Meredith J Rogers of Sunburst, enlisted in the Army in June 1940.
A smiling and lucky to be alive Tech Sgt. Meredith J. Rogers, 30 from Sunburst, NC shows how lucky he is when his helmet was punctured by a sniper's bullet during fighting in Normandy with the US 2nd Infantry Division, 13 July 1944.
Meredith J Rogers of Sunburst, enlisted in the Army in June 1940. He served in the 2nd Division and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
He received a presidential citation for bravery and was promoted to sergeant.
Sergeant Rogers remained in the military.
Meredith J Rogers died in 1994.
After the United States entered the war in 1941, the 2nd Infantry Division (nicknamed “Indianhead” because of its badge) left New York harbor for Belfast on October 8, 1943 and arrived in Northern Ireland nine days later.
She then arrived in England where she began her training to fight the Germans in Europe.
Attached to the 1st American Army, it landed in Normandy on June 7, 1944 at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer on the beach of Omaha and immediately began the fighting.
Commanded by General Robertson, the division liberated the village of Trévières on June 10, 1944 then the forest of Cerisy before seizing and defending hill 192, commanding the road to Saint-Lô. It crossed the Vire then entered Brittany in August 1944 where it laid siege to Brest.
On December 11, 1944, the 2nd Indianhead received the order to seize the dams on the Roer as part of the battle for the Hürtgen forest.
Following the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes, the division was forced to retreat to Elsenborn before resuming the offensive from February 1945.
It seized Gemünden on March 4, 1945, reached the Rhine on March 9 then Breisig on March 10, before guarding the Remagen bridge from March 12 to 20, 1945.
After crossing the Rhine on March 21, the division seized many German cities such as Göttingen on April 8, Merseburg on April 15 or Leipzig on April 18.
It reached the Czech border on May 4, 1945: on May 8, the date of the Allied victory in Europe, it laid siege to Pilsen.
The 2nd Infantry Division then returned to the United States and resumed training in Texas from July 22, 1945 while awaiting its projection in Japan.
But the Japanese sign the surrender before the division is deployed. 3,031 soldiers of the division were killed in action during World War II, 457 died of their wounds while 12,785 others were wounded.

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