D-Day survivor, Medal of Honor recipient
Walter Ehlers, the last surviving recipient of the Medal of Honor to participate in the D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II, died Thursday at a veterans hospital in Long Beach, Calif. He was 92.
The Congressional Medal of Honor Society announced his death. The cause was kidney failure.
The Kansas-born Ehlers joined the Army in 1940 along with his older brother, Roland. They spent much of the war together in the same units before the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France.
Shortly before the invasion, Roland was transferred to a different company. The brothers were several hundred yards apart, aboard separate landing craft, as the second wave of Allied forces swarmed ashore during the assault on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.
Walter Ehlers, then a staff sergeant, led his reconnaissance team onto the sands through water that was sometimes above their heads. Roland was killed when an artillery shell struck his craft.
In a two-day period, Walter Ehlers killed at least seven and as many as 18 German soldiers, and carried a wounded man to safety, despite having been shot in the back.
Walter Ehlers was one of 12 participants in the Normandy invasion to receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest honor for military valor. Nine of them received it posthumously.
Walter Ehlers later returned to combat in the Battle of the Bulge and was wounded three more times. His other decorations included the Silver Star and two Bronze Star medals.
Arkansas, Pages 8 on 02/24/2014