From: imbibe@mindspring.com   
      
   A World War II Veteran Gets His Due—Nearly 80 Years After Surviving D-Day   
   By Ginger Adams Otis, June 27, 2022, WSJ    
      
   A paperwork error made in the 1940s robbed a WWII veteran and D-Day survivor   
   of his U.S. Army medals. Nearly 80 years later, the Army is coming to New York   
   to fix its mistake.   
      
   On Tuesday, 97-year-old William Kellerman—who stormed the beaches of   
   Normandy in 1944, made a bold escape when captured by German troops and   
   survived sniper shots—will receive the Prisoner of War Medal and the Purple   
   Heart long denied him.   
      
   Gen. James C. McConville, Army chief of staff, will travel to Fort Hamilton in   
   Brooklyn NY, for the 11 a.m. ET ceremony, an Army spokesman said.   
      
   “The Army is conducting this ceremony now to correct this unfortunate   
   oversight,” the spokesman said.   
      
   Mr. Kellerman said he believes his superior officer never filed the paperwork   
   for his medals decades ago. His tale of survival was so improbable it seemed   
   his officer didn’t believe it, Kellerman said.   
      
   Now, the U.S. Army acknowledges that it all happened just as he said—even   
   the Hollywood-style plot twists such as a fortuitous stolen bicycle, followed   
   by a serendipitous flat tire, gun-wielding members of the French Resistance   
   and a classic disguise    
   that included a jaunty beret.   
      
   “This has been annoying my brain all these years. I know it sounds like a   
   crazy story, but it is all true,” said Kellerman.   
      
   Born in the Bronx to a Jewish family, Kellerman was 18 years old when he was   
   drafted late in 1943.   
      
   He was 19 years old on June 6, 1944, when he and thousands of other soldiers   
   huddled on war ships in the Atlantic Ocean as the first wave of Allied troops   
   launched themselves into the shores of Normandy.   
      
   Five days later, on June 11, it was his turn to dodge German fire while   
   running up Utah Beach.   
      
   “The more experienced guys, they sent them in first. A lot of them were   
   killed on the first day,” he said. “I was lucky.”   
      
   Roughly three weeks later, on July 4, his luck appeared to change. Heavy   
   gunfire blew out his company’s radio and the captain ordered Kellerman, a   
   private first class, to notify battalion HQ.   
      
   Kellerman, tacking cautiously across French terrain while German bullets flew   
   overhead, made it across several hedge-lined fields before he looked up and   
   saw a tank bearing down on him.   
      
   “I was not going to fight a German tank,” he said.   
      
   He was captured and moved the next day to a building that held about 80   
   prisoners of war, some of them wounded. The SS soldiers, looking to get the   
   prisoners into German territory, forced the men to march at night because   
   Allied airplanes controlled the    
   skies.   
      
   “Our planes shot anything that moved during the day,” Kellerman said.   
      
   One night, a few weeks after his capture, the Germans let the men stop for a   
   break and Kellerman found himself next to a bank of heavy bushes.   
      
   “I thought, ‘Why not?’” Kellerman recalled. “They only counted us in   
   the morning, so I thought I might have a chance.”   
      
   He rolled into the bushes and the German soldiers marched their prisoners   
   away. As soon as they were out of sight, Kellerman took off in the other   
   direction. He ran until he saw a house, where a Frenchman gave him food and,   
   after burning Kellerman’s    
   Army uniform, a fresh set of clothes, including a beret.   
      
   “Then he told me to get out, because if the Germans find you here they’ll   
   kill us all,” Kellerman said. At first Kellerman tried to keep to the woods,   
   but eventually got brave enough to walk some of the country roads. Kellerman,   
   who kept his beret    
   pulled low, gave a breezy “Bonjour” to any German troops that passed by.   
      
   When he saw an untended bicycle one day on a bridge, he grabbed it, but not   
   without a small pang for the man fishing in the river below.   
      
   He walked and biked nearly 600 miles into the Loire Valley, picking up food   
   where he could from French farmers, Army records show. A flat tire in a small   
   town in the Loire Valley forced him to stop at a bike shop—which turned out   
   to be the secret    
   headquarters of the French Resistance.   
      
   “I couldn’t understand why three guys came out with guns pointed at me,”   
   Kellerman said. After convincing them he was an American POW and not a German   
   spy, the men put their guns away, but they wouldn’t let him leave. Kellerman   
   had now become a    
   security risk.“They said, ‘We can’t let you go. If the Germans catch   
   you, they’ll get it out of you,’” he said.   
      
   Kellerman, along with 180 Royal Air Force pilots and Allied soldiers, was   
   hidden deep in Freteval Forest, at a camp codenamed Sherwood.   
      
   Back home, his mother and sister feared the worst. They had received a   
   hand-delivered letter from the U.S. Army telling them he was listed as missing   
   as of July 22, 1944.   
      
   Kellerman’s family—and his battalion captain—learned he was alive when   
   Allied forces took over Freteval Forest at the end of August. Instead of   
   sending him home, which was usual for prisoners of war, his captain put him   
   back into combat, Kellerman    
   said.   
      
   He was part of the force that took Chames, France, according to the U.S. Army,   
   and in April 1945 was hit by sniper fire in the hand and the leg.   
      
   Kellerman was being treated for his wounds in an Army hospital when the war   
   officially ended. He served until 1946, the Army said.   
      
   After leaving the military, Kellerman used the GI Bill to attend art school   
   and then lived in Havana, Cuba, where he made jewelry. He married in 1950 in   
   New York and became a successful businessman. He and his wife, Sandy, had   
   three daughters.   
      
   In 2018, Kellerman traveled with his daughter and granddaughter to Normandy to   
   receive the Legion of Honor from France for his WWII service. The French knew   
   all about Kellerman thanks to his time with the French Resistance in Freteval   
   Forest.   
      
   “That’s when I learned why my father, for his whole life, always wore a   
   beret,” said his daughter Jean Kellerman-Powers. “I always thought it was   
   because he was an artistic guy. But no, it was because it’s part of how he   
   survived thanks to the    
   people who helped him.”   
      
   When the family returned, Ms. Kellerman-Powers made it her goal to get the   
   U.S. Army to review her father’s service record. Many requests were denied,   
   she said, before the Army acknowledged its nearly 80-year-old error.   
      
      
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