He and his outfit survived the Battle of the Bulge and his story races along with his division toward the bridge across the Rhine River at Remagen.
"The Germans were supposed to demolish it," he says. "The demolition didn't go off. The Germans took off and all our men crossed the Rhine River right then."
The "Miracle at Remagen" on March 7, 1945, enabled the first American soldiers to enter Germany. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said the bridge was "worth its weight in gold."
Trovato was stuck briefly in a town near the bridge, manning a military switchboard, unhappy because he had expected to go to Paris on leave. His outfit, with its heavy equipment, big artillery pieces and tanks, couldn't cross into Germany on the rickety Remagen Bridge until Army engineers bypassed it with a pontoon bridge. He's got the photograph.
They fought on, attached to Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army, until the war in Europe ended May 8, 1945.
"We became a first-class outfit," he says, "because we were fighting and fighting and fighting from when the Germans came out of the woods [in the Ardennes]."
Trovato shot pictures of Patton receiving the surrender from German generals. But he lent them to an Army photographer, which he regrets to this day. He never got them back.
He returned after the war to Little Italy to run his parents' store. He later worked for a grocery supply company. He retired about 30 years ago to take care of his late mother, Concetta. He's hardly left Little Italy since.
He's never married, but his photo collection is full of pictures of pretty women. He stopped counting his birthdays a couple years ago. He doesn't want the ladies to think he's old.
carl.schoettler@baltsun.com
