Roland Vogt

Appleton native Roland Vogt volunteered to sail with the first wave of soldiers landing on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. He got off a naval landing craft and waded through hip high water into German machine gun fire. He convinced ten soldiers to follow him up a cliff to stop the German fire. The group of men disabled two machine gun nests and helped save the lives of other soldiers landing on the beach.

Vogt acted as part of an Allied invasion force ordered to attack the coast of Normandy and liberate France from the Nazis. 175,000 men from twelve nations sailed from Great Britain onto five beaches named Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah, and Omaha. American soldiers landing on Omaha experienced the worst German counterattack. These men passed through minefields in the water and bursts of machine gun fire and mortar explosions on the beach. The US suffered high casualties, but overran the beach by nightfall.

Map of Vogt's path through Europe.

Roland Vogt shows off his
94th Division patch,
circa 1942
Courtesy of Jeffery Vogt