Filed under: Battle of the Bulge, Medics, Normandy, Veterans | Tags: 1st Infantry Division, Big Red One, Omaha Beach
“He still gets nightmares, and he thinks back to the men he couldn’t save,” Bernard Friedenberg’s wife, Phyllis, told FoxNews.com.
Sergeant Bernard Friedenburg was a medic in the 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry. When he landed on Omaha Beach, 40 minutes into the landings, it was a nightmare. He came in near the D-1 “draw”, outside Vierville-sur-mer.
As a medic, he was trying to save men, but he is haunted by the terrible calculus of war. Trying to treat one soldier with a sucking chest wound, he had to give the young man morphine and move along to less-wounded men. He could save more of the others, but he is haunted by the memory of that one. He went into a minefield to save five men, only failing when the sixth man rolled over onto a mine. For that, they awarded him a Silver Star.
He ignored heavy fire in “Munsterbusch, Germany, to treat and evacuate wounded comrades. This earned him his second Silver Star.”
While his memoirs seem to be hard to find, both the memoirs and an oral interview can be found at The Veteran’s History Project of the Library of Congress.
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
We're not lost, Sergeant, We're in ... France 