Tony Pagano, who deployed to Europe not long after D-Day, is marking the Normandy invasion a little differently this year. 

Pagano, who retired from service with the rank of staff sergeant, Pagano, who is from New Jersey, enlisted into the Army in downtown New York in 1943 and was deployed for training at Georgia’s Fort Benning (now called Fort Moore) by the time he was 18. 

He was later transferred to the 1255th Engineer Battalion in the 3rd Army before going overseas in October 1944, months after D-Day. He landed at Omaha Beach, one of the D-Day landing zones for the Allies, before he made his way to the front lines. 

Pagano’s deployment was just before the Battle of the Bulge, the Nazi German counteroffensive in Belgium and Luxembourg in late 1944 that was designed to push back against the D-Day invasion, which had put the Allies close to victory.