Dan Henry and Operation Dragoon

My Grandfather Daniel Lee Henry was a pretty interesting guy. He was an accomplished scientist who built boats from scratch, and spent a lot of his spare time in his workshop working on any number of projects involving multiple disciplines. When I was a kid in Atlanta Georgia, he was by then a retired chemist, and very much the inventor. He got me a very advanced chemistry set when I was eight years old that probably could have landed both my brother and me in the hospital. He also made us a telescope, accompanied with a copy of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” which fostered an interest in the cosmos that holds strong to this day. Every piece of that telescope, including the hand-ground lenses, he made in his workshop. He handcrafted beautiful wood furniture for family and friends. For years, he made his own wine to entertain with. Before he retired, he was Chief Chemist of Law & Company Analytics, which he also co-owned. He personally came up with some clever methods of extracting cottonseed oil for industrial food uses, and invented several factory devices and processes for the Coca-Cola production facilities in Georgia. He died in 1984, and he never talked of his achievements to anyone, as he was an extraordinarily humble fellow who eschewed such behavior. Were he still alive, he would very likely be uncomfortable with the notion of me putting his deeds in print.

In 2013, I decided to write the National Personnel Records Center to locate some information about Dan's Army service in World War II. It wasn't a topic that he really talked about when he was alive, as he was a humble man above all else who did not care much for braggarts. Neither my father, nor my aunts had any idea what he did during the war, aside from knowing that he retired a Major after serving in the reserves for most of his adult life. For all we knew, he could have been a clerk, a mechanic, or worked in a lab.

Having gleaned some basic unit information six months after making the request to the NPRC, I then decided to dig even more, and procured some records from the National Archives to get just a few records copied, and eventually ended up with several thousand pages of documents, maps, and overlays. I thought it would be fun to trace out his footsteps as closely as I could from when his outfit invaded the French Riviera on the 70 year anniversary of the event, by translating coordinates from Army unit journals, combat reports, intelligence reports, and map overlays to real-world latitude and longitude on Google Maps.

Daniel Henry in the Army

Dan Henry ROTC Photo 1934

Dan was a member of the Reserve Officers Training Corps since his senior year in College, and was called up for active duty with the US Army on 28 October 1941 at the age of 28. After receiving instruction on crew-served heavy weapons and months of further combat training, he was then designated an Occupational Specialty as an Infantry Captain. In May of 1943, Dan was shipped out to the coast of Algeria to serve as a line officer at the 2nd Convalescent Hospital in Oran. Such a practice of having Infantry Officers in charge of troops in a rehabilitative role was adopted from the British Army, as this tended to keep the troops more disciplined in the final stages of recovery from wounds, and better prepared for reintegration into their respective combat units. The presence of Infantry Officers was also known to cut down on cases of "malingerers” who might want to extend their stay on clean hospital sheets in lieu of a muddy foxhole. Who could blame them, really?

By the spring-1944, the US Armed Forces were suffering from heavy attrition in numbers, especially for trained Infantry officers. Dan Henry was relieved from his duties in North Africa in April of 1944 in favor of commanding a Rifle Company for the Texas 36th Infantry Division: He was headed for Italy.

Dan Henry and Operation Dragoon

1 - Italy 2 - Operation Dragoon 3 - Invasion Plans 4 - German Defenses 5 - Cote D'Azur D-Day 6 - Aftermath 7 - Sources