Hi, I’m the History Guy. I have a
degree in history and I love history and if you love history too,
this is the channel for you. It is June the 6th, the anniversary of Operation
Neptune, the Allied amphibious invasion of the beaches of Normandy France. Seventy-three years
ago today more than a hundred and fifty thousand troops, American, British and Canadian, assaulted
five beaches in the beginning of the operation to liberate fortress Europe. But in addition to the
hundred fifty thousand troops on the beaches, the Allies dropped thousands of paratroopers
behind the lines. With jobs to take strategic positions, to cut off German reinforcements and to
facilitate connecting the Allied beachheads. Over 13,000 American paratroopers were dropped during
D-Day, and among the first were 69 hundred of the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles.
And of all the stories of heroism on D-Day, none as more interesting than the story of
two medics of the 101st Airborne Division, Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore. Bob Wright and
Kenmore were both 19 year old privates in the 501st parachute infantry regiment of the 101st
Airborne Division. Angered by Pearl Harbor, Moore had signed up in high school, and he volunteered
for the paratroops because they got extra pay, fifty bucks a month, and because the paratrooper
uniform was supposed to attract girls. “It sounded glamorous” he said adding, “It never occurred
to me that they would make us jump out of airplanes”. After training in the United States,
they were moved to England in January of 1944. The island was so covered with troops and equipment
that the paratroops joked that the only thing holding the island up was the barrage balloons.
D-Day would be their first taste of combat. Wright and Moore were dropped behind Utah Beach
and what was called Drop Zone D. The C-47 Dakotas carrying the paratroops took heavy flak and
many of the paratroops died in the planes, never even got a chance to jump. Two of
the three division commanders of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment never made it
to the ground. When Moore jumped out of his plane he was near the back, the plane was only
300 feet off the ground, he said his parachute barely opened before he hit the ground. Much
of the drop zone had been pre-registered for German fire and so they were taking casualties
from the get-go. Moore recalled being shot at the moment he hit the ground. “You realize..”
he said, “that someone is trying to kill you”. Wright and Moore were both senior medics; they
jumped that day with first-aid kits, but no weapons. While they were medics, their medical
training was limited, Moore had only gotten two weeks of medical training. “Their training, and
their job” he said, “was to stop the bleeding”. They had been dropped near the tiny
hamlet of Angoville au Plain. The 101st mission in the area was to cut
off the main road between Cherbourg and Paris, and thus cut off the German
reinforcements to the beach defenses. The tiny hamlet only had a population of about
80 and it was dominated by a small stone 12th century Romanesque Church. The paratroopers
dug into their positions while Wright and Moore converted the church into an aid station
and immediately casualties started coming in. To this day you can still see bloodstains on
the pews of the church at Angoville au Plain. The fighting was brutal; this was bocage country
and the hedgerows offered plenty of places for snipers and machine guns to hide. The road going
in front of Angoville au Plain was critical and so the village became a centerpiece of the
combat. Wright and Moore followed the rules of the Geneva Convention, they treated troops
from both sides as well as civilians too, two small girls from the village were wounded
by mortar fragments they treated them both. One survived. They would stabilize the
wounded as best they could and then they would risk their lives to go out into
the fields and search for more wounded, their Red Cross armbands offered them some
protection from enemy fire; they used a wheel barrel from a farm to help carry the wounded
back to the church. In the heaviest fighting the lightly armed paratroopers were pushed back
and had to withdraw from the village but Wright and Moore refused to leave the wounded and so
they stayed behind. When the Germans discovered them they saw that they were treated wounded from
both sides and so let them be. A German officer came in and asked if he could bring in more of
his wounded, they obliged. They treated men, they said, not uniforms. The only rule was that
soldiers had to leave their rifles at the door. The church was often in the crossfire, sometimes
from American troops who thought it was occupied by the Germans. All of the windows were shot
out, they've since been replaced with stained glass representations of paratroopers. A
mortar shell hit the roof and caused more injuries amongst the wounded inside, it cracked
the flagstone floor of the church and that scar can still be seen in the church today. A piece
of the falling roof hit Moore on the head and made him bleed and for that he was awarded the
Purple Heart. He had treated so many seriously wounded that day that he said he was embarrassed
to take it. The two worked for three days straight and never slept in that time, and in perhaps
the most surprising incident of the time, after about two days, two Germans came down
from the church steeple and surrendered to them. Apparently they had been in the church
the entire time and they didn't know about it. The Germans were finally pushed back for the
last time On June 8th and in those three days Wright and Moore had saved more than 80 lives.
Both were awarded Silver Stars for the action. There are so many stories of heroism in the
invasion of the Normandy beaches. The story of Dick Winters of the 502nd Parachute Infantry
Regiment taking the artillery so well described in Steven Ambrose's book ‘Band of Brothers’, or
the Forgotten story of the african-american 320th barrage balloon battalion that was described
in Linda Hervieux’s book ‘Forgotten’. Or the amazing story of Juan Pujols the Spanish double
agent who played such a critical role in the deceptions that tied down thousands of troops
that was written in Steven Talty's wonderful book ‘Agent Garbo’. But the story of Wright and
Moore is very interesting because in the midst of all that shooting, they never picked up a
rifle. As author Tim Gray states in the book that he wrote about the two called ‘Angels
of Mercy’, compassion was their ammunition. Ken Moore passed away in 2014, at his request
his ashes were dropped from an airplane, one last jump for a veteran paratrooper.
And Bob Wright died in 2013 at his request his remains are buried in a small
church yard next to a small church in Angoville au Plain France and you
can still see that gravesite today. I'm the History Guy and I hope you enjoyed this
addition to my series, five minutes of history short snippets have forgotten history 5 to 10
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