Five years after visiting the cemetery at Normandy, where Allied forces mounted the massive D-Day assault on Europe in World War II, Laura Greeson learned a soldier from Murray County was buried there. Army Pvt. Sidney Linton Cantrell was 24 when he was killed in action 16 days after the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion.
The murraycountymuseum.com website notes, “His death was reported in the Aug. 3, 1944, issue of the Chatsworth Times: ‘Pvt. Sidney L. Cantrell, 25, of Crandall, was killed in action on June 22 in France; the soldier’s mother, Mrs. Annie Morrison Cantrell, of Crandall, has been notified. Having previously received a message that her son was wounded, Mrs. Cantrell received the news last Sunday night that he had been killed.’”
Greeson, a 1981 graduate of Southeast Whitfield High School, said she visited Normandy because her grandfather, Maj. Jack Greeson of the Army Air Corps, served in World War II and she simply “loves history.”
“My parents had been a couple of times and spoke of their experience when visiting. I was overwhelmed with sadness while standing in the gun turrets looking out at the beach where so many Americans died,” she said.
The visit also spurred her to do more research, and she shared her findings about Cantrell.
“He was with the 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division, and was awarded a Purple Heart,” Greeson found in her inquiries that accessed ancestry.com and Census records. “There is a marker in Eton Cemetery, but I am assuming it was placed there as a memorial and not marking his burial place. His parents were Sidney Sr. and Annie Cantrell. They lived in the Cohutta Springs and McDonald Districts of Murray County.”
Information about Cantrell’s early years and personal life is scant, but it is known he completed grammar school before becoming employed as a semi-skilled woodworker. After his enlistment at Fort McPherson in Atlanta in September 1943, he was stationed in England as an infantryman beginning in April 1944.
Greeson said the military museum in Normandy tells of “bravery and loss.”
“But nothing compares to actually standing and looking out at all the tombstones at this beautiful cemetery,” she continued. “It is a very solemn place. The very first grave that I walked up to was a McEntire from Georgia, and it all hit home for me then. It is indeed hallowed ground and if visiting there doesn’t tug at your heartstrings, I don’t know what would. I just wish I had known Pvt. Cantrell was interred there. I had no idea that Murray County had someone buried there. I will go again, and I will pay my respects to him.”
Honor Flights
As a volunteer with Honor Flights, which helps senior veterans visit Washington, D.C., to see its military and memorial sites, Greeson shared a special memory from a few years ago.
“I got a blessing that day I will never forget,” she shared. “When we were at the Udvar-Hazy Center which is part of the Smithsonian museum, the World War II vet I was responsible for looked at the Enola Gay (that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan) and I will never forget what he said to me, ‘That plane and my mama’s prayers saved my life.’ We both shed a tear.”