Charles ShayA decorated Native American veteran who was a 19-year U.S. Army medic died Wednesday when he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day and helped save lives. He was 101 years old.
Shay died at her home in Bretteville-L’Orgueilleuse in the Normandy region of France, her longtime friend and caregiver Marie-Pascale Legrand said.
Shay, a native of the Penobscot tribe and Indian Island in the US state of Maine, was awarded the Silver Star for repeatedly diving into the sea and bringing critically wounded soldiers to safety from drowning. He also received France’s highest award, the Legion of Honor, in 2007.
Shay had lived in France since 2018, not far from the shores of Normandy, where nearly 160,000 troops from Britain, the US, Canada and other nations landed on D-Day on June 6, 1944. The Battle of Normandy hastened Germany’s defeat less than a year later.
“He died peacefully surrounded by his loved ones,” Legrand told The Associated Press.
Shay told CBS News in 2019 That he went to France to be close to his fallen brothers.
“I’m going to die here,” Shay told CBS News at the time. “I think I can speak to the souls of the men who are still here on the beach. And I’ve tried to make sure they’re not forgotten.”
The Charles Shay Memorial group, which honors the memory of the 500 Native Americans who landed on the beaches of Normandy, said. Statement posted on Facebook “our hearts are deeply saddened as we share that our beloved Charles Norman Shay … has returned home to the Creator and Spirit World.”
“He was an incredibly loving father, grandfather, father-in-law and uncle, a hero to many and an all-around amazing human being,” the statement read. “Charles leaves a legacy of love, service, courage, spirit, duty and family that continues to shine.”
Ready to give life
On D-Day, 4,414 Allied troops lost their lives—2,501 of them Americans. More than 5,000 were injured. On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.
“The mortars and the artillery are coming our way” Shay told CBS News in 2019. “When the ramp came down, the men who were standing in front of it, some of them were killed immediately.”
Jeffrey Schaeffer/AP 
Others were so hurt they couldn’t drag themselves out of the surf.
“Many of the men who were injured were lying down and unable to hold themselves up in the tide,” Shay told CBS News.
Shay survived.
“I think I was willing to give my life if I had to. Fortunately, I didn’t have to,” Shay told The Associated Press in a 2024 interview.
“They gave me a job, and as I saw it, it was up to me to complete my job,” he recalled. “I didn’t have time to be there and worry about my situation possibly losing my life. There was no time for that.”
That night, tired, 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, surrounded by dead Americans and Germans,” he recalled. “I wasn’t there for very long and I continued on my way.”
Shay then went on a mission in Normandy for several weeks, rescuing the wounded, before heading with US troops to eastern France and Germany, where he was taken prisoner in March 1945 and released a few weeks later.
Spreading the message of peace
After World War II, Shay rejoined 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: he returned to combat as a medic in the Korean War, participated in US nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, and later worked at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria.
For more than 60 years, he didn’t talk about his World War II experience.
LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images 
But he started attending D-Day celebrations in 2007 and in recent years, he has taken several opportunities to give his powerful testimony and spread the message of peace.
During the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic, Shay’s lone presence marked memorial ceremonies as travel restrictions prevented other veterans or families of fallen soldiers from the US, Britain and other allied countries from traveling to France.
Sadness to see war in Europe
Over the years, Shay used to hold a sage-burning ceremony in honor of the dead on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach, where the monument that now bears his name stands.
On June 6, 2022, he dedicated the memorial to another Native American, Julia Kelly, a Gulf War veteran of the Crow tribe. This was just over three months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in what would be Russia’s worst war on the continent since 1945.
Shay then expressed his sadness at seeing war again 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 come,” he said. “In 1944, I landed on these beaches and we thought we would bring peace to the world. But it’s not possible.”
So N. Ghanbari/AP 