A Doctor’s Letter Home

MEDICAL OFFICER Lieutenant J. Russell Davey, Jr. (right), with the 6th Naval Beach Battalion’s C-8 Platoon, led the initial USN medical attachment ashore at the Easy Red sector of Omaha Beach at 0735 on D-Day. Under the command of Navy Beachmaster Joseph Vaghi, Dr. Davey’s medical team provided aid and evacuation for the initial assault troops of the 1st Infantry Division. By the end of the day, most of his C-8 corpsmen had become casualties. Although injured himself, Dr. Davey continued to minister to the wounded on the beach. In a letter to his wife, written from a hospital bed in England in July, he described the wounds of some of the men:

“John Gallagher had had a 3-cm piece of shrapnel enter his face just below the eye, which passed thru the upper part of the maxillary sinus, entered the orbit to sever the optic nerve, and lodged in the petrous part of the temporal bone.… Yesterday, I saw one of John K’s [Dr. Kincaid’s] corpsmen, whom he was quite anxious about. He got a 1/2-cm piece of steel in the eye, which was later removed with a magnet. He also is blind in that eye.… Perhaps one would expect that these cripples would be bitter and resentful. They are not; nor are most of the others that I have talked to. They’re just happy to be alive.”

BOTTOM LEFT PHOTO CAPTION: One of the surgical kits that Dr. Davey used at Omaha Beach.

D-Day: The Greatest Invasion – A People’s History by Dan van der Vat
Copyright 2003 A BLOOMSBURY / MADISON PRESS BOOK
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