Leonard T. Schroeder

Leonard Treherne Schroeder Jr. (July 16, 1918 – May 26, 2009) was a colonel in the United States Army, who served on active duty from 1941 to 1971. As a captain during World War II, he commanded Company F of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division in the Normandy Landings on June 6, 1944, landing on Utah Beach in France. Leading the men of his company, Schroeder was the first American soldier to come ashore from a landing craft in the D-Day invasion.

Early years Schroeder was born in the Baltimore suburb of Linthicum Heights, Maryland, on July 16, 1918. Although bullied as a child, Schroeder became an outstanding athlete in high school, graduating in 1937 from nearby Glen Burnie High School where he played soccer and baseball. While captain of his high school's soccer team in 1936, they won the Maryland state championship. He then attended the University of Maryland, College Park, on a full athletic scholarship. While there, he was enrolled in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). In June, 1941, Schroeder graduated from the University of Maryland and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army at the age of 22. In January 1944, the Division left the U.S. and arrived in the south of England, where they continued practice amphibious landings in preparation for the unprecedented Normandy Landings.

D-Day Invasion On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Schroeder was a 25-year-old captain in command of the 219 men of Company F of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. The 8th Infantry Regiment was ordered to make the initial D-Day landing on Utah Beach as part of the invasion.

The USS Barnett, six months after D-Day As they sailed to France from England on the night of June 5 aboard the navy's USS Barnett on the rough English Channel, they heard Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower's exhortation to the troops over the radio, "Together, we shall achieve victory". At 2:30 a.m. on June 6, Schroeder's company left the Barnett to board their LCVP landing craft. Before departing the Barnett to face the enemy, Schroeder wrote a letter to his wife: "I told her where I was, what I was about to do, and how much I loved her". Schroeder's own assault boat, commanded by navy Lieutenant (j.g.) Abraham Condiotti of Brooklyn, New York, was the first to hit the beach. In his boat were 32 men, including Brigadier General Roosevelt. He recalled to a television interviewer in 2008 that "80 percent of the guys on the boat were sick" due to the rough seas and, as his landing craft in the first wave neared the shore, Allied forces were still shelling Company F's designated landing site on Utah Beach. "They were dropping all those bombs on the place where we were going in" and his company had to disembark "without getting bombed by our own guys". Schroeder recalled years later that American air support was "running a little late and we were running ahead of time. They were dropping all those bombs on the place where we were going in," he said. Afterwards, he was hailed in a Pentagon press release as "the first GI to invade Europe". Upon the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, he was an Air Operations Officer, coordinating air support for ground forces and planning bombing strikes. Produced by Jean-Christophe Giesbert, Les héros du 6 juin: Le débarquement de 1944 ("The heroes of June 6: the landing of 1944"), is available in French on DVD. A 50th anniversary cover feature in the French magazine VSD, published June 2, 1994, profiled Schroeder's life and D-Day exploits. In an interview for the magazine article, he said, "Today, I realize that to be the first man ashore is an immense honor, yet I do not merit it more than anyone else. Five of my men died down there at Normandy. They alone are the heroes". Shortly before his death from emphysema early on the morning of May 26, 2009, Schroeder reflected on his 30 years of military service to the nation, saying he still missed the comradeship and family-like brotherhood of army life. At televised ceremonies on June 6, 2009, commemorating the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, the Armed Forces Military Museum presented Schroeder's family with a plaque in his memory. The plaque displayed the insignia of the 19 Army divisions that landed on the Normandy beaches. He is interred at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell, Florida, alongside his wife, Margaret, who died on January 8, 2010.