From Indian Island to Omaha Beach: The Story of Charles Shay, Penobscot Indian War Hero Harald E. L. Prins and Bunny McBride Publication date: September 1, 2012 Paperback, $15, ISBN 978-0-88448-318-2 6.5 x 9, 176 pages, photographs Biography / Native American / WWII

On the dark night of D-Day 1944, well over five hundred North American Indian soldiers crossed the stormy sea from England to the French Normandy coast. They represented many different tribes in Canada and the United States. Two of the men, Charles Shay and Melvin Neptune, came from the Penobscot reservation in Maine. Both served in the legendary First Division known as the Big Red One—Shay as a recently drafted combat medic, only nineteen years old; Neptune as a battle-hardened scout who had already fought in North Africa and Sicily. Before the crossing, the two Penobscots had an unexpected reunion. They talked about home—and then had an emotional farewell.

Assigned to an assault platoon in the 16th Regiment, Shay moved with the first wave of troops hurled into battle on Omaha Beach. They waded in under horrendous German fire. "It was every man for himself," he recalls. "Blood stained the water red." Reaching the sea wall, he saw countless men dead or dying in the rising tide. Braving a barrage of piercing bullets and iron-hot shrapnel, he ran back and pulled wounded soldiers to the shelter of a sand dune where he treated them.

Shay earned his first Silver Star for his heroism that morning. Hours later, Neptune also landed on "Bloody Omaha," but Shay did not see him there and wondered if he had survived. After the Battle of the Bulge and crossing the Rhine at Remagen, Shay was captured by enemy soldiers, but survived the POW camps. Three Penobscot soldiers died in the war, but he made it home safely, as did his three brothers—and Melvin Neptune. About eighty Penobscots—nearly every eligible male at Indian Island—had served in the Pacific, African, and European theaters of WWII.

Reenlisting, Shay later served in Austria, then distinguished himself again as a combat medic in the Korean War, followed by a stint in the southern Pacific where atomic bombs were tested. After decades abroad, he moved home to Indian Island. In 2007, he revisited Omaha Beach and other WWII battlefields for the first time. Soon after his story became public, the president of France inducted this old American Indian veteran as a knight in the Légion d'Honneur.

Harald E. L. Prins is a University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University and Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution. Born in the Netherlands, he does research in South and North America. Instrumental in the recognition and land claims of the Aroostook Band of Micmacs, he also served as expert witness in the U.S. Senate and various Canadian courts. Formerly president of the Society for Visual Anthropology and visual anthropology editor of the "American Anthropologist," he has produced films such as Our Lives in Our Hands and written many scholarly articles and books such as The Mi'kmaq: Resistance, Accommodation, and Cultural Survival.

Bunny McBride is an anthropologist and award-winning writer. Her books include Women of the Dawn, Molly Spotted Elk: A Penobscot in Paris and Our Lives in Our Hands: Micmac Indian Basketmakers. In 2007 she completed (with Harald Prins) a two-volume cultural-historical study for National Park Service, Asticou's Island Domain: Wabanaki Peoples at Mount Desert Island 1500-2000. Since 1981, McBride has worked on projects and museum exhibitions with Maine tribes. In 1999 the Maine State Legislature officially recognized her research and writing on the history of Wabanaki women. She serves on the board of the Women's World Summit Foundation, based in Geneva.