Russell J. York receives the Silver Star medal.

Russell J. York (August 5, 1921 – July 22, 2006) was a native of Waterville, Maine who served between 1942-1945 as a combat medic assigned to the 4th Engineer Battalion of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division.

He landed at Utah Beachon D-Day under the command of Gen. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. and with the U.S. 22nd Infantry Regiment served in the campaigns in Northern France, Rhineland, Battle of the Bulge and Central Europe.

For gallantry in action in Germany, November 20, 1944 he earned the Silver Star medal.

The 4th Infantry Division saw some of the most heavy and ferocious fighting of the war, particularly in Normandy and the Hürtgen Forest.

The 4th Infantry Division was tasked with linking up with airborne forces through the flooded fields of Normandy on June 6th, 1944, and then cutting off and clearing the Cherbourg Peninsula.

The fighting within the Cherbourg Peninsula was particularly bloody, entire regiments were chewed up and spit out within a period of only 2 months. In September 1944, the 4th Infantry Division was a unit spearheading the charge through the Siegfried Line near Aachen.

The Division was battered and soon pulled off the line for a time. In 1945, they continued the push into Germany and although the fighting was not as ferocious as it may of been in Normandy or the Hürtgen Forest, it was no less deadly.

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Two boys in this photograph from the early 1900s, taken by Dr. Allan Warner of the Isolation Hospital in Leicester

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During the Vietnam War, one of the most dangerous jobs was undertaken by a select few known as "tunnel rats."

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