Waverly Woodson treated men for 30 hours on Omaha beach. But his heroic record that day became a casualty of entrenched racism, wartime bureaucracy and Pentagon record-keeping.
Cpl. Waverly B. Woodson, Jr. displayed incredible heroism on D-Day, but racism and bureaucracy prevented him from receiving the honors he deserved — until now, 80 years late. | U.S. Army, was a finalist last year for the Pulitzer Prize in History.
Not a single one of the million-plus Black personnel who served in World War II received one of the 432 Medals of Honor awarded during the war. | U.S. National Archives But that has started to change. As the 80th anniversary of D-Day arrives this week, the quest to deliver Woodson the nation’s highest combat award continues unsuccessfully. But, in a surprise Monday morning, provided exclusively in advance to POLITICO Magazine, the Pentagon and Sen.
During the Clinton administration, the Army commissioned a five-person team at Shaw University to study the voluminous historical record of World War II and determine why — and what, if anything, should be done to rectify it.
In the end, the Shaw commission in the 1990s recommended that distinguished combat awards given to 10 soldiers be upgraded to the Medal of Honor, and the Pentagon ultimately honored seven of those — including three of those four soldiers where the commission had found evidence that they “may have been recommended” contemporaneously for the Medal of Honor: First Lieutenant Vernon Baker, Staff Sergeant Edward A. Carter Jr. and Sergeant Ruben Rivers.
Ironically, in life, France did more to recognize Woodson’s heroism and contribution to D-Day than his own country. For the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994, Woodson was one of three U.S. veterans chosen by the French government for a week-long, all-expenses-paid trip back to the battlefield. As Woodson later said, “I don’t know why they chose me, but it was a wonderful thing. I was the only Black man of the three. I think it was the French’s way of saying, ‘Thanks.
There were just four awarded among the roughly 160,000 men who stormed ashore by air and sea that day; only one of them survived to receive the award. All four of those stories ring with the heroism that helped the Allies win that day. Lt. Jimmie W. Monteith Jr.
Even measured against such high standards of valor, courage and sacrifice, Woodson’s story inspires. His actions mirror the same ones that Barrett was ultimately honored for with the Medal of Honor; Woodson even worked on the beach longer.— who just turned 95 in late May — never gave up the fight to recognize his D-Day heroism. In an interview last week, Woodson’s son, Steve, said that the lack of official recognition long troubled his father: “It bothered him immensely.
“It immediately struck me as a case of justice undone,” Van Hollen told me in an interview last week. “We reviewed all the details, read the story, and we came to the conclusion that Corporal Woodson — after that Staff Sergeant Woodson— had been overlooked for the medal because of the color of his skin and that this case had to be part of an ongoing effort to address the injustices of history.”
To help keep pressure up on his case in recent years, particularly as Woodson’s widow aged, Van Hollen and other members of the Maryland congressional delegation also introduced legislation to authorize the Medal of Honor for the medic and, along with the Congressional Black Caucus,Pentagon bureaucracy and urge the military to reconsider whether to award Woodson a higher award.
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