WWII Veteran Reflects on Military Service

After nearly 71 years, Peter Rossetti still rattles off his enlistment date like it happened yesterday: Oct. 12, 1942.

Rossetti, 91, a resident of ACTS, Southampton Estates for the last three years and a moderator for the retirement community's annual Memorial Day service, joined the Navy during World War II and served as a Quarter Master Third Class in five campaigns, including the Invasion of Sicily, Salerno, Angelo and D-Day Normandy. 

Just as readily as he shares the start of his military career, Rossetti remembers the eight-month-long hospital stay and struggle to walk again after his ship struck an underwater enemy mine on July 12, 1944. Three men perished in the engine room, he said. 

“All I remember is being blasted into the air," Rossetti said. "I got up to help others, but I collapsed because my knee was bleeding pretty badly.” 

Rossetti was awarded a Purple Heart and Navy Combat Medal and Navy Unit Commendation Medal.

Besides remembering his own military past with fervor, Rossetti recalls a little known fact that could have changed history as we know it. 

"We celebrate D-Day as June 6, 1944," Rossetti said from an apartment at the retirement community. "The real date was June 5. The water was so rough General Eisenhower told us to return to our bases. A lot of people don't know that."

An Upper Southampton Township resident since 1987, Rossetti was born and raised in the "Swampoodle" section of Philadelphia. Following his military career, he returned home to the City of Brotherly Love, attended Temple University where he earned a degree in business administration and worked for the next 25 years as an employee benefit consultant. 

He met his late wife of 38 years in 1946 or 1947 while taking a friend to Temple University Hospital for a broken arm.

"I tried to date her," Rossetti shared of their first encounter, adding that she took some time to win over. 

In terms of his military service, Rossetti jokes that he joined the Navy–as opposed to the Army–for selfish reasons.

"I didn't want to be in any foxholes," Rossetti said. "When I go to bed, I want to be in a nice bed."

Yet his service and the service of other brave men and women is something he takes very seriously, particularly as Memorial Day approaches. 

"It means a lot to me because we're honoring our country," Rossetti said. "I happen to be a Purple Heart recipient, but I didn't choose that."