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Charles Norman Shay | |
|---|---|
 Shay on Omaha Beach in October 2018 | |
| Born | June 27, 1924 Bristol, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Died | December 3, 2025 (aged 101) Thue et Mue, Calvados, France |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Rank | Master Sergeant |
| Unit | 1st Infantry Division 3rd Infantry Division |
| Battles / wars | |
| Awards | Silver Star, Bronze Star (3) |
| Spouse | Lilli Shay (died 2013) |
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Charles Norman Shay (June 27, 1924 – December 3, 2025) was an American Penobscot tribal elder, writer and decorated veteran of both World War II and the Korean War. Along with a Bronze Star and Silver Star, Shay was also awarded the Legion of Honour, making him the first Native American in Maine with the distinction of French chevalier. He was instrumental in the re-publishing of a book by his own grandfather, Joseph Nicolar: The Life and Traditions of the Red Man, originally published in 1893. He later wrote an autobiography, Project Omaha Beach: The Life and Military Service of a Penobscot Indian Elder, that detailed his time abroad in the military. Shay was also a direct descendant of Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin.[1]
World War II
Shay was drafted into the military in 1943 at the age of 19. He was selected for training as a medical technician and learned basic surgery skills. Shay joined the Medical Detachment of the First Division's (the "Big Red One") 16th Infantry Regiment and was attached as a platoon medic to Fox Company.[2] As a combat medic, Shay treated as many of his wounded comrades as possible – bandaging wounds, applying tourniquets, applying makeshift splints, administering morphine or otherwise trying to make the wounded soldiers as comfortable as possible. Shay pulled several struggling soldiers from the rising tide, saving many immobilized wounded from drowning[3] during the first wave of the landing of Omaha Beach on D-Day.[4] He was also present helping the fallen at the Battles of Aachen, Huertgen Forest, and the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge).[5][6]
Shay was later attached to a reconnaissance squadron moving into the small farming village of Auel near the Sieg River in Germany. The squadron encountered about 20 German soldiers accompanied by a tank with an 88mm weapon, and were forced to surrender. The squadron was then marched 50–60 miles, moving only by night, to the POW camp Stalag VI-G.[7] He was held there until April 1945, when American forces captured the camp.[8]
Post-World War II and Korea
After making it home safely, Shay was unable to find work, like many other veterans after the war. He re-enlisted and was stationed in Vienna, Austria, serving as a medic with a Military Police Battalion. While stationed there he met a woman named Lilli [Rosa] Bollarth, and they married on March 21, 1950.[9] When the Korean War broke out later that year, Shay joined the 3rd Division's 7th Infantry Regiment as a medic and was shipped to Japan. A few months later, his regiment went into battle in Korea and he served again as a combat medic. Shay was promoted to master sergeant and awarded the Bronze Star with two oak leaf clusters.[2]
Retirement and death
Shay and his wife Lilli lived together in Vienna, visiting Shay's original hometown on Indian Island in Maine in the summers. Charles and Lilli officially relocated to Indian Island in 2003, but Lilli fell ill almost immediately. She died shortly after.[10]
Shay also renovated the two-story wooden "Teepee" on Native Island that his aunt Lucy Nicolar Poolaw and her Kiowa Indian husband Chief Bruce Poolaw built as a novelty shop and to sell Lucy's handmade baskets. Shay restored the site as a small family museum.[5]
He was an elder member of the Penobscot tribe of Maine. Also known as the Penawahpskewi, the people of the Penobscot Nation are federally recognized. The tribe is part of the Wabanaki group, located in Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Shay lived until 2018 in the community of the Native Americans reservation where he spent his childhood on Penobscot Island, opposite Old Town, Maine. In his retirement, Shay played a big role in the installment of National Native American Veterans Day.[11]
Shay moved to France in 2018 and "During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–21, coming from his nearby home, he was among the few veterans able to attend commemorations. He stood up for all others who could not make the trip amid restrictions."[12][13]
He turned 100 on June 27, 2024,[14] and died on December 3, 2025, at the age of 101.[15]
Project Omaha Beach
In spring of 2007, Shay along with Harald E. L. Prins and his wife Bunny McBride, both of Kansas State University, planned a trip back to Europe so Shay could visit past battle sites and comment on his experiences. The group was awarded grants to fund the journey from both the Maine Humanities Council and the First Division Museum in Wheaton, Illinois.[16]
Prins, McBride, and Shay visited Normandy, Mons, Aachen, Hurtgen Forest, the Ardennes, and Auel. The trip was documented and filmed for future reference and in order to shed light on the experiences of American Indian soldiers in World War II. In Project Omaha Beach: The Life and Military Service of a Penobscot Native American Elder, Shay narrates the journey in the form of letters to his deceased wife Lilli, and also includes an autobiography and information on organizations with which Shay is now associated. The book was published in 2012 by Polar Bear & Company in Solon, Maine.[17] Soon after returning to his home at Panawahpskek (Natives Island), Maine, Shay was personally inducted into the Legion of Honour as a Chevalier by Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the French Republic at the French Embassy in Washington DC.[18]
A year later, in 2008, Shay was inducted as a Distinguished Member of the 16th Infantry Regiment in a special ceremony at Fort Riley, Kansas, home base of the 1st Infantry Division, the famous "Big Red One." In 2009, he spearheaded the official establishment of June 21 as Native American Veterans Day in Maine, the first state in the US to do so.[19] Eight years later, he was invited to ceremonially inaugurate a large granite turtle sculpture at the "Charles Shay Indian Memorial," a small park in the dunes overlooking Omaha Beach.[20]
Notes
- Khaldi, Tarik (June 10, 2009). "The Béarnese Indian". Sud-Ouest.
- "Veteran Dossiers". DeepRespect.org. Association Deep Respect. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
- Shay (2012), pp. 13–14
- Prins and McBride (2019)
- Houx, Ramona du (2018). "Medic at D-Day: The Humble Heroism of Charles Norman Shay". American Indian. Vol. 19, no. 2. Retrieved December 3, 2025.
- Kim, Samuel (November 20, 2025). "US Army Medical Readiness Command presents the Order of Military Medical Merit to WWII, Korea Veteran Charles Norman Shay in Bayeux, France". U.S. Army. Retrieved December 3, 2025.
- Van Buren, Michael (July 24, 2010). "Shay, Charles Norman". Central Connecticut State University Veterans History Project. YouTube. Retrieved March 15, 2015.
- "Native American D-Day Veteran Charles Norman Shay Dies at 101". The National WWII Museum New Orleans. December 4, 2025. Retrieved December 9, 2025.
- Shay (2012), p. 84
- Prins, Harald E.L.; McBride, Bunny (2012). "Foreword". Project Omaha Beach: The Life and Military Service of a Penobscot Native American Elder. Solon, Maine: Polar Bear & Company. p. viii. ISBN 978-1-882190-08-9.
- Snyder, Haley (July 20, 2017). "Over There, Over Here". Portland Magazine. Portland Monthly. Retrieved July 27, 2017.
- "On D-Day, 19-year-old medic Charles Shay was ready to give his life, and save as many as he could". Associate Press. May 6, 2024. Retrieved May 6, 2024.
In 2018, he moved from Maine to Bretteville-l'Orgueilleuse, a French small town in the Normandy region to stay at a friend's home. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–21, coming from his nearby home, he was among the few veterans able to attend commemorations. He stood up for all others who could not make the trip amid restrictions.
- "96-year-old American is lone veteran to attend D-Day anniversary". June 5, 2021.
- "Charles Norman Shay". Maine Public. June 27, 2024. Retrieved June 30, 2024.
- D-Day veteran Charles Shay, who saved lives on Omaha Beach, dies at 101 in France
- Shay (2012), p. ix
- Shay (2012)
- Prins and McBride (2007)
- Statehouse News Service (2009). Maine Native American Veterans Seek Their Own Day The Lincoln County News, February 28, 2009.https://lcnme.com/currentnews/Maine-Native-American-veterans-seek-their-own-day/
- Prins and McBride (2017)
References
- Prins, Harald E.L.; Bunny McBride (2007). "From Indian Island to Omaha Beach: A Penobscot Combat Veteran's Pilgrimage". Indian Country Today. 27 (22): 1,5. [1]
- Prins, Harald E.L.; Bunny McBride (2017). "The Turtle Honors Extraordinary Sacrifice of Indian Warriors on D-Day". Indian Country Today. 37 (11): 1. [2]
- Prins, Harald E.L.; Bunny McBride (2019). From Indian Island to Omaha Beach: The D-Day Story of Charles Shay, Penobscot War Hero. Bath, Maine: Wisbee Creek Press. ISBN 978-0578497-27-3.
- Shay, Charles Norman (2012). Project Omaha Beach: The Life and Military Service of a Penobscot Indian Elder. Solon, Maine: Polar Bear & Company. ISBN 978-1-882190-08-9.
Further reading
- Carroll, Lorrayne (Fall 2012). "'To remove the fear': A Conversation with Charles Norman Shay about Joseph Nicolar's The Life and Traditions of the Red Man". Studies in American Indian Literatures. 24 (3).
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Charles Norman Shay, who as a 19-year-old medic on D-Day repeatedly saved soldiers from drowning off Omaha Beach, turning them on their backs, dragging them ashore and binding their wounds, died on Wednesday at his home in Thue et Mue, France, near the site of the Normandy invasion. He was 101.
His death was announced by a group that supports the Charles N. Shay Indian Memorial, a monument on Omaha Beach to Native American soldiers who landed there on June 6, 1944.
Mr. Shay, a member of the Penobscot Nation of Maine, was one of about 175 Native Americans among the 34,000 Allied troops who came ashore on that beach, into the teeth of some of the bloodiest fighting of D-Day in the opening act of the liberation of France during World War II.
Mr. Shay was awarded the Silver Star for saving soldiers who had been cut down by heavy German machine-gun fire after disembarking from their landing craft into the waves. In 2007, he received France’s Legion of Honor for his actions that day.
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“I saw there were many wounded men who were floundering in the water, who could not help themselves, and I knew that if nobody went to help them, they were doomed to die,” Mr. Shay recalled in a 2010 interview for the Library of Congress.
He continued: “I proceeded to get as many men as I could out of the water by turning them over on their backs and grabbing them under their shoulders. I don’t know where my strength came from, but they say once the adrenaline starts flowing in your body, you can do unbelievable feats.”
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An Army private with the First Infantry Division, known as the Big Red One, Mr. Shay was drafted in 1943 and assigned to the medic corps. He continued in that role as American forces suffered heavy casualties while battling to drive German occupiers out of France.
Mr. Shay participated in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge. In March 1945, he and his squadron were captured by the Germans near Auel, Germany. For several weeks, he was held as a prisoner of war at Stalag VI-G, until Americans liberated the camp in April 1945, en route to forcing Germany’s surrender in May.
As a Native American, Mr. Shay found few opportunities for work on returning to the United States. In the fall of 1945, wearing his Army uniform with his decorations, including the Silver Star, he was turned away when he tried to vote in an election in Maine. (The state did not grant Native Americans the right to vote in federal elections until 1954, and in state and local elections until 1967.)
“I tried to cope with the situation of not having enough work or not being able to help support my mother and father,” he said last year. “Well, there was just no chance for young American Indian boys to gain proper labor and earn a good job.”
He re-enlisted in the Army and was stationed in Vienna as a medic with a military police unit. During the Korean War, he saw combat and earned the Bronze Star. He retired with the rank of master sergeant in 1952.
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Charles Norman Shay was born on June 27, 1924, in Bristol, Conn., one of nine children of Leo Shay and Florence (Nicolar) Shay, a noted Penobscot basket maker. The couple had moved to Connecticut in 1923 from the Penobscot reservation on Indian Island in Maine, in search of better jobs.
The family traced its ancestry to a 17th-century French officer, Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin (for whom the town of Castine, Maine, is named), and one of his wives, a daughter of the Penobscot chief Madockawando.
Charles earned a certificate as a machinist in 1942 before being drafted.
In 1950, while stationed in Vienna, he married Lilli Bellarth, a native of that city, and the couple lived there for many years. In 2003, they moved to the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation, near Old Town, Maine, north of Bangor, where Mr. Shay, by then a tribal elder, promoted the culture and history of the Penobscot.
He was instrumental in the reprinting of “The Life and Traditions of the Red Man,” a book written by his grandfather Joseph Nicolar in 1893. He also lobbied successfully for a Maine law making June 21 Native American Veterans Day.
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Mr. Shay’s wife died in 2003. He is survived by a son, Jonny Shay, and a grandson.
Mr. Shay returned to Omaha Beach for the first time in 2007. “When I looked across the beaches all those years later,” he told Portland Monthly magazine in 2017, “I could still hear the screams and cries of the wounded and dying begging for help. I did what I could to relieve their pain and misery.”
From 2018 until his death, Mr. Shay lived in northwestern France, in the home of a caretaker, Marie-Pascale Legrand, not far from the beaches where the World War II invasion took place. Ms. Legrand, who met Mr. Shay at a commemoration ceremony in Normandy in 2016, said in an interview that he had been lonely living in Maine and was not getting adequate health care. After visiting him there, she invited him to move to Normandy.
For several years, Mr. Shay performed a sage-burning ceremony overlooking Omaha Beach in honor of the dead. He was one of a very few American veterans able to attend D-Day commemorations in Normandy in 2020 and 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
A total of 4,414 Allied troops were killed during landings on five beaches in Normandy on D-Day, including 2,501 Americans. Allied commanders considered pulling back forces from Omaha Beach at one point because the German resistance was so fierce. By the end of that first day, Mr. Shay fell into an exhausted sleep above the sand.
“When I woke up in the morning, it was like I was sleeping in a graveyard, because there were dead Americans and Germans surrounding me,” he recalled. “I stayed there for not very long, and I continued on my way.”
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