A native American war hero gets the French Legion of honor award
Charles Shay went off to the wars more than 60 years ago and has now returned as a tribal elder, preserving Penobscot history.
from the November 5, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
"I'm very proud to be a native American; a member of the Penobscot Indian nation," says Shay. "I'm trying to do whatever I can to promote my native American culture; to promote what my ancestors have done for the people of this small reservation.
"I would like to see more recognition given to the native American veterans of the state of Maine."
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The next-to-youngest of nine siblings, Shay was one of four brothers to fight in World War II. The Shay brothers were drafted in 1944, along with 85 other Penobscot men and women from their 500-member reservation. Two of them served on Navy ships, one was in the Army Air Corps; Charles was a medic. They all survived the war; and Shay is the last living member of his generation.
He has a somber nonchalance when describing D-Day. German obstacles thwarted a close approach to the beaches, he says, which meant disembarking into waist-high water.
"Once they hit the obstacles, they dropped their ramps," he says. "A lot of men didn't even get out of the craft because they were standing at the front and got hit ... some dropped into the water dead, or drowned because they had all their equipment on them and were wounded and couldn't help themselves. It was every man for himself."
Shay went in over his waist and headed for the top of the beach to find protection from withering fire beneath the embankments – hundreds of yards from the landing zone.
He carried no weapon – wouldn't have had time to use one. He was preoccupied with "treating and comforting the wounded anyway I could.... If the men were wounded and couldn't help themselves, they would drown." He has no recollection of the number of men he pulled from the water. And he's characteristically modest about that: "We've all had our individual experiences, and none are more dramatic than the next."
The invasion chaos turned into a coherent military campaign. "Infantry companies had been decimated, 40 to 50 percent, and we had to operate with the people we had left," says Shay. "We had objectives to take. I just followed the troops."
By March, Shay had crossed the Rhine. One day, Shay and a small reconnaissance platoon stumbled across a German tank unit idling in a village. "They got the drop on us," he says. None of his platoon were killed or wounded, and they spent several weeks being moved nightly in a German "shell-game" before they arrived in a prisoner of war camp. Back home, Shay's mother was receiving that pink telegram.
"After one or two days, we woke up and the Germans were gone," says Shay. "They knew they couldn't move us anymore. Americans liberated the camp." It was April 18, 1945. In days, the war in Europe would be over.
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