US Army Private Colbert Clayton Poole was born in Grove Hill, Clark County, Alabama on January 11, 1924, the son of Colbert Turner Poole (1886-1944) and Laura Alice Wright (1883-1958). During the Great Depression, his father worked for the WPA (Works Progress Administration) in farming, which was a Roosevelt program used to put people back to work.
Little is known about his formative years, but we do know that he was working for the Hardaway Construction Company at NAS Pensacola in 1940. After the war began, he enlisted in the US Army Paratroopers on April 13, 1943, and was sent to Camp Blanding, Florida for processing. Upon completion of his training, he was assigned to the newly formed 508th Parachute Regiment. His regiment embarked on December 28, 1943, from New York City and sailed for Belfast, Northern Ireland where they arrived on January 8, 1944. It is assumed that Colbert would have been with the regiment by this time given his enlistment date and training records. After several more stops for training, they arrived at Wollaton Park in Nottinghamshire, England, where they finally joined the 82nd Airborne Division. At this time, Operation Overlord had been implemented and the date to go had been set.
The 508th Parachute Regiment loaded up on their C-47 transport planes and took off into the night sky over Normandy at 2:15 AM on June 6, 1944. Their target was the town of Sainte-Mère-Église plus the securing of the bridge over the Merderet River near Chef-du-Pont. Once secured they were to set up defensives from Neuville-au-Plain to Breuzeville-au-Plain. However, the regiment was dropped onto the wrong landing zone making it difficult to hook up with any of the other units. They continued to fight the Germans until they were relieved on July 7th and moved to the rear lines to become the reserve force. Sadly, the day before on July 6th, Colbert was killed in action. His wife Olive was working as a saleswoman at the Esidor Greenblatt Dry Goods Store when she received the telegram from the war department notifying her of his death.
Out of 2,100 paratroopers of the 508th regiment who participated in the D-Day landings, only 995 returned. His body was turned over to the graves registration unit and buried in a military cemetery. After the war, he was disinterred in May 1949 and shipped home aboard the Army transport SS Haiti Victory. He was buried in the Godwin Cemetery in Bratt on Monday, June 27, 1949, with military escort.
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