Does this sound right to you guys?
Yesterday the Senate passed S. 2339, which would:
designate the VA Outpatient Clinic in Alpena, Michigan as the “Lieutenant Colonel Clement C. Van Wagoner Department of Veterans Affairs Clinic.” Lt. Col. Van Wagoner was in combat for 600 days while serving in the Army during World War II.
But the next part threw me for a loop:
He was severely wounded on five different occasions, and was only one of 32 survivors of the 1,800 soldiers who landed with the 1st Infantry Division at Omaha Beach on D-Day.
Can that number possibly be accurate? I doubt it, but am amenable to accepting it if someone can show it. I find it more likely that the 32 were the only non-casulaties, but being a “casualty” doesn’t mean you are killed, you could be wounded. But saying he was one of only 32 survivors seems unrealistic.
Maybe I am wrong, any amateur historians out there?
Category: Politics
It’s hard to say. 1st Infantry and 29th Infantry Divisions landed at Omaha Beach, the bloodiest of the Normandy Beachheads by far. He was probably first wave, and the figures, if accurate (there are no specifically accurate numbers, by the way) are probably first-hour figures. Certainly the 1st Inf. Division had more than 1,800 men in it, so that figure is suspicious. Also, the Big Red One details indicate slightly under 4,000 KIAs during all of World War II. Thus, I think that the number must be “casualties,” because if half of the Division’s KIAs had occurred on one day, I think it would be more significantly highlighted in the Division’s history.
Yeah bob, that was my take as well. As a casualty rate that would make much more sense.
They may be talking about the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 16th RCT, which landed as the first wave for the 1st Infantry Division (The 3rd Battalion of the 16th RCT landed later). 1800 is not an unreasonable number for those 2 Battalions. 32 surviving DDay is unreasonable, unless they’re talking about surviving the war (still seems like too small a number of survivors to me, though).
Perhaps they meant to say “is only one of 32 survivors”. As in “there are only 32 men alive today from the original 1,800”.
Jim, I think they might mean surviving the war. My granddad was one of the Navy men that piloted the boats. He lost the entire lot of troops in his thanks to three German machine gun nests. He almost lost himself that day. But, the little he said, was that he wasn’t the only pilot whose boat was disabled and/or shot to hell. After that, they still went through hell to get to the end of the war. So, I am pretty sure it was surviving the war rather than D-Day.