On the morning of June 6, 1944, Cpl. Waverly Woodson’s battle began before the young medic’s boots ever touched the fine golden sand of Omaha Beach.
Woodson, then just 21, would later recall the blasts and the chaos that followed when his boat hit an enemy mine andan exploding mortar shell sprayed the steel deck with burning metal. All around lay the bodies of young men who, moments earlier, had been amped up on pre-combat adrenaline or heaving into their helmets from seasickness. Woodson grimly surveyed his own inner thigh and buttocks, ripped open by shrapnel. He would later write in an unpublished account that he thought he was dying.
With a dressing hastily slapped on his wounds, Woodson splashed into the rising surf and hit the beach as the tank he was trailing burst into flames. The pre-med student from Lincoln University had signed up for the Army in 1942, determined to serve his country. He would endure dehumanizing treatment in an Army segregated by race and later miss the chance to become a doctor because medical schools had quotas for Black students.
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While we can speculate on what Woodson’s post-war life could have been like if he’d had an equal shot to fulfill his dream, we know for certain that on D-Day, he ignored his own pain, braved punishing German sniper and small arms fire, and worked for 30 hours to treat more than 200 men and save countless lives.
We also know that Woodson was nominated for the Medal of Honor. He never got it; in fact, no African Americans received the nation’s highest honor for heroism during World War II. The Woodson family and bipartisan allies on Capitol Hill have waged a campaign to persuade the Army to right a historical wrong and award the medal to Woodson, who died in 2005. After another appeal, the Army agreed last year to open a formal review. That decision is pending.
On Wednesday, the First Army, which was in charge of the troops that fought in Normandy, will present 94-year-old Joann Woodson with the Combat Medic Badge, a basic acknowledgement of her husband’s service that he should have gotten, but didn’t, in 1944. Organizers are hoping the gesture will cast a spotlight on the greater injustice done to Woodson.
“It’s clear, Waverly Woodson deserves the Medal of Honor, and but for the color of his skin, he would’ve received it a long time ago,” said U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who has led the fight to persuade the Army to change its mind.
Nearly 80 years after the D-Day landings, an emerging body of evidence reveals that the racism baked into Army policy during World War II was not the only factor that worked against Woodson.
For the past two years, First Army historian Kevin Braafladt has sifted through thousands of existing records on his own time in a quest to find documents supporting research that Woodson was nominated for the Medal of Honor.
Connecting many dots, Braafladt believes that infighting among Army leaders in 1944, among other factors, likely contributed to Woodson, and many other men whose units served under the command of the First Army missing out on the medals they deserved.
The Army demands an official paper trail to revisit a case for high honors. Yet after the war, the Army culled millions of files. Braafladt has traced the dates when hundreds of linear feet of reports for Woodson’s unit, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, were destroyed. And scores of personnel records, including Woodson’s, were lost in a fire in 1973.
What is unique about Woodson’s case is the remarkable evidence that still exists today. We have no eyewitness testimony to Woodson’s actions, as the Army requires. Yet on Aug. 28, 1944, the Army issued a news release, apparently taken from first-hand accounts, singling out the “modest Negro” who treated more than 200 men for “extraordinary bravery.”
“The Philadelphia soldier’s story of heroism was left to his buddies to tell,” the news release says.
That piece of paper sits in a folder in the Truman Presidential Library. Stapled to it is a handwritten note informing an aide to President Roosevelt that a recommendation for “a Negro from Philadelphia” was elevated to the Medal of Honor. The author, an assistant director in the War Department, wrote, “This is a big enough award so that the President can give it personally, as he has in the case of some white boys.”
There is no doubt this exchange is about Woodson who, with his injuries, could have opted for a hospital bed. Instead, braving relentless enemy fire, Woodson repeatedly raced into the sea to save drowning men. He dispensed blood plasma, amputated a right foot, and worked until he collapsed.
His sacrifice is particularly notable when you consider that a white private named Carlton Barrett received the Medal of Honor for actions that were strikingly similar— except Barrett wasn’t injured.
In January 1945, Woodson got the Bronze Star, the fourth-place award for minor acts of heroism, without even the “V” add-on indicating the recipient acted with valor. “He got the absolute lowest award available,” Braafladt said. “It is disheartening.”
Privately, veterans use much stronger language to describe the snub. Over the years, the Army has sometimes sought to make amends for past injustices. A soul-searching study resulted in the award, in 1997, of seven Medals of Honor to Black soldiers who served in World War II. There have been other medals and belated tributes to forgotten units of Black men and women.
But when it comes to the most sacred of military honors, critics contend the Army and Navy have been inconsistent, even rejecting their own requirements to reopen the case for the Medal of Honor.
“Their methodology and how they judge these requests is totally inscrutable,” said D-Day historian Joseph Balkoski, who was among a team that made a failed bit to secure the Medal of Honor for Norman “Dutch” Cota despite ample eyewitness testimony that the storied 29th Division general exceeded the call of duty.
Only three soldiers, including Barrett, received the Medal of Honor for their actions on Omaha Beach, the most iconic battle in modern history. By comparison, 21 Medals of Honor were awarded after the Battle of the Bulge.
“The heroism of those 18 hours on Omaha Beach has been vastly underappreciated,” Balkoski said. “There was no one taking notes.”
Retired Lt. Gen. Thomas S. James, Jr., the former First Army commander, who believes Woodson deserves the Medal of Honor, told The Daily Beast, “We have a saying, ‘We stand on the shoulders of giants,’ that those who came before us define us today. What Waverly Woodson did on the beaches of Normandy, with all the injustices he had to navigate to get to that point, he is one of those giants we need to remember.”
The First Army has taken a special interest in Woodson and other soldiers who fought under their command and were denied the honors they deserved. Beyond supporting Woodson’s case, officials in 2022 renamed the medical clinic at their post at Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, in honor of Woodson.
At Wednesday’s graveside ceremony, James and another retired commander, Lt. Gen. Stephen M. Twitty, have a surprise for Joann Woodson: Inside a shadow box, sitting alongside the Combat Medic Badge is a shiny new Bronze Star medal. Joann Woodson had donated the original medal to her husband’s alma mater, and she has missed it.
But just like the original, this replacement is missing the little “V” for valor pinned to the red ribbon. That upgrade, too, would require an Army review.
Joann Woodson appreciates the attention, but she’s holding out for the big one.
“I hope I live long enough to see this Medal of Honor,” she said in a gentle Maryland drawl. “It’s been a long time.”
