Brothers in Arms: Remembering Brothers Buried Side by Side in American World War II Cemeteries

Introduction

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—what historian Garry Wills called the words that remade America—took place at the dedication of a military cemetery. The president and other leading dignitaries gathered on a brisk November afternoon in 1863 to dedicate the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four and half months after the decisive battle.

At the time, the idea of a national cemetery was a relatively new concept in the United States. Soldiers killed in the American Revolution or the War of 1812, for example, were generally retrieved from the battlefield, returned home, and buried in family or church plots. The first military cemetery created and sponsored by the U.S. government was established in Mexico City in 1851 to hold the remains of 750 war dead from the Mexican-American War. It was the first American military cemetery placed in a foreign country. It would not be the last.

The scale of military deaths in the Civil War—more than 600,000—impelled the U.S. government to take a more active role in retrieving, identifying, and burying fallen soldiers. In July 1862, Congress created the U.S. National Cemetery System and by the end of that year, fourteen national cemeteries were established including Arlington National. The cemetery at Gettysburg was therefore not the first national cemetery, but it was different from the others in one important respect: how it represented the individual soldier. As Drew Gilpin Faust wrote in her Pulitzer-Prize nominated book, This Republic of Suffering: The cemetery at Gettysburg was arranged so that every grave was of equal importance; William Saunders’s design, like Lincoln’s speech, affirmed that every dead soldier mattered equally regardless of rank or station.

This tradition of burying all American war dead regardless of rank or station would continue in American overseas cemeteries established after World War I and World War II.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

World War I presented a new challenge for U.S. military and government officials: what to do with more than 100,000 Americans who died overseas—bring them home or bury them near the battlefields where they fell? Ultimately, the government let the families of the fallen decide whether to have the remains repatriated to their homes or buried at one of eight newly-established permanent cemeteries in Europe. Roughly 60 percent chose repatriation, while 40 percent chose overseas burial. To construct and administer these new cemeteries, Congress created the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) in 1923. General John J. Pershing, hero of World War I, was named as its first chairman. These eight World War I cemeteries contain over 30,000 burials and list nearly 4,500 names on the Walls of the Missing.

The disposition of war dead in World War I would serve as a model for World War II, when more than 400,000 Americans died in a conflict that stretched across the globe. Due to the grisly but heroic work of the U.S. Army’s Graves Registration Service (GRS), many fallen Americans had been retrieved, identified, and buried in hundreds of temporary cemeteries around the world. Again, the government let families decide what to do with the remains, and once more, about 60 percent chose repatriation, 40 percent chose overseas burial. To hold these foreign burials, the ABMC established fourteen permanent American cemeteries overseas. In 1949, General George C. Marshall, the Organizer of Victory, took over as chairman of the ABMC when Pershing died. Working in concert with the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, they hired some of the finest architects, landscape architects, and artists to design these new cemeteries and memorials. As in World War I, no cemeteries would be placed on enemy soil. Therefore, there would be no burial grounds in Germany or Japan. Instead, those fourteen cemeteries were placed in eight countries: five in France, two in Belgium, two in Italy, and one each in: the Netherlands, England, Luxembourg, Tunisia, and the Philippines. These grounds hold over 90,000 burials and list nearly 80,000 names on the Walls of the Missing.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The goal of this book is simple: to tell the stories, in words and images, of brothers buried side by side in American World War II cemeteries overseas.

I visited my first American cemetery at Normandy about twenty-five years ago while backpacking through Europe. I was struck by it. There, I took a photo of the gravesite of Sergeant Frank McNally from New York. I realized he was likely about my age at the time he died, and that it was due to the sacrifice of people like him that I was able to trek through a free and prosperous Europe some fifty years later. That photo has hung on my wall ever since.

Then, about ten years ago, while traveling in Italy with my wife and three young sons, we visited the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery near Anzio. Again, I was struck by its beauty, its impeccable grounds, its insightful mosaics, and its perfectly-aligned rows of white burial markers. I took a photo of the main statue there, Brothers in Arms, which features a soldier and sailor walking arm in arm. Shortly afterward, I captured a photo of my two oldest boys, Max and Finn, walking arm in arm through the gravestones. That photo too hangs on my wall.

And then we came across two brothers from Iowa buried side by side—Fred and Edgar Wood. I learned from the cemetery superintendent that the U.S. government would try to bury brothers next to each other, often at the request of the family. As the father of three boys, I found the sight of two brothers resting forever together to be especially poignant. I wondered: Who were these brothers? Where did they come from? How did they die? Who did they leave behind? That became the inspiration for this book.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

Using information provided by the ABMC, my small team and I have compiled a list of 286 sets of brothers buried or memorialized at fourteen American World War II cemeteries overseas. A full list of the brothers is included in the back of this book.

Our first step in researching these brothers was to build an online family tree for each set of brothers. We then retrieved census, newspaper, military, and other historical records. We knew that the best source of archival material related to these brothers would be surviving relatives. Therefore, using obituaries and phone directories, we tried to locate and contact the family members of these brothers. It was not always easy. Many families were difficult to track down or unresponsive. In over eighty cases, we made contact with at least one surviving relative, and in over seventy cases, we personally met with family members to collect photos, archival materials, and recollections of these brave brothers. Our journey took us to thirty-five states and one country, Canada.

Brothers in Arms is meant to be a living project in that we want to continue to collect memories and materials from relatives and continue to publish that content both online and in print. This book should be seen therefore as not the end result of this project but instead as an opening chapter. The project can be found online and via social media @brothersinarmsbook.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

This book is organized by cemetery and follows the war, to some degree, chronologically. It starts with the North Africa American Cemetery, where the assault against Nazi Germany first began, and ends with the Manila American Cemetery, the only American World War II cemetery in the Pacific, where the war ultimately concluded. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction of the cemetery and the battles that took place there, including photographs of these inspiring resting places. The heart of each chapter are the profiles of the brothers, highlighting their lives on the home front and their experiences on the battlefront.

A book with such a narrow focus as this one—brothers buried overseas—omits many who died in the cause of freedom. By definition, there are no women profiled in this book, and yet many served bravely in the war, and several hundred are buried or memorialized at ABMC cemeteries. And while these brothers represent a wide diversity of backgrounds, there are among our list, as far as we know, no African American brothers. While policies of segregation relegated many black service members to rear-guard supply units, many others served heroically in combat and, again, many are buried or memorialized overseas. This book also leaves out the many sets of brothers who died in the war but whose remains were returned home. It also excludes many fallen brothers who were never found, such as the famous five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, who all went down on the same ship in November 1942. Also, there are three resplendent American World War II cemeteries that are unfortunately absent from this book—Cambridge, Rhone and Florence—simple due to a lack of time, space, and our inability to contact the family members of brothers buried there. So many stories remain to be told.

With that said, the brothers profiled in this book represent a diverse cross section of souls who traveled far from their homes to combat the evils of fascism and tyranny around the world. They came from every part of the country, from big cities and small towns. Some were college graduates. Others never finished grade school. Some walked the streets of New York City in patent leather shoes. Others trekked barefoot through the hills of Appalachia. They were, by birth or by heritage: Cherokee, English, French, German, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, Mexican, Norwegian, Polish, Pueblo, Scottish, Slovakian, Slovenian, Swedish, and more.

In war, these brothers served in every theater and branch of service. They were pilots or crewmen on B-17 or B-24 bombers. One flew the P-51 Mustang, to great effect. Several plied the high seas. Some were officers. Many were enlisted men. Some drove tanks, launched artillery, or stitched up wounds. Many were rifleman in infantry units. Some died in accidents. Others died heroically and earned medals for their valor. A tragic few took their own lives.

They share only this. All are brothers. All died in World War II. All rest in an American cemetery overseas.

The stories of these brothers are often told by the people who knew them. A few stories are reasonably well known, like the Roosevelt brothers, Ted Jr. and Quentin, sons of President Teddy Roosevelt. Or the Niland brothers, inspiration for the movie Saving Private Ryan, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, both of whom were struck, as I was, by the experience of visiting the cemetery at Normandy. But many others have never been told.

In the end, we simply want to put a face—and a story—to the names, the men who lay beneath the crosses, as Tom Hanks called them, and to remember what they died for, as President Lincoln so eloquently reminded us more than 150 years ago.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

CHAPTER 1

North Africa

American Cemetery Carthage, Tunisia

HE HAS OUTSOARED THE SHADOW OF OUR NIGHT

—From Shelley’s Adonais. Inscribed on the wall of the memorial chapel, North Africa American Cemetery

Unless otherwise noted, all cemetery photos in the book are by Katherine Lin

North Africa

The North Africa American Cemetery rests on a high plateau off the coast of Tunisia, just a few miles from the ancient Punic city of Carthage. Here, during the first millennium B.C. , Queen Dido ruled over a Mediterranean empire. On clear days, one can see across to Sicily, and control of this narrow strait bolstered Carthage’s immense power in the ancient world. Unfortunately, Carthage was destroyed completely by the Romans in 146 B.C. after the Battle of Zama. A new Roman Carthage was built, upon whose remains the American cemetery sits today.

Under Operation TORCH, the American Army landed on the shores of North Africa in November 1942 and soon entered the fight against Nazi Germany for the first time. They had much to learn about tactics, equipment, and strategy—as the deadly Battle of Kasserine Pass demonstrated. But with one army encroaching from the west and another from the east, Allied forces ultimately cornered the German commander, General Erwin Rommel, and his Afrika Korps into the capital of Tunis. There, on May 12, 1943, the Nazi foe surrendered, and the Allies captured 275,000 enemy prisoners. Rommel, known as The Desert Fox, was not among them.

As in all battles, the American Army set aside grounds for a burial plot, in this case what would eventually become the North Africa American Cemetery. With Nahli limestone mined from local quarries and Cararra marble imported from Italy, the cemetery draws inspiration from the local Mediterranean culture and landscape. The memorial features a Court of Honor, designed as a cloister, similar to a courtyard found in a Tunisian home. Four bubbling fountains made of Roman travertine marble populate the grounds and suggest the image of an oasis in the desert. Buried here among twenty-seven acres of eucalyptus trees, orangeberry flowers, and a Jerusalem thorn tree, are over 2,800 American service members—including four sets of brothers buried side by side—all of them residing forever in the shadow of an ancient civilization.

Private Ward H. Osmun, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, (d. 24 Dec 1942), Purple Heart.

Private Wilbur W. Osmun, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division,(d. 24 Dec 1942), Purple Heart.

Osmun Brothers

Knowlton, New Jersey

Most of the brothers profiled in this book joined the war at different times and for different reasons. Usually, brothers served in different combat units, partly due to War Department policies to keep siblings separated. Most brothers fought in different battles. And even though these brothers are buried side by side, they often died miles, countries, or even continents apart.

But for Ward and Wilbur Osmun, two farm boys from western New Jersey, their war experiences were unusually similar. They both signed up for the U.S. Army on the same day—October 24, 1940—and for the same reason: they needed a steady job. They fought in the same company, battalion, regiment, and division, the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, The Big Red One. They died on the same day—Christmas Eve 1942—and in the same place: a dusty, rocky hilltop in Tunisia that the locals called Djebel Ahmara, but that history would forever remember as Longstop Hill.

The battle for Longstop Hill began with a visit by Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower in late December 1942. Having driven some thirty hours from his headquarters in Algiers, Eisenhower stopped at a stone farmhouse outside of Béja to meet with his commanders. They told him that the rainy weather and stubborn defenses of the German army meant that the Allied advance on Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, would be delayed, possibly until springtime. Eisenhower decided, however, that one current offensive operation would continue as planned: the taking of Longstop Hill. As such, the fate of the Osmun brothers was sealed on that drizzly night in December 1942.

Longstop Hill lay at a critical intersection on Highway 50, which led to Tunis. Whoever controlled the hill had a vantage point for miles around from which to inflict punishing artillery, tank, and mortar fire on any prospective invader. If the Allies ever wanted to capture Tunis, they needed to take, and hold, that hill.

Only one American battalion fought on Longstop Hill that day—Ward and Wilbur’s. At the time, they were attached to the British Coldstream Guards, a unit that had been pushed out of Europe two years earlier at Dunkirk and was eager to get back in the fight.

Unfortunately, Allied intelligence made two fateful errors in planning the attack on Longstop Hill. One, they believed that only a single German company held the hill. Instead, it was a full battalion, comprised of three infantry companies and their associated support units. Two, they failed to realize that Longstop Hill was not one hill, but actually two, each separated by a wide valley. While British and American troops celebrated the taking of the one hill on the morning of Christmas Eve, they soon realized the Germans still controlled the other.

The Osmun brothers would not survive that day and neither would the Allied occupation of Longstop Hill. By Christmas morning, it was back in German hands and they gave it their own moniker, Weihnactschugel, Christmas Hill.

Several months would pass before American graves registration units could return to Longstop Hill to retrieve the fallen soldiers. Some men were found in their full kit, still facing east. Ward and Wilbur Osmun were among those discovered on that barren hilltop. The brothers died together and are now buried that way at the North Africa American Cemetery at Carthage.

CHAPTER 2

Sicily-Rome

American Cemetery Nettuno, Italy

Nobly they ended, high their destination

Beneath an altar laid, no more a tomb,

Where none with pity comes or lamentations

But praise and memory, a splendor of oblation

Who left behind a gem-like heritage of courage and renown,

A name that shall go down from age to age

—Inscription at Sicily-Rome American Cemetery, from T.T. Higham’s translation of The Greek Dead at Thermopylae, by Simonides

Sicily-Rome

The Sicily-Rome American Cemetery is a refuge of calm in the otherwise bustling Italian seaside city of Nettuno, located not far from the Anzio beaches where Allied troops landed in January 1944. Traversing the town’s twisting streets, crowded with shoppers and Vespas, the American cemetery can be hard to find. But when visitors finally stumble upon it and pass through its bronze gates, they enter a place of sublime calm, beauty, and inspiration.

Near the entrance, on an island in a large elliptical reflecting pool, rests a cenotaph, an empty tomb that honors those whose remains lie elsewhere. From there, a manicured mall of grass bordered by Italian cypress trees leads to a memorial building made of travertine and Roos Levanto marble. It features an angel carved in high relief, bestowing laurel wreaths on the graves of the fallen. In the center of the memorial courtyard, surrounded by an oval colonnade, stands a bronze statue of a soldier and sailor walking arm in arm. The statue is titled Brothers in Arms.

This quiet, reflective place holds the remains of over 7,800 American service members, most of whom gave their lives in the Italian campaign, one of the deadliest on The Western Front. A smaller but equally inspiring American cemetery is also located just outside of Florence.

As in the North African campaign, American war planners were somewhat hesitant to invade Italy. They preferred to attack across the English Channel, into France, and then strike at the heart of the enemy: Berlin. But once again, the British advised caution and patience and once again the American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, agreed with them. The president was also persuaded by the thousands of battle-tested American troops—along with ships, planes, armor, and artillery—stationed in Tunisia, just one hundred miles from the Italian coast.

Many bloody lessons would be learned in Italy. The campaign began in July 1943 with the Sicily invasion, a large-scale airborne and amphibious operation led by Allied forces.

From Sicily, the Allies moved to Salerno, on mainland Italy, and began the long, violent march up the Italian Peninsula. The German commander charged with Italy’s defense, General Smiling Albert Kesselring, set up several well-defended lines such as the Gustav, the Hitler, and the Barbara. An audacious Allied beach landing at Anzio bogged down and failed to dislodge the German army.

Nevertheless, the Allies trudged northward through bitter fighting. American troops under U.S. Fifth Army commanding General Mark W. Clark liberated Rome on June 5, 1944. The achievement hardly made front page news because the Normandy invasion began the following day. But the Italian campaign would continue, and eventually Allied forces surrounded the last retreating German troops at Bologna, forcing them to capitulate on May 2, 1945, less than a week before the general surrender of Nazi Germany.

Twenty sets of brothers are buried side by side at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery, including the Kaspervik brothers from Quincy, Illinois, who were highlighted in a speech by President George H.W. Bush on Memorial Day 1989. William and Preston Kaspervik are buried here in soil that they helped free, said the president on that day, brothers in life, brothers in arms, brothers in eternity.

Private First Class Michael Conte, 30th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, (d. 26 Oct 1943) Purple Heart.

Private First Class Pasquale Patrick Conte, 30th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, (d. 16 March 1944), Purple Heart.

Conte Brothers

Brockton, Massachusetts

Brockton, Massachusetts is one of those towns that seems as tough as its name suggests. After all, this working-class suburb south of Boston is the hometown of the Rock from Brockton, Rocky Marciano, who held the world heavyweight boxing title from 1952–1956. Brockton was also the home of the Conte brothers, Michael and Pasquale.

The Conte brothers grew up just blocks away from the future boxing champ, who was born Rocco Francis Marchegiano. He and Pasquale, or Patrick, were friends and Rocky would come by to sample whatever was cooking in the Conte kitchen. In fact, Patrick and