Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty/Courtesy of Woodson family
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 He would later write in an unpublished account that he thought he was dying.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.