In July 1944, Walter Okrongley landed on Utah Beach in Normandy, France, where the 19-year-old Army medic would help care for wounded soldiers as Allied forces advanced across a country still under Nazi occupation.
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Eighty-two years later, France came to thank him.
Okrongley, 102, was awarded France’s highest national distinction, the Legion of Honor, during a small ceremony Monday at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force in Pooler.
He sat quietly in his wheelchair as about 40 family members, soldiers, and representatives of the French government gathered in the museum’s chapel. Okrongley spoke little during the ceremony, offering a quiet “thank you” after receiving the medal.
“We will always remember that you came in 1944 because France needed your help,” said Matthieu Gervaiseau, consul general of France. “We are going to remember you for your service, for your courage, for your humanity and for the part you played in restoring our freedom.”
Okrongley served with the Army’s 108th Evacuation Hospital. Trained as a medic, he became a chaplain’s assistant after admitting he could play the piano, which led to his hauling a portable organ across Europe for religious services. The job also brought him face to face with wounded and dying men far from home.
His unit cared for troops during the Siege of Brest and in later campaigns across northern France, the Rhineland and Central Europe. By the end of the war, 13,733 casualties had passed through the 108th Evacuation Hospital.
Okrongley remembered walking through hospital tents, praying with wounded soldiers, and sometimes writing short notes for men who wanted to send a message home to their families.
“You get emotionally involved, you know,” Okrongley said in a 2013 interview with historian Sean O’Dwyer. “But I think you also develop an armor … mental armor.”
Gervaiseau said what stands out to him is just how young Okrongley and so many of the Allied troops were when they came to Europe.
“They were very, very young,” he said. “They could just stay at home, and they decided to fight for the values that we share together, the values of freedom, of democracy, of free speech.”
Established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, the Legion of Honor honors military and civilian service.
Gervaiseau said candidates are nominated through the French diplomatic system, reviewed in Washington and Paris and ultimately approved by the French president.
For him, honoring veterans like Okrongley is also a way to preserve the memory of what happened more than eight decades ago.
“What they did in 1944, 1945 allowed you and me to be who we are, to be able to live in democracy and to feel free,” Gervaiseau said.
Okrongley spoke about his own role with considerably less fanfare.
“We didn’t make it a big deal,” he said in 2013. “A lot of us, you know, we just said we were glad to get home and go back to where we were working, or find another job.”
Originally from Chicago’s South Side, Okrongley returned home after the war and worked in human resources at International Harvester and Ace Hardware. He retired about 25 years ago and moved to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, where he became an active member of St. Francis by the Sea Catholic Church.
In that interview, Okrongley was asked whether he brought any souvenirs home from the war.
His answer was two words.
“My life.”
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