Excerpt from <em>The Penn Stater</em>: The Reluctant Soldier

On the day before he died, Eddie Wagner wrote an encouraging letter to a friend back at Penn State. "I have developed an ear for the whine of artillery," he wrote, "when to dive for this foxhole of mine, and when to take it easy since I know it's somebody else who is catching the hell." That was June 27, 1944. At that point, the 25-year-old lieutenant from Harrisburg, Pa., three years removed from his graduation from Penn State, had already spent three weeks in the thick of the Allied invasion of Normandy, half of that time behind German lines. Back on June 6, hours before the main D-Day assault force stormed the beaches, a misplaced parachute drop had deposited his paratroop regiment far from the 5,000-ship Allied armada poised off Normandy's beaches. On June 28, Harry Edward Wagner's ear for artillery failed him, and he was killed in action. He became another fatality in a unit that lost as much as two-thirds of its personnel in the weeks after D-Day. Sixteen years later, the University honored his memory when it dedicated the Wagner Building as the new home of ROTC training facilities.
For the full story, Alumni Association members should watch their mailboxes for the arrival of the magazine during the next few days.
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