“The doctor was with him. He was not alone, he was at peace and he was comfortable,” said one of Mr Persichitti’s friends and fellow veterans, Al De Carlo.
He added: “She put his favourite singer, Frank Sinatra, on her phone and he peacefully left us.”
Mr Persichitti, from Rochester in New York state, had travelled to Europe with a group from the US National World War II Museum, determined to visit the beaches where so many of his countrymen fell, storming the German defences.
“I’m really excited to be going,” he told WROC-TV in Rochester the day before he left the US, saying his cardiologist had encouraged him to make the trip.
Mr Persichitti served in Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Guam as a radioman second class on the command ship USS Eldorado, and was named in the New York State Senate’s Veterans Hall of Fame in 2020.