Honors for Waverly Woodson at Arlington National Cemetery

Joann Woodson receives the Bronze Star and Combat Medic Badge at Arlington National Cemetery on Oct. 11, 2023. Photo: Department of Defense

In an extraordinary ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Oct. 11, the First Army honored the late Sgt. Waverly Woodson for heroics on Omaha Beach that have long gone unrecognized.

Two retired First Army generals presented Joann Woodson with the Medic Combat Badge and a Bronze Star, tributes her late husband earned for his service on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Despite his own serious injuries, Woodson treated hundreds of wounded, saving countless lives, until he collapsed 30 hours after landing. Click here to read more about the event.

Joann Woodson and her family are hoping this another step toward the Medal of Honor, our nation’s top award for valor. Woodson was nominated for the award in 1944 but he did not receive it. No African American soldiers did during World War II. “I hope I live long enough to see this Medal of Honor,” Joann Woodson said. “It’s been a long time.”

Click here to read more about the battle to award Woodson the Medal of Honor.

Click here to read more about Waverly Woodson’s battalion, D-Day’s only Black combat unit.

Waverly Woodson Medal of Honor bill

Exciting news! Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has taken the fight to win a Medal of Honor for Waverly Woodson to the next level. Van Hollen has teamed up with a coalition of bipartisan legislators to introduce a bill in the Senate and House calling on the President to award Woodson our nation’s highest honor.

Van Hollen announced the news Sept. 8 at a Zoom press conference attended by Joann Woodson, Woodson’s wife, and his legislative partners. This is looking good!

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Check out these links to the story:

The Washington Post

ABC News

NPR

Today is the 73rd anniversary of D-Day

Today is the 73rd anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, the beginning of the end of World War II. Few of the men of I interviewed for my book "Forgotten" are still with us, but Henry Parham of Pittsburgh, 96, of Pittsburgh, is one of them. On May 7, 2013, the French Embassy in Washington, DC, awarded him the Legion of Honor for his service on that very long day. His war story begins in Dec. 1942, when the draft letter came in the mail. “They got me,” he said. Parham's reluctance to serve wasn’t rooted in the extreme difficulties of serving in a racist Jim Crow army where he knew he would be treated as less than a man. He didn't lack patriotism. His reasons were more practical. He had left a sleepy corner of rural Virginia where mostly everyone he knew worked as a sharecropper. He wanted something better, and was happy to land a steady job as a porter at a bus station in Richmond, Va., where he was earning a sum that provided, for the first time in his 21 years, a dose of security. Yet he boarded a train bound for a new Army training camp in Tennessee, and trained to fly giant balloons. That secret mission would take him across the sea to a 5-mile-long patch of sand called Omaha Beach. There, Parham would be tested as never before. You can read more about him and the men of D-Day's only African-American combat unit in my book and here. 

72 years after D-Day, African-Americans are still fighting for the Medal of Honor

Among the thousands of soldiers who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, there were two young men whose stories were remarkably similar. They both raced along the shooting gallery at the water's edge pulling the wounded to safety. One was injured during the landing. The other was not. One received the Medal of Honor. The other did not. Read about their stories HERE in The Daily Beast.

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Waverly Woodson was nominated for the Medal of Honor. He never received it. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Photo: Linda Hervieux

NPR's Here & Now features FORGOTTEN

The men of the HQ battery of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion pose in France, July 1944.

Thanks to NPR's Here & Now, recorded at WBUR in Boston, for inviting Linda Hervieux on the show to talk about FORGOTTEN: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, At Home and At War. They also published an excerpt from the book. Read it here.

Al Sharpton interviews Linda on MSNBC's PoliticsNation

Al Sharpton interviewed Linda Hervieux at MSNBC's studios in Rockefeller Center. 

Should D'Day's hero medic, Waverly Woodson, receive the Medal of Honor? That was question Al Sharpton explored on his MSNBC show PoliticsNation. Woodson, dubbed the invasion's No. 1 hero by the black press, was nominated for the nation's highest honor, though he never received it. His widow, Joann Woodson, eloquently made the case to Sharpton about her husband's heroism. Linda's Hervieux's book FORGOTTEN: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, At Home and At War, makes the case for Woodson to posthumously receive this important award.  See the interview here. 

FORGOTTEN makes page 1

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Lowell Sun photographer Julie Malakie takes a selfie with Linda Hervieux on a frigid, windy day at the Centralville War Memorial in Lowell. Julia's photo and video with Linda appeared on page 1 of the Lowell Sun, along with Christopher Scott's page 1 story about the men of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, the only black combat unit to land on D-Day. Read the story here. FORGOTTEN also make page 1 of the Nashua Telegraph. Read the story here. 

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FORGOTTEN makes page 1 of the Lowell Sun on Dec. 4, 2015.

Historian Antony Beevor wants to read FORGOTTEN

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Historian Antony Beevor came to Miami to talk about his new book, "Ardennes 1944," and Linda took the opportunity to ask him about her book, "Forgotten." Beevor said he's love to read it. A book is on the way!