June 6, 2024, marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, which was a major turning point in the war against Nazi Germany. One local Limestone County resident made the ultimate sacrifice for his country on D-Day.

Lionel Floyd Smith grew up on a farm in the community of Capshaw in Limestone County, where he attended local schools. He later attended Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University), where he served in the Reserve Officer Training Corps and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the US Army in May 1933, and graduated in 1934 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Lionel married the former Lois Winifred Rhea of Carthage, Missouri on July 6, 1935, in Montgomery, Alabama, and by 1940 they had settled in Cullman, Alabama where he worked as an engineer for the government.

Lionel was called to active duty on August 2, 1941, and by June 1944 had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel and served as the commander of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion. On D-Day, 6 June 1944, the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion was in the initial waves landing at Omaha Beach, supporting the 1st Infantry Division’s 16th Regimental Combat Team by blowing up underwater obstacles that could damage the landing craft as they made their way to shore. Once ashore, the engineers were tasked with breaching gaps in the extensive enemy mine and wire obstacles and clearing the combat trails leading off the beaches. After making it ashore, Smith and several of his staff were killed later that day when an enemy mortar round hit their command position. He was posthumously awarded the bronze star.

Smith was initially buried in France and in 1947 was reinterred in Park Cemetery in his wife’s hometown of Carthage, Jasper County, Missouri.

‘Stories Behind the Stars’The story of Lt. Col. Smith was researched and written as part of the Stories Behind the Stars project, a nationwide nonprofit founded in 2020. The project endeavors to ensure that each and every one of the more than 421,000 American service men and women who paid the ultimate price to preserve our freedoms in World War II are remembered as more than just a statistic in a book or a grave marker in a local cemetery. The project is named after the gold star banner that families of an American service member lost in WWII displayed in their window.

Bob Fuerst, a NASA engineer in Huntsville, serves as the Alabama State director for the Stories Behind the Stars project, and leads a small team of volunteers from across the state who have so far researched and written stories of more than 5,000 of the more thatn 6,300 Alabamians who lost their lives during WWII. All stories written for the project are being saved to a common online database so they can be easily viewed by anyone. The stories are also being shared on a daily basis via a Facebook page named Remembering Alabama WWII Fallen.

Fuerst is just one of hundreds of Stories Behind the Stars volunteers, from all 50 states and a dozen other countries, researching and writing stories of American WWII fallen. The volunteers come from all ages and backgrounds; some are as young as junior high school while others are retired. While some are amateur genealogists or seasoned researchers with years of experience, most are not. Stories Behind the Stars provides online training in how to research and write the stories, as well as free access to key online research sites that would otherwise require a paid subscription. The project also has a Facebook group where volunteers interact to help each other with research and answer questions.

“Basically, if you can write an obituary, you can research and write one of these stories in as little as a couple of hours,” said project founder Don Milne of Louisville, Kentucky. “Be forewarned. This is a very addictive and enriching experience. Quite a few individuals have already written hundreds of stories.”

So far, the project volunteers have completed almost 50,000 stories of American WWII fallen, including all who died at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941; all who died in Normandy on D-Day; and all buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Many more volunteers are needed to complete this historic project. Anyone interested in learning more about the project or to register as a volunteer can do so at www.storiesbehindthestars.org.