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This Day in History: Harold Garman's bravery on the Seine

  • tara
  • 15 hours ago
  • 3 min read

On this day in 1944, a hero engages in an action that would earn him the Medal of Honor. Harold Alva Garman was a U.S. Army medic who, in a surprising twist, swam his way into Medal of Honor history.

 

He evaded German fire and lived to tell the story!

 

Allied forces were then working their way across France, liberating it from the Germans.  As they approached the Seine River, units from the 10th Infantry were tasked with recapturing Montereau, about 70 miles south of Paris. They were also to establish a bridgehead on the Seine.

 

On the night of August 24-25, our boys crossed the Seine under cover of darkness, then set up defensive positions. The Germans were expected to attack first thing in the morning—and they did.

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Unfortunately, too many of our soldiers were taking hits, so an effort was mounted to ship injured soldiers back across the Seine in the assault boats.

 

And that’s where Garman comes into the story.  The 5-foot, 4-inch medic was carrying litters with injured men to ambulances on the shore. Suddenly, he noticed that a boat carrying more wounded had come under attack.

 

Most of the men tumbled out of that boat and into the waters of the Seine, fleeing before the enemy fire. Three soldiers, however, were too badly hurt to help themselves. One was so severely injured that he couldn’t even leave the boat. The other two were in the water, but clung to the side of the boat, unable to swim.

 

Garman jumped into the river, swimming towards the stranded men.  At first, he tried swimming under water so the Germans wouldn’t see him, but that proved inefficient and slow.  He was soon swimming atop the water, fully exposed, with bullets splashing all around him.

 

He wasn’t a very big man, remember.  How did he accomplish the half-mile swim to the boat, bogged down by his heavy combat clothing?  Yet he did. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to safely tow three men simultaneously, nor could he go back and forth to retrieve each individually.

 

He’d have to tow the whole boat. So, of course, that’s exactly what he did. His Medal citation notes that he was “still under accurately aimed fire” as he “towed the boat with great effort to the southern shore.”

 

Would you believe he successfully got all three men, plus himself, back to shore?  He also pulled them out of the water, up an incline, and hid them behind a wall for protection. He never knew the names of the men he had saved.

 

His action inspired those around him.

 

“This heroic, almost suicidal act,” a local journalist later wrote, “motivated his unit to evacuate the rest of the wounded and fight harder to cross that river barrier.”

 

Within a matter of months, Garman learned that he was to receive the Medal. “We were up on the Moselle River,” he described, “and when I came out of a building one morning there were some buddies standing outside. They told me I was going to get the Medal of Honor, but I thought they were joking.”

 

Like so many other recipients, Garman didn’t think he’d done anything special, instead shrugging that “the [Seine’s] current was slow and steady, just like the little Wabash” back at home where he’d learned to swim.

 

Yet another member of the Greatest Generation, stepping up to do what had to be done. . . . then humbly wondering why he got a Medal for it.


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stories can be found on my website, HERE.


Primary Sources:

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