You Need To Know about This Incredible Soldier Who Saved Hundreds on D-Day

via Wikimedia

PushBlack
August 22, 2019

June 6th, 1944 was D-Day, and the forces were all out. Sergeant Waverly “Woody” Woodson Jr. was the 21-year-old medic for the only Black combat unit there to fight on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France.

War had its way, however. Sergeant Woodson was so punctured with shrapnel that he thought death was certain. Even with such ghastly wounds, what he did next was pure bravery…

  

Under heavy machine-gun fire, his thighs and buttocks torn from shrapnel, Sergeant Woodson set up a medical aid station and gave medical aid to soldiers for 30 hours.

He removed bullets, cleaned wounds, fixed broken bones, amputated a foot, and even saved some from drowning. But Woodson never got the highest honor for a soldier - the Medal of Honor.

Military units were segregated back then and of ALL the hundreds of Medals of Honor given at the time, not one medal was for a Black soldier.

Woodson exemplifies the disrespect shown to the 1 million Black WWII soldiers, and to this day his wife fights the Army to award him a Medal of Honor posthumously. So let’s honor Sergeant Woodson for his extraordinary valor!

We have a quick favor to ask:

PushBlack is a nonprofit dedicated to raising up Black voices. We are a small team but we have an outsized impact:

  • We reach tens of millions of people with our BLACK NEWS & HISTORY STORIES every year.
  • We fight for CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM to protect our community.
  • We run VOTING CAMPAIGNS that reach over 10 million African-Americans across the country.

And as a nonprofit, we rely on small donations from subscribers like you.

With as little as $5 a month, you can help PushBlack raise up Black voices. It only takes a minute, so will you please ?

Share This Article: