James “Frank” Deegan
30th Infantry Division
119th Infantry Regiment
Company D
WWII veteran, Frank Deegan, was awarded the Bronze Star for valor, but never received it or the orders. Orders were found and BSM w/V presented. It was also determined that he was eligible for an additional Bronze Star. The request was submitted and award presented at a 30th Division Association Reunion.
The Bronze Star Citation with Valor device reads:
“For heroic achievement in active ground combat against the enemy while serving with Company D, 119th Infantry regiment, 30th Infantry Division, on 23 December 1944, in support of Old Hickory’s efforts to clear the northern region of the Amblève River in Belgium. Private Deegan’s exemplary performance of duty in active ground combat was in keeping with the finest traditions of military service and reflects great credit upon himself, the 30th Infantry Division and the Army of the United States.”
The Bronze Star Citation reads:
“For meritorious achievement while serving with Company D, 119th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division, in active ground combat against the enemy on 14 July 1944 in support of Old Hickory’s unrelenting advance to St Lo, France. Private Deegan’s exemplary performance of duty in active ground combat was in keeping with the finest traditions of military service and reflects great credit upon himself, the 119th Infantry Regiment and the Army of the United States.”
Frank’s awards include the:
Combat Infantry Badge
Purple Heart Medal w/2 OLC
Bronze Star Medal w/ V device and OLC
Good Conduct Medal
American Campaign Medal
European- African-Middle Eastern Medal w/4campaign stars
WWII Victory Medal
French Fourragère
Belgian Fourragère
Marksmanship Badge – Rifle M1
Frank was 19 when he landed at Normandy Beach, a week or so after the great D-Day invasion. World War II, the Battle of the Bulge and the Germans tried like hell over the next few months to take him out. The tough old bird kept getting up, though, and thrust back into action.
Frank Deegan, of Eagleville, Pa., was a private first class machine gunner with the U.S. Army’s 30th Division long before he raised a family of his own. He was one of the lucky ones during the battle of Mortain in France. He survived, but was wounded in the leg. By the time he got patched up and shipped back to the front, his was the first infantry division to march into Belgium. In the village of Fouron le Comte, he survived another brush with death. As he set up his machine gun to draw fire from a heavy German gun stationed at a crossroads, a G.I. fired on the German artillery. The resultant burst of German thunder blew off the G.I.’s leg and sent heavy shrapnel into Deegan’s back and neck.
By the time he returned to the battlefield, the 30th Infantry Division’s losses and triumphs had mounted. The unit steamed into Belgium’s picturesque Ambleve Valley and engaged in fierce battle at the town of Stoumont. Just a few days before Christmas in 1944 and not long after Stoumont, the fates tested Deegan again. He took fire while on patrol, suffering a bullet wound in the leg that shattered his femur and severed his sciatic nerve. His outfit fell back and Deegan rolled into a ditch, alone with only a .45-caliber sidearm.
Fearful of dressing his wounds and risking capture, he laid in the ditch and bled. Then everything went black. When he came to, a priest hovered over his stretcher, administering last rites. He was leaving the front — and maybe more — for good. Back home in Bridgeport, Pa., the Western Union man rapped on the door of the family’s cramped row home and handed a telegram to Frank’s kid brother. “Your brother was killed,” said the courier.
I’m not certain how the family came to learn that the telegram was in error, other than the letter they had received from Frank days earlier from a hospital in England. But with three Purple Hearts, Frank Deegan was headed home.
So he came home and got on with his life, eventually marrying and starting a family. He was not unlike so many of his band of brothers, who preserved democracy in Europe then went home to the States in pursuit of a normal life.
He was a member of Visitation B.V.M. Church, Trooper, PA. Frank was also life member of both the King of Prussia Volunteer Fire Co. and the VFW Post 5642 in Montrose, PA, a Charter member of the 10 Star Sportsman Club in Montrose, PA and a past president of the 30th Infantry Division Association. He was an avid golfer and hunter.
(Extract from Jim Deegan, The Express-Times)
Eagleville, Pennsylvania (2012)
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