Waverly Woodson
"Scared? You bet. Some of the troops were pinned down under some cliffs. I reached them and did what I could for the wounded. At that time, they didn't care what color my skin was."
76 years ago this Saturday, Corporal Waverly Woodson landed on the shores of Omaha Beach with the first wave of the D-Day invasion armed only with a bag of medical supplies and a couple dozen syringes of morphine. In 30 hours of non-stop combat, zeroed in by Nazi mortar and machine gun fire ripping apart the sands with gunshots and artillery explosions, Corporal Woodson saved the lives of dozens of American soldiers during one of the most high-stakes and high-stress moments in human history, stitching up grievous wounds, administering first aid, triaging injuries, amputating limbs, and binding tourniquets onto gunshot wounds of men who were panicking, dying, scared, bleeding, and screaming.
In the entire history of war, among all battlefields in human history, there are few more terrifying sounds than a wounded man screaming for a medic above a din of gunshots, the whizz of bullets, and the booming thuds of artillery rounds impacting the earth.
To run forward fearlessly into such a situation, without even a weapon to protect yourself – to risk your life to save the life of another in need – takes superhuman bravery, selflessness, and resolve. It is one of the noblest and most heroic things a person can do.
And, for 30 hours, beginning before dawn on June 6, 1944, Corporal Waverly Woodson did just this, repeatedly, with two Nazi shell fragments digging into his leg and back every step of the way. And the only thing that stopped him what when he literally collapsed from exhaustion.
Waverly Woodson was born in West Philadelphia on August 3rd, 1922, the son of a postal clerk. He went to college, attended Officer Training School even though officer ranks in the U.S. military were not available to Black soldiers, and, when World War II started for the United States in 1941, not only did "Wave" sign up, but so did his brother – becoming a famed Tuskegee Airman.
As a combat medic, Wave was assigned to the all-Black 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, which sounds like a weird name for a military unit, but is actually pretty crucial – these guys' job was to fly low-altitude high-explosive hydrogen balloons with metal guide-wires so sharp they could shear the wing off a Nazi aircraft. Think of a Barrage Balloon as the anti-aircraft version of those big anti-ship mines that float on chains in the harbor. He went to train in Camp Tyson, Tennessee – a place where the German POWs were allowed to go out to dinner in town but the Black soldiers weren't – and, from there, to New York City. He and the 320th boarded a big troop transport ship, made a harrowing crossing of the Atlantic Ocean at a time when any ship bigger than a dinghy was a prime target for the roving "wolf packs" of Nazi U-Boats that were doing everything in their power to assert their dominance over the North Atlantic, and eventually landed in Wales to train for the Allied assault on the Normandy Coast – an attack aimed at creating a beachhead in Europe from which the forces of Democracy could push forward and crush the Fascist regime of Adolph Hitler.
21 year-old Corporal Waverly Woodson wasn't supposed to arrive on Omaha Beach with the first wave of the Allied attack, but bad luck threw him into the breach and forced him into one of the most brutal assaults in modern military history. His ship, an LCT, had struck a Nazi mine a couple miles from the coast and lost power, and ended up being dragged in with the tides. He was supposed to arrive later, and function in a support role, but instead of showing up after the work was done he was now instead drifting in under zero power, dead in the water, just waiting for German 88s to zero him in and blast him apart along with the rest of the first wave on Omaha Beach.
At around 5:30am, Woodson's ship approached the beach, drifting listlessly while artillery and mortars bracketed the ship in fire. There was a tank on board – a Sherman – and the moment the ramp dropped, it was hit with a direct hit by a German FlaK 88 cannon and blown into a flaming wreck. Seconds later, machine gun fire pinged and raked the ship and a mortar landed just feet from Woodson, blowing his friend apart and embedding two large chunks of white-hot shrapnel into Woodson's ass and thigh, sending screaming pain up and down his leg and spine.
But, he had a job to do. He gritted his teeth, dropped into four feet of water, and started wading forward, armed only with about fifty pounds of medical gear and a fierce determination to serve his country.
25 of the 26 Navy personnel on Woodson's LCT were killed in the deployment, and, as he raced forward through chest high water with the first wave, Nazi machine guns swept ferociously across the beach, laying waste to the attack. Mines on the beach were blowing guys into the air, machine guns and sniper fire were ripping the sand apart, and artillery was whizzing overhead in both directions as both German 88s and Allied destroyers hurled explosives at each other from miles away.
Woodson, however, kept his cool, even though he was scared out of his mind. He ran forward to the seawall, found the shattered remnants of Infantry, signal troops, and combat engineers, opened up his med bag, and went to work. After patching up and stitching his own wounds, he, under constant fire, began digging bullets out of bleeding wounds, clamping off shattered arteries, resetting broken bones, and comforting dying men he had no power to cure. Moving up and down the line, with bullets ripping overhead non-stop for hours, he treated men. Some of them were killed as he was working on them, hit with fresh wounds and bullets. Others were saved by his first aid, sustained by the blood plasma he administered and protected against infections by the clean field dressings he applied. One guy needed a foot amputation, and, if you can realistically watch the intro of Saving Private Ryan and tell me you'd be able to perform surgery under those conditions, then I guess you're just a better man than I.
As the battle raged, Woodson continually and without hesitation exposed himself to unbelievable amounts of machine gun fire, rushing to wounded men to save their lives. At one point he actually saw a LCPV landing craft break the guide rope and be destroyed by enemy fire, dumping guys into the English Channel with 60 pounds of gear on their back. Corporal Woodson – who, remember, wasn't even supposed to be here yet – ran forward, jumped into the water, grabbed a drowning man, and swam back to shore with him while Nazi bullets splashed all around him.
Then he went back and did the same thing three more times, pulling four wounded men from the wreckage, saving their lives, and then treating them with first aid.
After the beach was more-or-less 'secure', they set up a medical tent for him, where Woodson could get to work cleaning up the wreckage from the morning. With Nazi snipers taking aim at him every half-hour or so, Woodson performed more life-saving heroics, patching up wounded soldiers until, finally, a day and a half after he first landed on the beach, Woodson finally collapsed from exhaustion and the loss of blood he'd sustained through 30 hours of treating injuries under brutal conditions. He was credited with saving the lives of dozens – or, depending on who you ask, HUNDREDS, of lives on the shores of Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944 – a true hero during one of the most heroic moments in American history. He awoke on a hospital ship in the English channel a few hours later, spent the next four days recovering from his injuries, and then immediately left his hospital bed and requested to be re-deployed to Omaha Beach. He'd spend the rest of the war in Europe, return home a war hero, and not be legally allowed to drink coffee at a diner with the men whose lives he'd saved on the beach that day.
For his heroism, Cpl. Waverly Woodson was written up in his local newspaper, who adorably claimed him "the No. 1 hero of D-Day", and go writeups in magazines like Stars and Stripes. His commanding officer nominated him for a Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award for heroism offered by the United States Military, but when the General in charge read the report of what Corporal Woodson did on the beach he was like, no, the DSC is not enough. He nominated Woodson for the Medal of Honor.
He didn't receive it, of course, because no Black American soldier received the Medal of Honor for actions during World War II until seven DSCs were upgraded in 1997 – over five decades after D-Day – and by that point the paperwork on Cpl. Woodson's heroics had been lost in a fire or something. I'll argue that it doesn't matter what hardware adorns his gravestone – this man was a hero, no matter who you ask.
Woodson was sent to Georgia to use his medical training to work on a communicable diseases project, but when he arrived he was told that Black soldiers weren't allowed to work in this department, so those guys transferred him to Maryland where he became the Director of a morgue at an Army Medical Center there. He was on active duty for the Korean War but didn't deploy overseas, and retired a Staff Sergeant in the mid-50s. After the military, he got married, had three kids, and spent forty years working as a medical tech for the NIH in Maryland. He died August 12, 2005, not long after his 83rd birthday.
To this day, at the age of 91 years old, his widow is still pushing for his Bronze Star to be upgraded to something that better reflects the heroism and bravery he demonstrated on the shores of Omaha Beach.
Woodson on Normandy Beach during the 50th anniversary of the landings.
Links:
Books:
Bowman, Martin. Bloody Beaches. United Kingdom: Pen & Sword Books, 2013.
Gratz, Alan. Allies. United States: Scholastic Incorporated, 2019.
Hervieux, Linda. Forgotten. United States: Harper, 2015.