Daniel McBride Jr. (9 April 1924-16 February 2022) was a US Army Private First Class who served in the 502nd Pathfinders, F company, 3rd Platoon during World War II.
Biography[]
Dan is born in 9 April 1924 in Ohio. Dan had an adventurous spirit, hitchhiking from Ohio to Colorado and back at the age of 15, financed by doing odd jobs along the way. For the next few years, he hunted game to help feed his family during the Great Depression.
Dan became an expert sharpshooter, serving as a sniper and machine gunner while paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division during World War II.
On June 6, 1944, he jumped with the 101st Airborne Division over Écoquenéauville and Audouville-la-Hubert. As soon as he touched the ground, he fell on a German sentry whom he shot down. Later, near Boutteville, he and other soldiers, including an officer from the 82nd Airborne Division, intercepted a 1936 Ford driven by a German officer. Around mid-June 1944, he was wounded in the forearm during a night skirmish south-west of Carentan with paratroopers of the German 6th Parachute Regiment. He was then evacuated to England and awarded the Purple Heart, a medal for the wounded. However, he recovered from his injury in time to jump with his regiment to the Netherlands on 17 September 1944 as part of Operation Market Garden. In October 1944 he was wounded again near Dodewaard (Netherlands) when a mortar exploded at his feet.
Although Dan McBride did not fully recover from his wounds, he set out with his division on December 18, 1944 for the Ardennes to block Hitler's last major offensive in the west, in the Belgian sector of Bastogne.
It was there that he received his third Purple Heart in January 1945 when a shrapnel hit him in the knee near Michamps, Belgium. This did not prevent him from continuing another campaign in Alsace with his 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, which then arrived in Düsseldorf in March 1945 and then Berchtesgaden in May when the German Army capitulated.
Dan McBride finally returned to the United States in 1946 and settled in New Mexico. He was passionate about his favorite sport, hunting. Died on Wednesday, February 16, 2022 at the University Medical Center in El Paso, Texas. He died peacefully of natural causes. Having lived over 97 years, he bravely ended his life and remained young until the end.