U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04) today honored Walter Pruiksma, a hero who, 74 years ago, braved a nighttime run on a horse-drawn, two-wheel wooden cart through German lines to bring an injured French woman to a hospital only three days after he had landed on Utah Beach in the wake of the D-Day invasion.
U.S. Army Reserve Maj. Gen. Phillip Churn came from Washington to present him with the Silver Marechaussee Award, one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on a military policeman (MP) by the Military Police Regimental Association. Smith presented an American flag flown over the U.S. Capitol.
The ceremony was held at Pruiksma’s longtime church, the Manasquan Presbyterian Church on Virginia Avenue in Manasquan, hosted by Pastor Jim Dunson and his congregation. The veteran's friend, Al Schobel, gave a stirring tribute to the flag and to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Smith told Pruiksma, a resident of Brick, NJ, his willingness to go into harm’s way to help a woman he did not know reminded him of the lyrics of a song, I am Available, by the music group Petra and its words, “I am available. I will go when you say go.”
“You did it unhesitatingly,” Smith told the veteran before his family, friends and the congregation gathered for the event. “We are with a true hero, one of the greatest of the greatest generation.”
The mission was so perilous that his lieutenant wouldn’t order anyone to do it, but instead asked for volunteers. He volunteered, and another man, the late Cecil Morris of Union City, NJ joined him.
“When I landed, I vowed to myself, 'Walter, don’t get killed, wounded or captured to make your mother grieve,'” Pruiksma said. “Three nights later I volunteered for a very dangerous mission!” The 24-mile mission was in the dead of night. “We went through the front lines into no man’s land, saw bodies of the dead Germans and Americans.” They reached the hospital successfully and they returned through enemy lines and back to his unit. Though the woman, who was wounded by a grenade thrown into her home later died of her wounds, 40 years later he was able to locate her daughter and began corresponding with her. Why did he volunteer that night? “I volunteered because I wanted someone to do the same thing if it was my mother.”
