![\"helen](\"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/files\/2014\/04\/helen-young-in-uniform.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nHelen Kogel grew up with five brothers and two sisters on the farm homesteaded by her grandfather near Woonsocket. She loved and respected her family but she also wanted more for herself than to be a farm wife so after high school, she went to business college..then, in part because eligible men were kinda scarce due to the war, she and a friend decided to join the WAC\u2019s (Woman\u2019s Army Corps). After basic training, her superiors soon recognized Helen\u2019s skills and, after a stint as a recruiter, she volunteered and was selected to serve on General Eisenhower\u2019s staff in London working as a secretary-typist. After a four day ocean voyage aboard the Queen Mary, she arrived in England during the height of the blitz..set up in a hotel room with a few other girls ..then taken to a secret location where for the next two months she sat in a closed room up to nine hours a day typing Ike\u2019s orders for \u201cOperation Overlord\u201d\u2026the detailed plans for the invasion of Normandy (D-Day.) and the liberation of Europe.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Ike and his generals going over plans for the invasion. Plans likely typed up by Corporal Helen Kogel of Woonsocket, South Dakota<\/p><\/div>\n
She\u2019d been ordered to forget everything she typed but that, of course, was impossible. Instead, she concentrated on doing her work absolutely mistake-free to avoid slow-downs. At the end of each session, a Military Policeman would gather up all carbon copies and typewriter ribbons and toss them in the burning fireplace..then escort all of the female staffers back to their hotel on Barclay Square where they\u2019d try to sleep. A difficult proposition as V2 German buzz bombs exploded around the city leaving them to wonder if the next one might have their name on it.<\/p>\n
During those eight weeks, Corporal Kogel had seen and saluted the General many times but never met or spoken to him. That all changed when finally the invasion transcribing was complete and she was invited to hand the papers over to Ike in person. He asked, \u201cCorporal do you know what you\u2019ve typed here?\u201d She said, \u201cYes sir. These are the battle plans that you will use for the invasion of France.\u201d He stressed the importance of secrecy and then did something that caught Helen totally off guard. He said, \u201cYou have a brother, Jerry, over here don\u2019t you?\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d she said. \u201cI haven\u2019t seen him in three years.\u201d That\u2019s when he produced a weekend pass and told her to go and visit him. \u00a0(Jerry Kogel survived the war serving with General George Patton\u2019s Tank Corps.)<\/p>\n
Although it was dangerous to venture out in London, Helen and 14 others did take a tour of Windsor Castle and while exploring the portrait room… in walks King George VI along with the queen and princess daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret. Seeing Kogel in uniform the king approached her and asked her name and what she did. The 23 year old girl from Woonsocket, South Dakota later said didn\u2019t know whether to genuflect, bow or kiss his ring..instead she just shook his hand and identified herself saying she served on General Eisenhower\u2019s staff. The king then gestured to his eldest daughter and asked if she knew her. He said Elizabeth is going to be driving some of your officers around. Helen looked at the future Queen of England and said, \u201cOh, I hope to see you around some time.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a>The royal family and British Prime Minister during World War II<\/p><\/div>\n
Not long afterward, the group stopped at Number 10 Downing Street and were surprised when the housekeeper invited the tour group in for tea. Before long, the living room door opened and in walked the British Prime Minister who grabbed a beverage and scone then left without saying a word. Later when Helen wrote her mother about the experience she couldn\u2019t help but tease how she had tea and scones with Winston Churchill.<\/p>\n
She knew the number of \u00a0ships, planes, weapons, personnel and major objectives. She even knew the allied plan to fool the Nazi’s by taking the long way across the channel. \u00a0The only thing Cpl. Helen Kogel didn\u2019t know about the invasion was the exact date it would happen and didn\u2019t find out until she heard the roar of planes overhead flying east in the early morning hours of June 6th<\/sup>, 1944. \u00a0Even after it was obvious the invasion was underway, Helen never breathed a word about her role in it to anyone including her fellow WAC\u2019s on staff. They were all sworn to secrecy and that was that.<\/p>\n General Eisenhower wanted to move his headquarters to France as soon as possible so Helen needed to send a \u00a0telegram home to let her family know she\u2019d soon have a new address; Paris! That\u2019s when her luck dodging buzz bombs ran out. One struck the telegraph office. She woke up covered in dust and glass being \u00a0shaken by someone telling her she\u2019d be okay. Years later, Helen told an interviewer that she still had nightmares about that day; hearing the V-1 whistling above..then going quiet and the explosion which followed. \u201cI was lucky to have gotten out alive,\u201d she remembered.<\/p>\n The move to France was on the exact same route as so many thousands of others had made weeks earlier but without the bullets and bombs. Cpl. Kogel and her 29 female colleagues crossed the English Channel aboard a Navy transport ship then had to climb down a rope ladder into a landing craft which took them as close as possible to Utah beach then dropped the ramp requiring everyone to wade ashore in waist high water.<\/p>\n Sgt. Noel Denton whom Helen met and fell in love with on Utah beach.<\/p><\/div>\n It was while waiting in the mess line along the beach..still dripping wet..that she met her future husband, Sergeant, Noel Denton, who offered to retrieve the WAC\u2019s personal bags. With the sound of battle in the background, Helen and the staff spent 6 weeks camped on that beach in a special holding area; sneaking a few moments with Noel at every opportunity. Finally Paris was liberated and Cpl. Kogel rejoined the General\u2019s staff and remained there until the end of the war.<\/p>\n Helen had promised her father that she wouldn\u2019t get married while in the service so, after Noel was also discharged and had been rehired to his former job with Southern Bell in Atlanta, he made tracks for South Dakota to ask for Helen\u2019s hand. The two were married in the Woonsocket Catholic Church; a marriage that lasted 36 happy years until Noel\u2019s untimely death of a heart attack in 1982.<\/p>\n Helen in later life surrounded by images of her past. In spite of tragedies, one of her favorite sayings was “I’m a very lucky woman..a very lucky woman.”<\/p><\/div>\n In all that time. Helen never told a single sole including her beloved Noel about her contribution to history during the war.<\/p>\n To deal with..not only Noel\u2019s passing..but the accidental death of their adopted son, Jon, a few months earlier, Helen immersed herself in volunteer work receiving countless honors and awards for her efforts with the Red Cross, March of Dimes, United Way and just about any organization that needed someone to get a job done. That included serving for many years as both post and district commander of the Riverdale Georgia Chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.<\/p>\n But, it wasn\u2019t until the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of D-Day in 1994 when a friend asked if any women were involved in the invasion, that Helen finally broke her silence. When the friend heard her amazing story she couldn\u2019t wait to call the local TV station and from that day until Helen\u2019s passing last December in Fayetteville, Georgia at the age of 91, she spoke to hundreds \u00a0of groups from school kids to veterans and gave dozens of media interviews leaving everyone a bit slack jawed not only for the vital role she played in Operation Overlord but in keeping mum about it for a half century.<\/p>\n Corporal Helen Kogel was one of thousands of U.S. Military personnel to march in Paris on Victory in Europe Day.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>