"We said, if we're living tomorrow, we're gonna go up there and pray." (Interview)

Joseph M. Halicek

Joseph Halicek [detail] War: World War II, 1939-1946 Branch: Army Unit: 302nd Infantry Regiment, 94th Division Service Location: Camp Wolters, Texas; Camp Breckenridge, Kentucky; England; Normandy, France; Ardennes, Belgium; Germany; Czechoslovakia Highest Rank: Sergeant Place of Birth: Genoa, OH

Infantryman Joseph Halicek didn't land on Utah Beach until well after the original invasion, but he saw plenty of evidence remaining of those first few horrible days. And he faced plenty of danger in the next few months, fighting desperate German troops. The son of Czech immigrants, he found his language skills were useful when his unit wound up in Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1945, in a standoff against Russian troops eager to continue occupying that country far beyond the end of the war.