to save the fourth of the Niland sons. Fran-
cis was evacuated to England. When the
war in the Pacific ended, Edward was found
alive in a prisoner of war camp and returned
home.
A father and son, Ollie Reed and Ollie Reed
Jr., also lie side by side; the son killed in It-
aly July 4, 1944, and his father three-and-a-
half weeks later in the Normandy campaign.
Guillaume tells us that back home in Kan-
sas, Mrs. Reed received the telegrams 45
minutes apart.
D-Day has become such a famous tale that
many people forget that the Allies first
washed ashore in Europe in Sicily in 1943,
almost a year before D-Day, and the Italian
mainland at Salerno later that year, both
under General George Patton. My father
participated in both.
Standing high above Omaha, Guillaume
tells us that it was on this very spot where
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel looked down
at Omaha Beach and noted how similar
