Woodson, Jr, Waverly Bernard, “Woody” born on 03-08-1922, at 1235 North 58th Street in in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 
to Waverly Woodson and Edna Louise, born Baxter Woodson. Waverly’s father worked as a postal carrier in Philadelphia. Waverly Jr graduated from Overbrook High School and later attended Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania. 
While at Lincoln, Waverly took a pre-med program. In 1942 Woodson attended the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Officer Candidate School 
but before finishing the training, he was told that there were no officer positions open to him. This was one of the many instances of discrimination he had to face within the army. Before finishing his course, Woodson was sent to go train as a medic and assigned to the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion. 
Woodson underwent training at Camp Tyson, Tennessee 
the United States’ barrage balloon training center in Paris, Tennessee, where he experienced segregation and discrimination. By the time of Operation Overlord, he held the rank of corporal. In advance of Operation Overlord, Woodson was deployed to England.
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Normandy landings (Operation Neptune). A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August.
On 06-06-1944, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion participated in the Battle of Normandy as part of the First Army 
under command of General Omar Nelson “Brad” Bradley. 
it was the only African American battalion to participate. Woodson was assigned to a landing craft tank, LCT 856, 
that was to land at Normandy in the early morning. While coming ashore at Omaha Beach 
as part of the third wave, Woodson’s LCT hit a naval mine and lost power, drifting ashore with the tide. While drifting, the LCT was hit by an “eighty-eight” shell and Woodson suffered shrapnel injuries to his groin, inner thigh, and back. 
Upon swimming to the shore and having his wounds treated, Woodson and other medics set up a field dressing station under a rocky embankment by the German defensive position designated “WN61” and began treating other wounded soldiers. Woodson worked continuously from 10:00 AM until 4:00 PM on the following day while under “intense” artillery and small arms fire. During the 30 hours, Waverly carried out procedures including setting limbs, removing bullets, bandaging wounds, applying sulfa powder, dispensing plasma, and amputating a foot. After being relieved, Woodson was collecting bedding when he was alerted to three British soldiers having been submerged while leaving their LCT; Woodson provided artificial respiration to the three men, reviving them. Woodson was subsequently hospitalized due to his wounds; after three days on a hospital ship he requested to return to the front.
It has been estimated that Woodson’s actions during the Battle of Normandy saved the lives of as many as 200 soldiers, both black and white. Woodson’s commanding officer recommended him for a Distinguished Service Cross 
for his actions, but the office of General John Clifford Hodges Lee
determined that Woodson’s actions warranted the greater honor of a Medal of Honor. 
United States Department of War special assistant to the director Philleo Nash 
proposed that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
should give Woodson an award personally. Woodson ultimately received a Purple Heart.
Woodson was also approved to receive a Bronze Star Medal 
in 1945, but was never awarded it due to being redeployed out of Europe. The Philadelphia Tribune wrote, “the feeling is prevalent among Negroes that had Woodson been of another race the highest honor [a Medal of Honor] would have been granted him.”
Shortly after the Battle of Normandy, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion was redeployed to the United States, where it underwent further training at Camp Stewart in Georgia. 
The Battalion was then redeployed to Hawaii to prepare for Operation Downfall, which was cancelled upon the surrender of Japan in August-September 1945. With the subsequent end of World War II, Woodson was moved to the United States Army Reserve. Operation Downfall was the proposed Allied plan for the invasion of the Japanese home islands near the end of World War II. The planned operation was canceled when Japan surrendered following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet declaration of war, and the invasion of Manchuria.
Woodson initially hoped to study medicine, but was unable to find a medical school that would admit him as an African American. He went on to complete his studies at Lincoln University, graduating in 1950 with a degree in biology.
Woodson was reactivated by the Army upon the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. He was initially assigned to train combat medics at Fort Benning in Georgia, but due to his race he was instead reassigned to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center 
where he served as the sergeant-in-charge-morgue, performing autopsies. During the Korean War, Woodson was promoted to the rank of staff sergeant. Woodson left the Army in 1952.
Woodson married Joann Katharyne Snowden in 1952; the couple had two daughters and a son.
In 2020, Woodson was approved to receive the Combat Medical Badge. It, and the Bronze Star that was approved in 1945, was presented to JoAnn on 11-10-2023, at a ceremony near his gravesite at Arlington. Additionally, Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative David Trone introduced bills to authorize the President to award Woodson the Medal of Honor.
After leaving the Army, Woodson went on to work in the Bacteriology Department of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1959, he began working in the Clinical Pathology Department of the National Institutes of Health (also in Bethesda) where he supervised the staffing and operation of operating theaters and performed post-operative clinical procedures for open-heart surgery and other in-patient procedures. Woodson retired in 1980.
In 1994, Woodson was one of three veterans invited to visit Normandy by the Government of France to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings. 
He was presented with a commemorative medallion.
Death and burial ground of Woodson Waverly.
Woodson died on 12-08-2005, in the Wilson Health Care Center in Gaithersburg, Maryland at the age of 83. 
Waverly Woodson was buried with military honors at Section 69, Site: 1172, in Arlington National Cemetery. His papers were donated to the Langston Hughes Memorial Library Special Collections at his alma mater, Lincoln University.
On 03-06-2024, almost 80 years after Woodson’s actions, he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for heroism. During a ceremony on Omaha Beach, Major General William Ryan, First Army acting commander 
, placed the WWII-era Distinguished Service Cross on the sand while Soldiers saluted. Joanne visited his graveside.
At the time of his death on 04-07-2021, age 99, Henry Parham 
was the “last surviving African American combat veteran of D-Day” with the 320th Very Low Altitude Anti-Aircraft Barrage Balloon Battalion, the only all-Black unit to land on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944,,
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