I first encountered Chaplain Julian Ellenberg in the pages of a 1944 Stars and Stripes I bought. It had a short story buried inside its pages about a unit whose members received several Silver Stars for their part in the Normandy landing on D-Day. Looking a little deeper into his military service as a chaplain, I discovered a man committed to ministry in uniform as he sought to serve those under his care.

Before becoming a chaplain, Ellenberg graduated from Furman University and the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary.¹ He became the rector of St. Mark’s Church in Chester, South Carolina then St. Peter’s in Great Falls, South Carolina. Upon entering the Army to be a chaplain, Ellenberg attended the Army Chaplain School at Harvard University in Cambridge Massashusetts² and was promoted from 1LT to Captain sometime before February 1944.³

On 6 June 1944, Chaplain “Julian S. Ellenberg … went ashore on D-Day only 30 minutes after the initial assault troops…

Continue reading this brief military biography of Chaplain Julian Ellenberg…

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