Charles Shay, a adorned Native American veteran who was a 19-year-old U.S. Military medic when he landed on Omaha Seaside on D-Day and helped save lives, died on Wednesday. He was 101.
Shay died at his dwelling in Bretteville-L’Orgueilleuse in France’s Normandy area, his longtime pal and carer Marie-Pascale Legrand stated.
Shay, of the Penobscot tribe and from Indian Island within the U.S. state of Maine, was awarded the Silver Star for repeatedly plunging into the ocean and carrying critically wounded troopers to relative security, saving them from drowning. He additionally obtained France’s highest award, the Legion of Honor, in 2007.
Shay had been residing in France since 2018, not removed from the shores of Normandy the place practically 160,000 troops from Britain, the U.S., Canada and different nations landed on D-Day on June 6, 1944. The Battle of Normandy hastened Germany’s defeat, which got here lower than a 12 months later.
“He handed away peacefully surrounded by his family members,” Legrand informed The Related Press.
Shay informed CBS Information in 2019 that he moved to France to be near his fallen brothers.
“I’ll die right here,” Shay informed CBS Information on the time. “I imagine that I can discuss with the souls of the lads which are nonetheless wandering on the seashore right here. And I simply tried to guarantee them that they aren’t forgotten.”
Jeffrey Schaeffer/AP
The Charles Shay Memorial group, which honors the reminiscence of about 500 Native Individuals who landed on the Normandy seashores, stated in a assertion posted on Fb that “our hearts are deeply saddened as we share that our beloved Charles Norman Shay … has returned dwelling to the Creator and the Spirit World.”
“He was an extremely loving father, grandfather, father-in-law, and uncle, a hero to many, and an total wonderful human being,” the assertion stated. “Charles leaves a legacy of affection, service, braveness, spirit, responsibility and household that continues to shine brightly.”
Prepared to provide his life
On D-Day, 4,414 Allied troops misplaced their lives — 2,501 of them Individuals. Greater than 5,000 had been wounded. On the German aspect, a number of thousand had been killed or wounded.
“Mortars and artillery coming at us,” Shay informed CBS Information in 2019. “When the ramp went down, the lads that had been standing within the entrance, a few of them had been killed instantly.”
Others had been so badly harm, they could not drag themselves out of the surf.
“Many males that had been wounded had been laying and couldn’t assist themselves within the tide,” Shay informed CBS Information.
Shay survived.
“I assume I used to be ready to provide my life if I needed to. Thankfully, I didn’t should,” Shay stated in a 2024 interview with The Related Press.
“I had been given a job, and the way in which I checked out it, it was as much as me to finish my job,” he recalled. “I didn’t have time to fret about my state of affairs of being there and maybe dropping my life. There was no time for this.”
On that evening, exhausted, he ultimately fell asleep in a grove above the seashore.
“Once I awoke within the morning, it was like I used to be sleeping in a graveyard as a result of there have been lifeless Individuals and Germans surrounding me,” he recalled. “I stayed there for not very lengthy and I continued on my means.”
Shay then pursued his mission in Normandy for a number of weeks, rescuing these wounded, earlier than heading with American troops to jap France and Germany, the place he was taken prisoner in March 1945 and liberated just a few weeks later.
Spreading a message of peace
After World Warfare II, Shay reenlisted within the navy as a result of the state of affairs of Native Individuals in his dwelling state of Maine was too precarious as a consequence of poverty and discrimination.
Maine wouldn’t enable people residing on Native American reservations to vote till 1954.
Shay continued to witness historical past — returning to fight as a medic throughout the Korean Warfare, collaborating in U.S. nuclear testing within the Marshall Islands and later working on the Worldwide Atomic Power Company in Vienna, Austria.
For over 60 years, he didn’t speak about his WWII expertise.
LOIC VENANCE/AFP by way of Getty Pictures 
However he started attending D-Day commemorations in 2007 and lately, he has seized many events to provide his highly effective testimony and unfold a message of peace.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021, Shay’s lone presence marked commemoration ceremonies as journey restrictions prevented different veterans or households of fallen troopers from the U.S., Britain and different allied nations from making the journey to France.
Disappointment at seeing struggle again in Europe
For years, Shay used to carry out a sage-burning ceremony, in homage to those that died, on a bluff overlooking Omaha Seaside, the place the monument bearing his title now stands.
On June 6, 2022, he handed over the remembrance activity to a different Native American, Julia Kelly, a Gulf Warfare veteran from the Crow tribe. That was simply over three months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in what was to grow to be the worst struggle on the continent since 1945.
Shay then expressed his disappointment at seeing struggle again on the continent.
“Ukraine is a really unhappy state of affairs. I really feel sorry for the folks there and I do not know why this struggle needed to come,” he stated. “In 1944, I landed on these seashores and we thought we might convey peace to the world. But it surely’s not attainable.”
Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP 
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