Waverly B. Woodson Jr., who was part of the only African American combat unit involved in the D-Day invasion during World War II, spent more than a day treating wounded troops under heavy German fire – all while injured himself. Decades later, and nearly 20 years after his death, his family finally received the recognition that was denied many Black service members. 

Woodson’s 95-year-old widow, Joann, was presented Tuesday with the Distinguished Service Cross he was awarded posthumously for his extraordinary heroism. Generations of Woodson’s family packed the audience, many of them wearing T-shirts with his photo and the words “1944 D-Day US Army Medic” on the front.

“It’s been a long, long road … to get to this day,” Woodson’s son, Steve, told the crowd. “My father, if he could have been here today, would have been humbled.”

The award, the second-highest honor that can be bestowed on a member of the Army, marked an important milestone in a yearslong campaign by his widow, supporters in the military and Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen for greater recognition of Woodson’s efforts that day.

Ultimately, they would like to see him honored with the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration that can be awarded by the U.S. government and one long denied to Black troops who served in World War II.

Van Hollen, who first heard Woodson’s story when Joann Woodson reached out to his office nearly a decade ago, told the crowd that Woodson’s “valor stood out.” He said there was only one thing that stood between Woodson and the country’s highest military honor and that was “the color of his skin.”

“Righting this wrong matters. It matters for Waverly Woodson and his family, and it matters for our entire country because we are a stronger, more united country when we remember all of our history and when we honor all of our heroes,” Van Hollen told the audience, which included troops from Woodson’s unit, the First Army.

Woodson, who died in 2005, received the award just days before the 80th anniversary of Allied troops’ landing in Normandy, France. First Army troops took the Distinguished Service Cross with them to France in June and in an intimate ceremony laid the medal in the sands of Omaha Beach, where a 21-year-old Woodson had come ashore decades earlier.

At a time when the U.S. military was still segregated by race, about 2,000 African American troops are believed to have taken part in the invasion that proved to be a turning point in pushing back the Nazis and eventually ending World War II.

“They were murder”

On June 6, 1944, Woodson’s unit, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, was responsible for setting up balloons to deter enemy planes. Two shells hit his landing craft, and he was wounded before even getting to the beach.

After the vessel lost power, it was pushed toward the shore by the tide, and Woodson likely had to wade ashore under intense enemy fire.

He spoke to the AP in 1994 about that day.

“The tide brought us in, and that’s when the 88s hit us,” he said of the German 88mm guns. “They were murder. Of our 26 Navy personnel, there was only one left. They raked the whole top of the ship and killed all the crew. Then they started with the mortar shells.”

For the next 30 hours, Woodson treated 200 wounded men – all while small arms and artillery fire pummeled the beach. Eventually, he collapsed from his injuries and blood loss, according to accounts of his service. At the time, he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Like many World War II veterans, Woodson didn’t talk much about his experiences during the war or what it was like to be in the middle of some of the most intense combat U.S. troops saw, his son said.

Speaking after the ceremony to The Associated Press, Steve Woodson said it wasn’t until 50 years after the invasion and his father had returned from an anniversary ceremony in France that he started to share memories of that day.

Woodson told his son one particular story that remained with him of a soldier who had been blown in half but was still alive and calling for God. There was little Woodson could do except console him until the soldier died.

“That troubled him through all of his life,” Steve Woodson said.

In an era of intense racial discrimination, not a single one of the 1.2 million Black Americans who served in the military during World War II was awarded the Medal of Honor. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that the Army commissioned a study to analyze whether Black troops had been unjustly overlooked.

Ultimately, seven Black World War II troops were awarded the Medal of Honor in 1997.

At the time, Woodson was considered for the award and he was interviewed. But, officials wrote, his decoration case file couldn’t be found, and his personnel records were destroyed in a 1973 fire at a military records facility.

Woodson’s supporters believe not just that he is worthy of the Medal of Honor but that there was a recommendation at the time to award it to him that has been lost.

U.S. First Army historian Capt. Kevin Braafladt has made it his mission to research Woodson’s D-Day role and he’d combed through an estimated 415 feet of army records in the search for the truth. Even after the ceremony Tuesday, that search would continue for Braafladt, who was planning to go Wednesday to see another collection at the Library of Congress. He said he became interested in Woodson’s story when he realized how he was overlooked because of the bureaucracy and racism at the time.

“It really touched me,” Braafladt said. “There was an opportunity here to fix something that was wrong in the past.”