WWII nurse from Greenlawn gets her medals

Not long ago, Billy White was rooting through some boxes in his mother's Greenlawn home when he came across her Army discharge papers.

"Mom, I didn't know you won a Bronze Star," he said.

"They gave me a ribbon, but they never gave me the medal," she explained.

Monday, Mary Occhiogrosso, 89, finally got her medal. In a ceremony held in the Paumanack Village Community building in Greenlawn where she lives, the former Army nurse also received four other long-overdue medals she earned for her service on the island of Iwo Jima in 1945 but never actually received. The ceremony was conducted by Huntington Town Supervisor Frank Petrone and Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington).

"I don't think I did anything that you would not have done," she said at the ceremony. "I was in a position where someone gave me an order and I just carried it out."

Occhiogrosso, who grew up in Maspeth, Queens, was in her 20s and barely out of nursing school when she landed on the Japanese-held island as a U.S. Army Corps nurse in 1945, one of 10 nurses tasked with setting up and running a makeshift hospital for wounded American soldiers.

"It was tents, cots," she said of the hospital, without water and electricity. "The [wounded] men didn't stay too long . . . The facilities weren't the best. When they were able to be moved, they were."

The battle for the island lasted more than a month that winter and was one of the most vicious of the war, pitting 70,000 U.S. troops against a Japanese force a third that size, but heavily dug-in and desperate. Approximately 26,000 Americans were killed or wounded.

"The whole island was coffee grounds; there was nothing growing there. The only thing we saw were rats, rats all over," Occhiogrosso said. Dugouts were built where the nurses could go to protect themselves from enemy fire.

"One of the nurses said something hits one of these places, we're going to lose 40 women," she said.

In spite of her training, nothing prepared her for the casualties that came to her hospital: men who were dying and horribly wounded. To cheer up her patients, Occhiogrosso sometimes performed such songs as "Melancholy Baby," and "My Buddy."

When she returned to Long Island, she worked as a nurse, including at Huntington Hospital as a supervisor in orthopedics. She retired at the age of 80, her son said.

Or almost retired: about three years ago, when a woman collapsed next to her at a bingo game, Occhiogrosso dropped to the floor next to her and administered CPR. The woman survived and returned to play bingo again.

The Army is trying to determine why the medals were not delivered 65 years ago when they should have been, said Master Sgt. Christina Steiner of the Human Resources Command at Fort Knox, Ky. "We're people too, and we make mistakes," she said.

Occhiogrosso's son and daughter, Mary Anne White, attended the ceremony with several neighbors. "I think she's a treasure," said Mary Luzetski, 88. "This should have been done a long time ago. But it's better late than never. . . . I'm glad she's finally getting her medals."

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