Skip to main content

Memorial Day, 2017

The officer you see pictured below is 1st Lt. Edmund Duckworth. He is one of thousands we honor on Memorial Day.


Allow me to tell you a little about him.

First Lt. Duckworth was serving as Executive Officer for E Company, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division when he was killed, June 6, 1944 on Omaha Beach. He was survived by a wife, Audrey (Travers) Duckworth, and a son, Patrick, who was born in November 1944. Known as Bill and Duck to his comrades, 1st Lt. Duckworth was a veteran leader, earning the Silver Star with Oak Leaf Clusters.

First Lt. Duckworth was a native of Lancaster County.

What I know of him I know mostly as the result of the hard work done by a student at my school. A junior at my school applied to the Normandy: Sacrifice for Freedom Albert H. Small Student & Teacher Institute. She was one of fifteen students selected from across the nation. Those fifteen students are studying the life of a soldier or sailor who is buried in the American cemetery in Normandy. Later this month, the students will offer eulogies by their graves. The eulogies are built upon extensive research of the soldier or sailor they chose to study.

And I'm one of the fifteen teachers who get to accompany them in France. The bigger honor, though, has been the chance to guide the student in researching our soldier's life and record. It's been a fascinating journey.

I ship out for Washington on June 17. Between now and then I'll have more of a chance to tell you about our research and our soldier. On June 22 we fly to France, where I'm excited to have the chance to tour sites I might never again get to see. I invite you to follow this blog where you can learn more about 1st Lt. Duckworth and the places where he and thousands of other servicemen and women fought for us more than seventy years ago.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Those whom we honored (the final eulogies)

The chapel interior at Luxembourg American Cemetery. Most of us on the trip completed research for soldiers buried at Luxembourg American Cemetery. It's situated right outside of Luxembourg City and it receives a good number of visitors every year. The fact that General George Patton is buried there has something to do with their high visitorship. In fact, the initial attempt to bury him along with the soldiers failed when the foot traffic to his grave wore out the grass. Patton's grave now sits by itself near the top of the hill at the cemetery, near the chapel and tablets of the missing. Suzy's soldier. Six of us delivered eulogies that day: five teachers and Kaat. When I had the chance to listen to students' eulogies back in 2017, I was struck by how something of each student's character worked itself into the story they told. I still get a bit of a sense of that with eulogies delivered by teachers. However, the element that works itself more powerfull

Some Thoughts on Liberation

One of the markers placed by the French and Belgian governments to mark the path of the liberators.  My greatest takeaway from this most recent trip involves some refined feelings about liberation. I'm writing this post in a time of high cynicism. And the were matters of which one could be cynical back in 1944, the year in which Charlie fought and died. This trip, however, left me with renewed appreciation for what our country did back in that war, helping me refocus on what I've had the chance to see and do the past few years. Christopher is the military historian who accompanied us on this voyage. In one of our webinars this spring, he made an offhand reference to a piece of scholarship about the Holocaust he said was worth reading. It's entitled Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. It's heavy. I can't say I read every chapter. But I read most of it on our bus rides this summer. And I'm glad I did. My unassigned reading. Saying that Bloo

Eulogizing Charlie

By Charlie's graveside in Luxembourg.  You may find the eulogy I wrote for Charlie interesting. I have it copied here. The marker by which we stand today identifies Staff Sergeant Charles F. Simcox, Jr., as a hero who gave his life in service to our nation. Before entering the service, his family knew him as Charlie. To this day they keep the memory of Charlie, or Uncle Charlie, alive. Many of the members of this closely-knit group still live near West Chester, Pennsylvania, where Simcox grew up. They have not grown apart in the decades of peace and prosperity that Simcox’s service and sacrifice made possible.    Something that I wanted to convey, but that seemed very difficult to convey, was the joyous and warm sense of his family. When I reached out to them this winter, they were more than happy to meet with me. I felt like something of a guest of honor. And so many of them came out to meet me that I lost track of who was who. A warmly receptive family isn't a