Cpl. Ben Gebbia, World War II medic, honored at LI veterans home event

Perhaps his natural calm was one reason why the U.S. Army had Ben Gebbia trained as a medic during World War II -- a role he'd fill at Normandy and in liberating two Nazi concentration camps.

Gebbia, now 96, had not aspired to a medical career.

"They picked me," he said, adding he had not even studied biology.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) Saturday presented Gebbia with an honorary certificate for sharing some of his war stories with children as part of a Long Island State Veterans Home program.

True to form, Gebbia, a resident of the Stony Brook home and dubbed "Everybody's Grandpa" by the staff, protested.

"I don't want to be the whole show. There were other people involved that did more than me," he said.

Gebbia said students often ask if he was scared during D-Day. Others want to know how witnessing Holocaust atrocities affected him.

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"At the beginning, I didn't know much," said Gebbia, a former corporal. "It got interesting, but then you got sick of seeing people hurt, people very scarred."

He added: "You know, that's a hard thing to see, and you never get over that."

Local students sent in about 500 essays for the fourth annual "My Military Hero" contest -- compared to three the first year, said Melissa Negrin-Wiener, a Melville lawyer who helped create the contest.

Some of the six winning essays revealed how remote that wars, and freedom's price, had seemed. "I learned that a gaming war is a lot less frightening than a real war," said one boy, who profiled his uncle, a Vietnam veteran.

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A girl said her uncle, an Army captain, "inspires me to be brave."

Service and sacrifice also were themes for 9-year-old Cameron Short of Ridge, who saluted two Marines: his Vietnam veteran grandfather and an uncle who survived three tours of duty in the Middle East.

"I would like to help in a different way, by becoming a police officer," he wrote.

Nick Graham, 11, of East Yaphank said his grandfather, who served two tours in Vietnam, forged deep friendships in combat.

"It's a closeness only understood by them," he wrote.