Roe Sr, Eugene Gilbert “Doc”, born 17-10-1921, in Bayou Chene, Louisiana, to Edgar Malcon “Ed” Roe and his wife Maud Cecile, born Verret,. Eugene was half-Cajun and quit school during his elementary years. He had two brothers and two sisters: Minnie Etta Roe Green,
1919–1991, Winnie Elmira Roe Smallman,
1920–1981, Charles Horace Roe,
1924–1999 and John Everrett Roe,
1927–1998. Eugene was semiskilled in oilers of machinery. The Roe family moved to Morgan City, Louisiana later. Eugene enlisted on 12-12-1942 in Lafayette, Louisiana. He had no medical background and was selected for wound care worker training because there was a shortage.
He was added to Easy Company
in 1943.
Roe a Technician Fourth Grade was one of Easy Company’s medics. While stationed in Aldbourne, Roe met his first wife Vera. Their wedding date was set for 06-06-1944, but had to be postponed because it was the day when Roe made his first combat jump into Normandy, with his 101 Airborne Division under command of General Maxwell Taylor..
or the Battle of Normandy or D-Day,


Roe also participated in the British controlled American military operation Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands. While in the Netherlands, he was wounded on 17-09-1944. Roe also took part in the Battle of the Bulge at Bastogne. He was discharged on 17-11-1945 and arrived in the United States 11 days later.
Roe was shown befriending a Belgian nurse called Renée in the aid station in Bastogne. While it was unclear if in reality Roe had met the nurse, a nurse called Renee Bernadette Émilie Lemaire, “the Angel of Basogne”
was indeed voluntary working in an aid station in Bastogne at the time. Lemaire volunteered her services at the battalion aid station on 21-12-1944. She helped in tending to over 150 seriously wounded patients per day without adequate rest or food, and offered great assistance. Lemaire was killed during the Christmas Eve bombardment when a bomb made a direct hit on the aid station. A sergeant named William Charles “Bill” Kerby
who knew Renée Lemaire remembers her last moments. He stayed in a house about thirty meters from the clinic. He was also surprised by the magnesium rockets and said he had felt the clinic’s massive blast when hit. He said he saw Renée Lemaire emerge from the debris several times and go back inside before she never came back at all. She was wrapped in a parachute and buried in Bastogne by the soldiers
When the war was over in Europe, Roe married Vera on 08-05-1945 in England. After his discharge, Roe and his wife moved to Baton Rouge and had three children, one son Eugene Gilbert. Jr. and two daughters Maxine and Marlene. The couple divorced twenty seven years later, and Roe re-married five years later with Myrtle Inez Hudson, 1928-2011.
Sergeant William Charles “Bill” Kerby survived the war and died 12-01-2006 (age 83) in Eustace, Henderson County, Texas, USA.
Death and burial ground of Roe Sr, Eugene Gilbert “Doc”




Roe became a construction contractor post war. He died of lung cancer on 30-12-1998, age 77, in his home in Baton in Louisiana. Doc Roe was buried at the GARDEN OF FAITH, at Resthaven Gardens of Memory and Mausoleum Baton Rouge, East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, VS.
The medics were the most popular, respected, and appreciated men in the company. Their weapons were first-aid kits; their place on the line was wherever a man called out that he was wounded. 1st Lieutenant Jack Edward Foley
had special praise for Private Eugene Roe. “He was there when he was needed, and how he got ‘there’ you often wondered. He never received recognition for his bravery, his heroic servicing of the wounded. I recommended him for a Silver Star after a devastating firefight when his exploits were typicaly outstanding. Maybe I didn’t use the proper words and phrases, perhaps Lieutenant Norman Staunton Dike, Jr.
didn’t approve, or somewhere along the line it was cast aside. I don’t know. I never knew except that if any man who struggled in the snow and the cold, in the many attacks through the open and through the woods, ever deserved such a medal, it was our medic, Gene Roe.” 1st Lieutenant Jack Edward Foley survived the war and died of complications of Type 1 diabetes on 14-09-2009, age 87. Lieutenant Norman Staunton Dike, Jr. also survived the war and died on 23-06-1989, age 71, in Lausanne, District de Lausanne, Vaud, Swiss.
Chris Langlois is a grandson of medic Eugene Gilbert Roe, Sr. Roe joined Easy Company at Camp Mackall, just after Toccoa. Chis is orginally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana and graduated from Louisiana State Univeristy. Eugene currently resides in Dallas, Texas with his wife, Patricia, and daughter Julia. Both Chris and Patricia are police officers. Chris is donating a portion of the profits to the Band of Brothers Family Foundation, so more copies of this book can be placed in school libraries and classrooms.


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