SSG Noel Patrick Washburn

SSG Noel Patrick Washburn was born in Henry County, Virginia on 14 Sep 1922. He was the 12th of the 13 children born to Nathaniel Ira and Dora Ella (Stone) Washburn. His father worked as a farmer, sawyer, carpenter, and lumber yard foreman to support his large family. One of Noel's older sister had died in infancy 6-years before he was born and another died in an automobile accident at age 16 in 1935. His mother died of a heart attack just 1-year later. His father married widow Betty May (Stone) Martin soon after. Noel himself did not finish high school and found work in a local furniture factory, the Morris Novelty Furniture Company. 

Noel was a PFC in the local National Guard unit, H Company 116th Infantry, when he was mobilized in February 1941. The unit was many months at Fort George Meade, Maryland before participating in the Carolina Maneuvers near Fort Bragg, North Carolina and then training at Camp Blanding, Florida. He then was with the unit when it sailed for England in late September 1942 and trained with the unit there for the amphibious assault that was a planned element of the liberation of Nazi occupied France. Exhibiting the necessary competence and leadership skills, Noel was promoted to SSG sometime before June 1944. SSG Washburn was leading his soldiers against a machine gun position on 6 Jun 1944 when he was shot in the head and killed in action. 

SSG Washburn was repatriated in 1947 and re-interred in Oakwood Cemetery in Martinsville, Virginia.

3 of Noel's brothers also served in the war. Ira Doyle Washburn and Reaves Rucker Washburn in the U.S. Army and Burl Abraham Washburn in the U.S. Navy.