D-Day Vet To Be Awarded French Legion of Honor Medal. Here Is His Story of Unmatched Courage and Sacrifice
D-Day veteran Alvin Perry, 95, of Kentucky will be awarded France’s Legion of Honor medal on Friday for his brave service in the campaign to liberate France from Nazi occupation.
Napoleon Bonaparte founded the Legion of Honor in 1802 as a means to designate “eminent service” to France, Louisville’s The Courier-Journal reported.
Kentucky vet captured during D-Day invasion 75 years ago to receive France’s highest honor https://t.co/DfFZXtQL5a
— Courier Journal (@courierjournal) June 6, 2019
“The American people call it the Normandy invasion, we call it the liberation,” said Guillaume Lacroix, consul general of France to the Midwest who is appointed to award the medal to Perry on Friday. “The French people are extremely grateful.”
Perry was drafted into the Army in November 1943. He was born in Kentucky in 1923, and was raised in a home with no electricity, phone or car and traveled by horse, he told the Courier Journal.
After 17 weeks of basic training, Perry was shipped to Europe to prepare for the Normandy invasion.
“I wasn’t happy. I knew where we were going,” he said.
Perry’s landing craft dismounted on, at that point, an Allied controlled Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. There were still Germans giving resistance to the Allied advance farther up the beach.
“You don’t know what it’s like. You might be killed any minute,” he said.
Perry was suppose to take part in a “mop-up” operation to clear remaining Germans in the area.
What was supposed to be a low intensity mission, according to unit commanders, turned into six days of hard fighting because the infantry was left unsupported by armored units because of a bridge explosion, according to The Courier-Journal. Perry next found himself in an intense firefight.
“The general told us we’d have an easy time, and we’d be having a hot breakfast the next morning. But that didn’t happen,” Perry said.
German soldiers surrounded Perry’s unit during the engagement.
“I could see the Germans running by us on the right,” Perry said. “In a short time, we were surrounded. They were firing at us from all angles.”
Perry was hit in the shoulder by a German bullet during the fight.
Following the firefight, Perry was taken captive by the Germans and brought to an Axis field hospital in Rouen, France, to be treated for his wounds. He was then shipped via train car to Stalag XII-A, a POW camp in Limburg, Germany — a journey that took 16 days on account of frequent Allied bombing of the rail line. He said some American POWs who tried to escape were shot dead in front of him.
“One fell right at my feet. We thought they were going to shoot us, too. … I was scared,” he said.
While he was a POW, Perry was forced to perform labor such as repairing bombed railways or picking crops. Perry said though his time as a POW was difficult, the Germans “could have treated us a lot worse.”
“As long as you behaved, you were all right,” he explained.
The Allied forces liberated Perry’s POW camp on April 29, 1945.
“That was a feeling that I can’t describe,” Perry said according to The Courier-Journal.
“We didn’t know if we’d get liberated. We were thrilled,” he said.
Perry was discharged and returned home to his family in Kentucky in November 1945.
Seventy-five years after the Battle of Normandy, Perry still has a hole in his shoulder where he was struck by a German bullet.
“There’s a hole there, but it doesn’t hurt too bad,” he said.
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