Joseph J. "Joe" Toye was born in Hughestown, Pennsylvania, to Peter and Beatrice McTighue Toye, the son of a Pennsylvania coal miner. He left high school during his junior year and, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, enlisted in the army on 11 December 1941 at Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. After Basic Combat Training and duty in Washington, D.C., he volunteered for the paratroopers for better pay and joined what would become Easy Company at Camp Taccoa, serving in 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, in World War II. He made his first combat jump on D-Day during Operation Overlord in the Allied invasion of France and was regarded as one of the company's toughest and most respected soldiers. Wounded several times during the war, he received the Purple Heart four times, credited in Stephen E. Ambrose's book as the highest total in Easy Company, and he often returned to the line after being wounded because he did not want to leave his friends. He was wounded by artillery in the Netherlands during Operation Market Garden, where fellow soldier James Campbell was killed beside him, and again in Bastogne, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge from December 1944 to January 1945, where he earned his last three Purple Hearts. At Bastogne on 3 January 1945, he lost his right leg, and his close friend William "Wild Bill" Guarnere also lost his right leg while trying to drag him to safety after he was hit. On D-Day, while taking an artillery battery, a grenade exploded between his legs, but the blast only bounced him up and down from the concussion. After about nine months in hospitals, he was discharged from the army hospital in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1946. Before the war he had worked as a coal miner, foundry worker, and mill worker, but after losing his leg he could no longer do such labor, and he later retired from Bethlehem Steel in Reading, Pennsylvania, as a drill bit grinder at Grace Mines. He married twice, first on 15 December 1945 while recovering in Atlantic City, had three sons, Pete, Steven, and Jonathan, one daughter, Anita, and seven grandchildren, and after being predeceased by a son, died of cancer in 1995 in Reading, Pennsylvania. Major Richard Winters delivered his eulogy, and he was buried in Gethsemane Cemetery in Laureldale, near Reading, Pennsylvania, alongside his wife and son Jonathan.