Heavy machine-gun fire greeted a nauseous and bloody Waverly B. Woodson, Jr. as he disembarked onto Omaha Beach the morning of June 6, 1944. A German shell had just blasted apart his landing craft, killing the man next to him and peppering him with so much shrapnel that he initially believed he, too, was dying.
Woodson, a medic with the lone African-American combat unit to fight on D-Day, nonetheless managed to set up a medical aid station and for the next 30 hours occupied himself removing bullets, dispensing blood plasma, cleaning wounds, resetting broken bones, and at one point amputating a foot. He also saved four men from drowning, reportedly pulling them from the waves and administering CPR after their guide rope broke on the way ashore.
Having treated at least 200 men, Woodson finally collapsed from his injuries and was transferred to a hospital ship. Within days, however, he asked to return to Omaha Beach, the bloodiest of the five sites invaded by the Allies on D-Day. “He was a good man,” his widow, Joann Woodson, 90, tells HISTORY. “Whatever he set out to do, he made sure he was going to do it well.”
Back home in America, black newspapers hailed Woodson as the “No. 1 invasion hero.” Other publications likewise offered praise, including the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes, which wrote that he and his fellow medics “covered themselves with glory on D-Day.” The U.S. Army issued a news release in August 1944 that called him a “modest Negro American soldier” who “was cited by his commanding officer for extraordinary bravery.”
Even Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, architect of the D-Day invasion and future president, weighed in, saying Woodson’s unit, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, “carried out its mission with courage and determination, and proved an important element of the air defense team.”
Woodson, however, never received the Medal of Honor, the highest U.S. military decoration given to those who display extraordinary valor in action. In fact, of the hundreds of Medals of Honor given out during World War II, not a single one went to a black soldier, even though more than 1 million African-Americans served in the conflict.
Though Woodson died in 2005, his family has been pushing the Army to award him a Medal of Honor posthumously. Their efforts kickstarted a few years ago, when journalist Linda Hervieux, author of Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, At Home and At War, uncovered a document showing that Woodson’s commanding officer had recommended him for the Distinguished Service Cross—the second-highest military award—but that the office of Gen. John C. H. Lee believed he had earned an even more distinguished award: the Medal of Honor.