The 16th Infantry Regiment was full of Ray Lamberts. They were known as the Sidewalk Soldiers from their prewar station at Governor’s Island in New York Harbor. Street kids from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, and New Jersey filled their ranks and by D-Day, they had already made two amphibious landings and fought across Tunisia and Sicily. They didn’t get to go home after 25 missions, they only went home dead, wounded, or by still standing on V-E Day in Czechoslovakia. Company E, one of the initial assault force on Omaha Beach, left half of their soldiers dead and wounded in the sand before they got off the beach. Today, their successors continue the traditions of their history by serving in Poland. A word of thanks is all they need.
It’s always been interesting to me how different the 1st and 29th Divisions were. Yet they there they were together on Omaha on D-Day.