“'We landed in water up to our necks,' Mr. Parham said, recalling a shorter man in his unit who had to be carried onto the beach because the water was over his head and he couldn’t swim."
The late Waverly Woodson is one of an untold number of Black service members passed over for the Medal of Honor whose cases have received renewed attention decades later, as their families and historians try to correct a historical record in which the contributions of Black service members are often left out.
As a political organizer for the Social Democrats, Kellner had opposed the Nazis from the beginning, campaigning against them throughout the duration of the ill-fated Weimar Republic.
Dozens of American veterans of D-Day were among other veterans and their families on a stage erected within the semicircular stone memorial at the Normandy American Cemetery.
Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said the events commemorating the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France were painting a "false" picture of who was responsible for winning World War II.
When Allied troops stormed the beaches at Normandy, France on June 6, 1944 – a bold invasion of Nazi-held territory that helped tip the balance of World War II – they were using a remarkable and entirely untested technology: artificial ports.
Waverly Woodson died in 2005 but his widow, Joann Woodson, who turned 90 on May 26, has made it her mission to see that her husband’s heroism is acknowledged.
Seventy-five years later, the ranks have thinned of those who braved machine gun fire on French beaches that were marked on their maps with American names like Utah and Omaha.
American and allied soldiers lost their lives on D-Day so that others may live free. The best way to honor D-Day veteran’s sacrifice is to work for that elusive, but achievable eternal world peace.
Amid the anniversary of the D-Day invasion, it is important to note, too, the anniversary of an event that unfolded just two days earlier: the Allied liberation of Rome.
