Charles Shay, D-Day veteran who saved lives on Omaha Beach as a 19-year-old US Army medic, dies at 101

Carlos Shaya decorated Native American veteran who was a 19-year-old U.S. Army medic when he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day and helped save lives, died Wednesday. He was 101 years old.

Shay died at her home in Bretteville-L’Orgueilleuse, in the Normandy region of France, said her longtime friend and caregiver Marie-Pascale Legrand.

Shay, of the Penobscot Tribe and Indian Island in the US state of Maine, received the Silver Star for repeatedly diving into the sea and carrying seriously injured soldiers to relative safety, saving them from drowning. He also received France’s highest award, the Legion of Honor, in 2007.

Shay had been living in France since 2018, not far from the shores of Normandy, where nearly 160,000 troops from Britain, the United States, Canada and other nations landed on D-Day on June 6, 1944. The Battle of Normandy hastened Germany’s defeat, which came less than a year later.

“He passed away peacefully surrounded by his loved ones,” Legrand told The News.

Shay told News themezone in 2019. who moved to France to be near his fallen brothers.

“I’m going to die here,” Shay told News themezone at the time. “I believe I can speak to the souls of the men who still wander the beach here. And I just tried to assure them that they will not be forgotten.”

The Charles Shay Memorial group, which honors the memory of some 500 Native Americans who landed on the beaches of Normandy, said in a statement posted on Facebook that “our hearts are deeply saddened to share that our beloved Charles Norman Shay… has returned home to the Creator and the Spirit World.”

“He was an incredibly loving father, grandfather, father-in-law and uncle, a hero to many and overall an incredible human being,” the statement said. “Charles leaves a legacy of love, service, courage, spirit, duty and family that continues to shine.”

Ready to give your life

On D-Day, 4,414 Allied soldiers lost their lives, 2,501 of them Americans. More than 5,000 were injured. On the German side, several thousand people were killed or wounded.

“Mortars and artillery are coming at us,” Shay told News themezone in 2019. “When the ramp fell, the men who were in front, some of them, died immediately.”

Others were so seriously injured that they were unable to get out of the surf.

“Many men who had been injured were lying there and couldn’t help themselves in the tide,” Shay told News themezone.

Shay survived.

“I guess I was prepared to give my life if necessary. Fortunately, I didn’t have to,” Shay said in a 2024 interview with The News.

“I had been given a job and, from my point of view, it was up to me to complete it,” he recalled. “I didn’t have time to worry about my situation of being there and maybe losing my life. There was no time for this.”

That night, exhausted, he finally fell asleep in a forest above the beach.

“When I woke up in the morning, it was like I was sleeping in a cemetery because there were dead Americans and Germans around me,” he recalled. “I stayed there not long and went on my way.”

Shay then continued his mission in Normandy for several weeks, rescuing the wounded, before heading with American troops to eastern France and Germany, where he was taken prisoner in March 1945 and released a few weeks later.

Spreading a message of peace

After World War II, Shay re-enlisted in the military because the situation for Native Americans in his home state of Maine was too precarious due to poverty and discrimination.

Maine would not allow people living on Native American reservations to vote until 1954.

Shay continued to witness history, returning to combat as a medic during the Korean War, participating in U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, and later working at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria.

For more than 60 years he did not speak about his experience in World War II.

But he began attending D-Day commemorations in 2007 and in recent years has taken advantage of many occasions to bear his powerful testimony and spread a message of peace.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021, Shay’s solitary presence marked remembrance ceremonies, as travel restrictions prevented other veterans or families of fallen soldiers from the United States, Great Britain and other allied countries from traveling to France.

Sadness to see the return of war in Europe

For years, Shay used to perform a sage burning ceremony, honoring those who died, on a cliff overlooking Omaha Beach, where the monument that bears his name now stands.

On June 6, 2022, he handed over the task of commemoration to another Native American, Julia Kelly, a Gulf War veteran from the Crow tribe. That was just over three months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in what would become the worst war on the continent since 1945.

Shay then expressed his sadness at seeing the war on the continent.

“Ukraine is a very sad situation. I feel sorry for the people there and I don’t know why this war had to break out,” he said. “In 1944 I landed on these beaches and we thought we would bring peace to the world. But it is not possible.”