Russell J. York

Russell J. York (August 5, 1921 – July 22, 2006) [1] was a native of Waterville, Maine, who served in World War II in 1942–1945 as a combat medic assigned to the 4th Engineer Battalion of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division.

He landed at Utah Beach on D-Day under the command of Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and with the U.S. 22d Infantry Regiment served in the campaigns in Northern France, Rhineland, Battle of the Bulge and Central Europe.

The tape is available for the public through that organization at the Library of Congress's veteran's website In the battle for the Hurtgen Forest, with the writer Ernest Hemingway, serving under Colonel, later Major General Charles T. Lanham, York earned the Silver Star.

[2] For gallantry in action in Germany, November 20, 1944, Technician Medical Fourth Grade York accompanied an engineer squad on a mission of building a two-span trestle bridge.

York is reported to have been at the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald sometime during 1945, where a contingent of American press including the CBS News correspondent Edward R. Murrow arrived on April 15, 1945.