us.”
He then chuckles.
“Our Christmas meal was oatmeal. Cold. With no milk.”
Antosy recalls how German troops would parachute in dressed as Allied MPs.
“They would direct traffic and move our troops around where we didn’t want to go,” he says.
After several weeks, Antosy was moved into Leipzig and continued through Germany. At one point, they crossed the Elbe River into a Russian Zone – only they didn’t know it was a Russian Zone.
“There were five major battles,” he says. “We were in them all.”
He remembers the German surrender as a unique event.
“They were surrendering by the thousands,” he says. “What do you do with all those men? Many had found their wives and families and brought them, too. The MPs would direct them into an open area and guard them. It was the strangest sight.”
Due to his communications background, Antosy was offered a position with the Armed Forces Network.
“I was a single guy and I knew that if I went back to the States it would be difficult to find a job,” he says. “I thought the Armed Forces Network was high adventure.”
Antosy was discharged in Belgium and moved to Paris, where he had officer’s status. In three months, he was asked if he wanted to return to Germany.
He ended up in Bayreuth, Germany, where the Armed Forces Network was building a transmitter. He stayed there until 1954, serving as chief engineer of the station and working with German engineers during reconstruction.
During his stint, Antosy bore witness to yet another iconic event.
“In 1946, the Nuremberg War Trials started,” he says calmly. ‘I did all of the engineering. We beamed the trials to France and throughout Germany.”
From his position above the courtroom, Antosy saw Hermann Goering and Rudolph Hess as they were prosecuted for war crimes and the Holocaust.
“It was fascinating,” Antosy says. “During the trial, they would gauge the progress of the trial based on the number of pages of charges against the Germans they would read. It was heavily guarded. On the last day of the trial, there was a tank on each corner of the court building.”
None of this is lost on Antosy.
“As I look back, it was history,” he says. “And I was a part of it.”
Antosy’s astonishing military experience pales to what happened in 1948, while attending Mass in a Catholic Church in Germany.
“I met a young lady,” he says, eyes all aglitter. “She was from Budapest, Hungary and was reading an English prayer book. I got to know her and started taking her to church in the company Jeep.”
The woman was a refugee, who later moved to North Carolina where she was sponsored by a parish. Some time later, she called Antosy, still in Germany. In 1949, they became Dorothy and Steve Antosy until her passing in 2013.
Antosy went to work for RCA and lived in Greenland, Iran, Turkey and throughout the Far East before settling in Southern California. On March 31, 1967, he paid $37,510 for the house on Monterey Rd. and – other than the family’s extensive travel – hasn’t budged.
Twin daughter—the aforementioned Leslie—and son Stephen IV were born in 1961 and went through San Marino schools and have given Steve grandchildren. He shares a framed box that contains his many awards and medals (including the Silver Star) and charts his movements on maps that he unfolds with care. He seems rightfully proud and never boastful.
The wars seem to have faded into the background – for the most part.
“My most dangerous duty was in Normandy,” he answers, when asked. “You were always operating in fear. The Germans had snipers. We were under direct fire at least a half dozen times.”
For years, Antosy would jump at loud, abrupt sounds.
“You never get used to it,” he says. “Even after several years a car would backfire and I would duck. But it wears off with time.”
Thank goodness his memory hasn’t…
