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D-Day veteran Charles Shay, who saved lives on Omaha Beach, dies at 101 in France

By December 3, 2025 | updated 38 minutes ago

FILE - In this Wednesday, May 1, 2019 file photo, World War II and D-Day veteran Charles Norman Shay, from Maine, poses at the Charles Shay monument on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. Instead of parades, remembrances, embraces and one last great hurrah for veteran soldiers who are mostly in their nineties to celebrate VE Day, it is instead a lockdown due to the coronavirus, COVID-19. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)

PARIS — Charles Shay, a decorated Native American veteran who was a 19-year-old U.S. Army medic when he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day and helped save lives, died on Wednesday. He was 101.

Shay died at his home in Bretteville-L’Orgueilleuse in France’s Normandy region, his longtime friend and carer Marie-Pascale Legrand said.

Shay, of the Penobscot tribe and from Indian Island in the U.S. state of Maine, was awarded the Silver Star for repeatedly plunging into the sea and carrying critically wounded soldiers to relative safety, saving them from drowning. He also received France’s highest award, the Legion of Honor, in 2007.

Shay had been living in France since 2018, not far from the shores of Normandy where nearly 160,000 troops from Britain, the U.S., Canada and other nations landed on D-Day on June 6, 1944. The Battle of Normandy hastened Germany’s defeat, which came less than a year later.

“He passed away peacefully surrounded by his loved ones,” Legrand told The Associated Press.

The Charles Shay Memorial group, which honors the memory of about 500 Native Americans who landed on the Normandy beaches, said in a statement posted on Facebook that “our hearts are deeply saddened as we share that our beloved Charles Norman Shay … has returned home to the Creator and the Spirit World.”

“He was an incredibly loving father, grandfather, father-in-law, and uncle, a hero to many, and an overall amazing human being,” the statement said. “Charles leaves a legacy of love, service, courage, spirit, duty and family that continues to shine brightly.”

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