Yesterday a friend of mine knowing my Missouri roots sent me an article about an 102 year old D Day survivor from Missouri that he thought I might be interested in. Boy, was I. Incredibly, the gentleman is a distant cousin on my mother’s side. He was turned down by the Marines and the Navy because of an enlarged heart from childhood rheumatic fever but the Coast Guard accepted him. His unit of “Matchbox” cutters were 83’ wooden boats that were loaded onto Liberty Ships and taken to England. They had no idea what was about to happen. His group of 15 boats were assigned to Omaha beach and their assignment was the rescue of injured men in the water. Because he was one of the two rescue swimmers on his cutter he was in and out of the water all day. (Turns out there was no reason to doubt his heart.) His only equipment was a line tied around his waist that his mates used to pull him back to the boat. Together their entire group of 60 cutters saved 1486 injured men and one lady nurse. He readily admits that he was scared to death the whole day with bullets striking the water all around but he said he just kept focusing on swimming to the next wounded man.
One of a group of ordinary men who rose to extraordinary heights of sacrifice and dedication and bravery.
That's one of those stories not often told. Thanks for posting.
I have great respect for the Marines, but they made some interesting rejections of men who wanted to join. Including Audie Murphy. Much later, the Army temporarily kept me from taking the PT test (how many pushups and situps we could do in 2 minutes followed by a 2 mile run.) The EKG that was part of my physical showed that I had an irregular heartbeat. I went to the clinic to see if I could get a better explanation. The female doctor who looked at my EKG and interviewed me was on the faculty at the U of Illinois college of medicine (as best I can remember. ) She said my profile looked like I was a fairly serious runner. (At the time, I was running about 5-6 miles a day.) She said my case was one she'd show to her students and ask them to offer a diagnosis, and they'd come up with pretty much everything except that my profile was not "normal" because I was doing a lot of running. She had her boss (board certified cardiologist) look at it. After that, every time I had a physical and an EKG, I made sure to tell them I was a runner. Cleared to take the PT test from then on.
Last edited by L. Brown; 06/09/24 07:07 AM.
