The D-Day Chaplain Who Died Twice

In early June 2025, I went with fewer than a hundred fellow paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to Normandy, France to commemorate the 81st anniversary of Operation Overlord and the D-Day invasion.Dozens of ceremonies take place across the region each June commemorating various battles and heroic actions of American soldiers.Two of those ceremonies honor the life and death of Chaplain Ignatius Maternowski.To those in the Normandy region of France he is known simply as the "D-Day Chaplain."A native of Holyoke, Massachusetts and a graduate of St. Francis High School in Athol Springs, New York, he was a paratrooper, chaplain, and Franciscan priest assigned to the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II.Eighty-one years ago, he jumped into the darkness without a weapon and assembled with small groups of fellow paratroopers near a hamlet of homes and buildings called Gueutteville in the town of Picauville.On the drop zone, he ministered to the wounded and dying in a nearby crashed glider.1 Gueutteville occupies a single, narrow road no more than a quarter mile long, with stone homes and storehouses lining either side.This humble street became a battlefield where American paratroopers made their stand against German forces.Before sunrise, it became the place where Chaplain Maternowski would lose his life.Locals in France often describe what they heard about the "D-Day Chaplain" from their parents and grandparents.With American casualties mounting in those early hours of the operation, Chaplain Maternowski decided to walk the narrow street that bisected Gueutteville to find the German aid station and doctor.He sought to create a single aid station to treat the wounded and dying from both sides.One aid station for all wounded personnel, regardless of their uniform.Somehow, he safely navigated the narrow road and found the German aid station.Even more strangely, the German doctor agreed to Chaplain Maternowski's plan.Yet on his walk back down the narrow street,