“During the Second World War, he felt respected, loved and appreciated by the French people”, insisted Ms. Streets, recounting, very moved, a century of life of her father who led him from the American army. with the New York police, until becoming an English teacher and associative activist for the black community of New York.
Several times injured
Born on January 16, 1922 into a poor African-American family in Brooklyn, fatherless at the age of three, enlisted in the army in February 1943, at the age of 21, Osceola Lewis Fletcher served on the beaches of Normandy a week after the Day -J du Débarquement on June 6, 1944, as a crane operator and handler between ships at sea and military trucks stationed on the coast.
Mr. Fletcher was wounded several times in the legs by the innumerable debris from the terrible bombardments and battles on the beaches, then seriously hit when a German missile fell on a supply truck, reported the consul general Jérémie Robert while giving him the insignia of Knight of the Legion of Honour.
“You risked your life to liberate my country, France, and to liberate Europe from the Nazis. Men like you have saved millions of lives”, launched Mr. Robert, hailing a “hero in the United States” and a “French hero”. “You were devoted to your comrades in arms, even when seriously injured, and despite the fact that you faced discrimination as a black soldier,” said the French diplomat.
Decorated in 2021 in the United States
Mr. Fletcher, seated in his wheelchair, briefly took the floor to ensure with mischief that “the French (we) made believe that (we) saved them, whereas they helped us to save them”.
Almost 78 years after D-Day, Jacqueline Streets thanked “the French government for the Legion of Honor (…), an extraordinary tribute”, recalling that her father had only received in 2021, at the age of 99, the prestigious Purple Heart medal, decoration awarded by the President of the United States for soldiers wounded in combat.
“Despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact that he is African American, of Native American descent, he always had to work and fight twice as hard for what he deserved,” she said. concluded.
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