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Full
text:
THE DEAD IN NORMANDY
CLINTON KWAAK
PETER GABRIEL PRIANTI JR.
Sidney C. Schaer
CLINTON KWAAK
Clinton Kwaak died on D-Day when he stepped on a land mine on Omaha
Beach. He was a radio technician
in the Army's 1st Division. He was a
corporal. He was 19 years old.
"He was my great-uncle," said 17-year-old Sharon Kwaak of North
Babylon, who as a seventh-grader in Sayville began assembling a family
tree and discovered she had a relative who was killed on the day the
Allies invaded Europe. She also realized an
uncle and a cousin were
named after him to preserve his memory.
The family tree shows Clinton Kwaak was born the day before
Christmas in 1924. He grew up in West Sayville
as one of seven children
in a family that made a living as baymen. Kwaak enlisted in the Army in
February, 1943, and served in North Africa and Sicily
before being
assigned to the Normandy
invasion.
His only surviving sister, Elizabeth Cooper of Florida,
once
described her brother as an "impeccable dresser" who played the
saxophone and guitar, and worked at Radio City
Music Hall before
entering the Army. He once wrote to her that he liked the Army, but
thought the killing was inhumane. She
inherited his posthumously awarded
Purple Heart.
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