Charles Shay was a 19-year-old soldier on D-Day. That’s the day troops from Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and other nations landed on Omaha Beach in France. The actions of those soldiers led to the liberation of France and Europe from Nazi occupation. Now 99, Shay spreads a message of peace as he prepares for the 80th anniversary of the landings in Normandy.
A Penobscot tribe citizen from Indian Island in Maine, Shay has lived in France since 2018. His home is not far from the shores of Normandy where world leaders will gather next month. Solemn ceremonies will honor the nearly 160,000 troops who landed on June 6, 1944.
Nothing could have prepared Shay for that morning on Omaha Beach: injured and dying soldiers all around him, the blast of machine-gun fire, and shells rocketing through the air.
“I had been given a job, and the way I looked at it, it was up to me to complete my job,” he recalls. “I did not have time to worry about my situation of being there and perhaps losing my life. There was no time for this.”
Shay received the Silver Star for repeatedly plunging into the sea and carrying out critically wounded soldiers, saving them from drowning. He also received France’s highest award, the Legion of Honor, in 2007.
Still, Shay could not save his good friend, Private Edward Morozewicz. He remembers seeing his 22-year-old comrade seriously injured.
“He had a wound that I could not help him with because I did not have the proper instruments,” Shays says. “He died in my arms.”
He adds, “I lost many close friends.”
Shay survived, pursuing his mission in Normandy for several weeks. He rescued the wounded before heading with American troops to eastern France and Germany. German soldiers took him prisoner in March 1945. A few weeks later, American forces liberated the camp where he was held.
After World War II ended, Shay reenlisted in the military. He did so because many Native Americans in his home state of Maine suffered due to poverty and discrimination. For example, Maine did not allow individuals living on Native American reservations to vote until 1954.
“I tried to cope with the situation of not having enough work or not being able to help support my mother and father,” he says. “There was just no chance for young American Indian boys to gain proper labor and earn a good job.”
Shay returned to combat as a medic during the Korean War. He participated in U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands and later worked at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Austria.
For over 60 years, he did not talk about his WWII experience. But he began attending D-Day commemorations in 2007. In recent years, he has seized many occasions to tell his story.
In 2018, he moved from Maine to a small French town in the Normandy region to stay at a friend’s home.
Today, the Charles Shay Memorial on Omaha Beach pays tribute to the 175 Native Americans who landed there on D-Day.
Shay often expresses sadness at seeing wars still raging in the world. He hoped D-Day would bring global peace. “But it has not, because you see that we go from one war to the next. There will always be wars. People and nations cannot get along with each other.”
That is a tragic reality of our broken world. Yet Jesus offers us hope and restoration. (John 16:33) And one day, all war will be over forever.
He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.— Isaiah 2:4
