Long-delayed medal for World War II vet – truck driver

Long-delayed medal for World War II vet – the French ...

 

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Donald W. Seefeldt says he will make room in his framed collection of war medals for a new one – the French Legion of Honor.

The 95-year-old retired truck driver from Blasdell was presented with the long-delayed decoration by French Consul General Jeremie Robert on Nov. 18 in Eden Memorial Post 8255, Veterans of Foreign Wars, where he is a charter member and the last survivor of World War II.

His daughter, Penny Favale, who arranged for the presentation through the office of Rep. Brian Higgins, said her dad drew an appreciative laugh from Robert when he told one of his favorite war stories.

It came from Aug. 25, 1944, when he was part of the first force that liberated Orly Airfield in Paris. He told it to Buffalo News reporter Lou Michel in an interview in 2014.

“I like to say that President Roosevelt shook a lot of hands,” Seefeldt said to Michel, “but he never kissed as many women as we did when we liberated the airfield.”

Seefeldt, one of 10 children who grew up on a farm near Medina, was drafted into the Army in 1943 and arrived in France with the 4th Infantry Division at Normandy three weeks after the D-Day invasion in June 1944.

A month after Orly, he was at the German border for the start of the bloody conflict along the Siegfried Line. He wasn’t wounded there, but he was so disabled by battle fatigue that he needed a month and a half in a hospital in England to recover.

When he returned to duty, it was back in France, where he served with an engineering unit that serviced the pipelines providing gasoline for Allied troops, a constant target of sabotage. His medals include the Bronze Star.

After the war, he became a truck driver for GLF (Grange League Federation), a farm supply business which became Agway. He drove for the branch in North Collins for 35 years.

The father of 10 children, with many, many grandchildren, he was married three times and outlived his wives.

In recent years, he has appeared in parades at the Eden Corn Festival, the Silver Creek Grape Festival and Memorial Day celebrations in Williamsville, Springville and Niagara Falls, riding in a car ahead of a patriotic float.