John H. Staples (May 2, 1920 – January 21, 2013) was a United States Army veteran who was awarded four Purple Hearts and three Silver Stars.
He was a tenth-generation descendant of Peter Staples, an English colonist who settled in Kittery, Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1670.
In 1940, aged 20, he left school to enrol in military service as a horse soldier in the 104th Cavalry Regiment of the Pennsylvania National Guard.
[1] In the wake of the assault on Omaha Beach, in June 1944, his division landed in Normandy, before moving across northern France and Belgium to the German frontier.
[1] In the spring of 1948, he relocated to Bangor, Maine, where he began working in the woodlands department of the Great Northern Paper Company.