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Take Me Out
(to the Ball Game)
While researching an
article that eventually became
Different Ways Home
I ran across an article about yet
another of the 153 soldiers that were in the
POW Hospital in Orglandes, France.
Before the war Roy
Smith had been in the New York Yankees Minor
League farm system. Smith eventually became
part of the California Angels in the early
1960s as a Scout.
Pfc (Private First
Class, ASN 12139704) Roy Lee Smith was a
member of Company A 508th
Parachute Regiment attached to the 82nd
Airborne Division going into Normandy. In
the 1945 article it talks about the capture
of Pfc Smith. Smith ended up with broken
ribs so he wound up at Orglandes.
Smith said that he
worked in the surgical ward there and helped
to bury 11 soldiers the few days he was
there. I knew a few soldiers had died at
the Orglandes POW Hospital but this was the
first time I’d heard in all these years that
11 had been buried there. Now the search
has begun searching for the soldiers buried
at Orglandes.
Pfc Smith’s 1945
article made me decided to look more closely
at what happened to Pfc for the rest of
Normandy. After Smith was liberated from
Orglandes on 15 June 1944 he went back to
Company A.
Smith was wounded 4 July. He ended up
going back to the States where he was
eventually discharged at the end of November
1944.
Took a look at
Roy Smith’s medical records and it turns
out he was discharged due to the fact he had
developed diabetes. When a man became a
Paratrooper they went through rigorous
training and testing. Hard to believe they
would have missed having diabetes.
In the article he had said that when
captured he’d been kicked in the ribs
breaking a few ribs. If you are kicked in
the ribs around your pancreas, that could
cause the onset of diabetes. Smith died in
his late 50s and that means that 35 years
later he died of his wounds.
Brian Siddall
June 19, 2025
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