"Any truth or a source for this?" Topic

This quote seems to be doing the rounds on social media, is there any source for it? It looks dubious to me.

AN INFANTRYMAN'S ACCOUNT OF THE SAPPERS ON D-DAY 06 JUN 1944.

"The entire beach and hillside was covered with obstacles, a unit of Sappers had gone ahead to find where the mines were. Those guys were smack in the middle of it, German bullets coming down from up top, and our bullets going back the other way, with mortars landing everywhere. They moved in pairs, if one went down his partner picked up his kit and kept moving.
They didn't call for a single medic, they just kept crawling up the beach as far as they could until they couldn't no more. You could see them pulling themselves up the hillside even after their legs got shattered from the explosions, I remember all their bodies had marker flags sticking out of them. The dirt was to loose to hold the flags up and the blasts would've knocked them over, so the guys had shot themselves up with morphine and stuck the flags into their legs. When you got to one that was still breathing he would tell you where it was safe to step.
They were about 25 yards apart, When I got to the base of the hill I took a quick look back and that's when I saw it. Those Sappers had made a trail with their own bodies. Now how do you not keep going after something like that…"

Well, I can get you a source, anyway. This is from 2019:
link
and it's attributed to "Sgt. Gino J. Merli (MOH Recipient) H. Co, 2nd BN, 18th Infantry, 1st ID, Omaha Beach." According to wikipedia, there was in fact a Sgt Gino J. Merli, who did win the MoH and did go ashore on Omaha Beach with the 2/18th. I can't find where he said or wrote it yet, but this is already better than most social media "facts." I'd look for histories of the 1st ID on Omaha Beach and check indexes and bibliographies indexes for Merli. The Army Official History does not use that quote that I can find, but it does say overall casualties for engineers were 40% and certainly much higher for the first waves.

The only oddity which catches my eye is the use of "sapper" by an American of a US combat engineer unit, but that could be me missing period or unit usage.

Thanks,

I was looking at Great Britain/Commonwealth units because of the use of "Sapper", the geography and use of morphine sounded wrong, but "Bloody Omaha" fits better.

I think it might be (somewhat inaccurately) transcribed from this:
YouTube link

When you look at the credits, it's an actor playing Merli, and Merli didn't write it. There were other oddities in the word choice which might be the script-writer rather than Merli. An honest effort, I think. And no question that combat engineers died in huge numbers trying to get the army off Omaha Beach.

Anyway, the trick in the Internet age is to do a Google (or equivalent) search for some four or five word section of the longer quote and keep going until someone gives you a source. Then you can search for the source.

Gino Merli was a local celebrity.
He worked for the Veterans Administration and had a VA center in Scranton named for him.