Reply #101: My good friend Annie's father [View All]

Was Capt. (later Lt. Col) John GW Finke, company commander of F Co, 16th Inf Regt, 1st Inf Div at D-Day. He and Capt. Edward Wozenski, commanding E Company, were the first two American officers on Omaha Beach.
He was hit by shrapnel from a mortar round around 11:30 am (every officer in F Co went down before the day was out), but survived and stayed in the Army until 1962.
John
He'd previously been shot clean through the shoulder in North Africa in 1942 and clipped in the head by a German machine gun bullet in Sicily in '43. The helmet and liner are still in the First Infantry Division's museum today.
He also earned a Distiguished Service Cross during the Rohr River campaign in Nov. 1944, too. Not famous, maybe, but heroic.