Sgt. Donald Akers and wife, Virginia. This photo was in among writings my uncle, Lawrence Wilson Hays, had written about Company I, 359th Regiment, 90th Division, which served during the invasion of Normandy at Utah Beach.

He wrote the following about Sgt. Akers:

"Donald Akers came to our outfit while we were at Ft. Dix. He was a buck-sergeant, but was assigned to our squad for awhile. He was from Iowa and was married and three days after we got to England on April 9th, Easter Sunday, he had a little girl born to he and his wife, Virginia. They named the baby Virginia Lee. Don carved one of their names on one side of his mess kit and the other on the other side. Donald and I became quite chummy on the boat to England. We had our bunks side by side on the very top. We explored the boat together. Akers used to let me read some of his wife's letters. If she loved him as much as the letters said, he had something to live for. You should have seen him run to mail call and you could judge how much he thought of her for yourself."

Further along he wrote:

"I caught up with my squad and about night we had some German machine gun crossfire. We stopped by a hedgerow and dug in. The bank that the hedge grew on wasn't very high and the Germans could see us, somewhat. They would spray the hedge and branches fell all around us. The first and second platoons were up on line. The third and weapons platoons were in reserve. Just before dark, the Germans sent a massive barrage toward us. It went over the first and second platoons and landed on the support units, the third and weapons platoons. Someone back there began yelling. It was the most awful scream I had ever heard. It was repeated three or four times. It wasn't long until news came that a staff sergeant was the one screaming. He was just wounded and so was another guy from the weapons platoon. Both were shell shocked. They also brought the saddest news of all, at least for me. They said, "Hays, Sgt. Akers was killed in that barrage." For a moment I saw black. I felt real funny. I stopped digging for a moment, but the war continued and I picked up my shovel and helped Leckner finish digging our foxhole. A very good friend of mine passed on, the casualty of war, when Donald Akers died."