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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.
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