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| Sgt. Lawrence Brown served with the 82nd Airborne in Normandy. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/46199638/lawrence-h.-brown https://www.ausa.org/articles/all-american-lieutenants-82nd-airborne-normandy |
Lawrence H. Brown, Jr. never had a chance to reach 100 years old. Instead, he sacrificed his life for our freedom.
Last year I was not able to write a profile everyday from September to November because I was studying for the Certified Financial Planner test (I passed!). I feel my project to honor one U.S. serviceman for each day of the war would be incomplete if I left them off. As I have time, I am going back and adding profiles for the days I missed.
Lawrence was born on September 9, 1918 in East Point, Georgia. His parents Lawrence and Hallie were also both born in Georgia. His father worked as a railroad express clerk and later a railroad conductor. Lawrence had two younger sisters and a younger brother. By 1940 Lawrence had completed two years of high school and was working as a cotton broker classer. He married Lurline Leach. They had one daughter.
He volunteered for the army on April 1, 1942 and then further volunteered to join a parachute regiment. He eventually became a staff sergeant in the HQ Company, 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Infantry Division. Sgt. Brown arrived in England in December 1944.
In the early morning hours of D-Day,June 6, 1944, Sgt. Brown parachuted into Normandy. The poor landing execution spread the troopers over a twenty mile area. The commanding officer of the 507th PIR, Colonel George Millet was captured by the Germans, but Sgt. Brown, from the same company, was not captured. By June 14, the 507th PIR had regrouped as much as possible, but it was way below strength. It was given the assignment, along with the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, to attack westward from Pont-l'Abbe. In a two day period the 507th withstood artillery fire from both the Germans and its own artillery. It lost 192 men in those two days after which it was pulled off the line. Sgt. Brown was probably wounded at that time and died the next day on June 16.
His grave is at Hillcrest Cemetery in East Point, Georgia.
On behalf of the fallen, if you would like to see more people become aware of this project to honor the WW2 fallen, be sure to share with others on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Thanks for your interest!
I created this video to explain why I started this project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXt8QA481lY.
Please consider joining the public Facebook group to increase the exposure of this project. Go to: WW2 Fallen 100
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