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The man up front pulling the raft is 1st. Lieutenant Walter Sidlowski of the 348th Combat Battalion, 5th Engineers Special Brigade, supporting the 1st Infantry Division on Omaha Beach, he was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor for rescuing scores of men from a floundering landing craft and others who were in the grip of a churning sea.
The rescues were captured in a sequence of photos taken by famed photographer Walter Rosenblum.
“There was a landing craft breached, either due to fire or to being grounded, and quite a few men on it were not getting off and the craft was going down. We swam out and took a few…back to shore. Somebody else got a long rope which we swam out with, tied onto the landing craft, and had them hold onto…and walk themselves in…. At that time I had no idea there was a photographer in the vicinity.”
“I saw this magnificent man swim out and bring some people off the sinking ship and bring them back in to shore and to me he was the picture of heroic beauty.”