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The ceremony was held on the Fort Hamilton Community Club in Brooklyn.
William “Willie” Kellerman is alive at this time due to a daring escape he made in the course of the battle again in 1944, and his unbelievable will to outlive a critical damage lower than a 12 months later.
“I can’t thank you all enough for the attention I am getting,” Kellerman stated on the ceremony. “It makes up for all of the years I didn’t get it.”
Kellerman was born in 1925, and he grew up within the Bronx in the course of the Great Depression.
Five days after June 6, 1944, also called D-Day, an 18-year-old Kellerman landed on Utah Beach, France, as a member of the 79th Infantry, 315th Regiment, Company D.
He was captured by the Germans on July 4, 1944, and was being marched to a jail camp in the course of the evening when he managed to flee.
Jeanie Kellerman says her father all the time tells her to assume outdoors of the field.
“That’s exactly what he did that day when he escaped the Nazis, Jeanie Kellerman said. “He actually stepped out of line rolled underneath a hedge.”
Willie Kellerman escaped on foot before finding refuge with the French Resistance.
He made it hundreds of miles trying to get to Switzerland. He had to steal a bike for most of it, but then he got a flat.
The bike shop he stopped at turned out to be a hideout for the French resistance fighters group.
The French knew he was an American because he knew who had won the 1943 World Series.
An easy one for a boy from the Bronx: the Yankees.
He traveled over 600 miles to the Freteval Forest, where he remained until it was liberated by the Allies in August 1944.
In April 1945, Kellerman’s unit engaged in combat with the Germans, and he was shot in the hand and leg by a sniper.
He was transported to a field hospital in Czechoslovakia, where the wound in his leg became infected. He remained there until the end of the war.
He served on active duty from September 4, 1943, to January 15, 1946.
So why is he receiving his awards 77 years later? They were apparently never processed due to an administrative oversight.
“It’s like I’ve been residing in the dead of night all my life, after which all the sunshine went on,” he said. “I’m simply overwhelmed by it.”
Veterans or their families with questions about awards, records, or other benefits, should contact the Army Service Center at 1-888-ARMYHRC (1-888-276-9472) or by email at usarmy.knox.hrc.mbx.tagd-ask-hrc@army.mil.
The Army Service Center serves as the primary entry point into the Army Human Resources Command for inquiries from soldiers, veterans, family members, civilians, and government agencies to support their efforts to receive or process entitlements or benefits.
You can also learn more by visiting HRC.Army.mil.
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