Eagles of Mercy
Upon landing in Normandy on D-Day, one of Easy Company’s medics connected with three other medics of the 101st Airborne Division and set up a makeshift aid station in the church of Angoville-au-Plain, a small village a mere 10 miles behind Utah Beach. Medic Edwin Pepping of Easy Company spent hours helping another medic by the name of Willard Moore transport severely wounded soldiers in a jeep to L’église Saint-Côme-et-Saint-Damien, the Church of Saint Côme and Saint Damien.
Back at the church, Medic Robert Wright began to treat the many wounded while Kenneth Moore, a stretcher bearer with not quite as much medical training, helped unload the men brought to them by jeep. They had lost a majority of their medical supplies on the jump and had to treat the men with anything and everything they could find, all while under heavy artillery fire.
They accepted any and all wounded into their care, regardless of nationality, under the stipulation that all rifles be left outside the church door. Men were laid on the pews with their heads facing the aisle, pews that remain in the church to this day. Those most seriously wounded, the ones they weren’t sure would make it, were placed behind the alter and given morphine.
Amidst one particularly intense shelling, a mortar fell through the roof of the church and landed in the center aisle. Miraculously, it didn’t explode, and Wright threw the shell out of a window. Pepping eventually moved on to reunite Easy Company, but Wright and Moore remained. They treated 80 seriously wounded American, French, and German soldiers as they worked 72 hours until the village was liberated on June 8, losing only two men.
The locals believe Wright and Moore landing near their village and choosing their church as an aid station to be no accident. Their church, as fate would have it, was named after two saints:
“L'église Saint-Côme-et-Saint-Damien, takes its name from 4th century martyrs: Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian. Saints Cosmas and Damian were physicians and possibly brothers who hailed from ancient Syria, then a province of the Roman Empire. They are widely regarded to be the patron saints of doctors, surgeons, and pharmacists. In fact, the saints were renowned for healing those who were ill or wounded as well as caring for all people regardless of their background, race, or faith.“
A stain glass window was installed in the church paying tribute to these two men and a memorial was constructed.
A documentary was created telling the story of the Eagles of Mercy featuring interviews with some of the veterans. Watch it for free at the link below:
