This series for the 80th Anniversary of D-Day would not be complete without the amazing story of Francis “Frank” Nugent, who was wounded three times, captured and imprisoned in four POW camps and escaped from two of them!
Frank grew up on the corner of Route 45 and Lampson Road in Austinburg and was a son of John and Nanetta (Wagner) Nugent. He left home by 1935 and joined the Army, then later the paratroopers, training out of Fort Benning, Georgia. He served as a paratrooper in the first unit with the 101st Airborne, 506th Parachute Infantry.
He and his unit were supposed to be dropped behind enemy lines over France in order to take out some of the enemy artillery. That night, 20,000 men in his regiment parachuted out of the Dakota C-47 engine planes and dropped at 300 feet so they would not be scattered. But things did not go according to that plan. Miscalculations caused the men to be dropped much further away from the drop zone.
After they touched down, the men found each other and began walking all night until noon the next day before the reached the original drop site. The men were exhausted after their all-night walk and at daybreak, some were lying in a culvert.
Frank was lying next to one of France’s famous “hedgerows” in a culvert when he came under enemy fire. He tried to crouch down lower in the culvert, but with a bandolier strapped to one leg and a machine gun, he was an easy target.
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