"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you."
With those words, General Dwight David Eisenhower led over 73,000 Americans to the shores of Normandy in an offensive that would begin the push back against Nazi Germany.
Seventy years ago, thousands of American men put their lives on the line halfway around the world to fight for freedom and liberate an occupied continent.
Seven decades later, the sacrifices that led to victory in Europe, for many Americans, have faded into the history books. While the stories of individual heroism are often forgotten on this side of the Atlantic, those men and their supreme sacrifice are well-documented and honored even today by the people in the towns they liberated.
Hundreds of Western New Yorkers were part of that force. Among them, a Medal of Honor winner, a family who's loss inspired a Hollywood blockbuster and a man of the cloth who gave his life trying to save others.
As we mark the 70th anniversary of V.E. Day, Pete Gallivan presents The Unknown Stories of WNY Return 2 Normandy.
Across the ocean in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, thousands of white marble crosses mark one of the most visited spots in Normandy. Seventy years ago, the American Cemetery became the final resting place for 9,387 soldiers who sacrificed themselves for freedom.
Two of those men would inspire one of the most talked about films following the Invasion of Normandy. In 1998, Steven Spielberg shared the search for the last surviving sibling of three brothers in Saving Private Ryan, a story based on that of the Niland brothers of Tonawanda, New York. It turns out, Private Ryan was actually a model for Sergeant Frederick "Fritz" Niland whose brothers Robert, Preston and Edward were all believed to be killed in battle.
Fritz's nephew Pete Niland remembers visiting his uncles' graves as a young man long before the blockbuster hit Hollywood.
"My dad had asked me to stop there and put flowers on his brothers' graves and I said sure," Pete said.
Decades after his visit to France, Pete learned of the famous film which lead him and his wife Jan on a journey back in time. It began with a trunk filled with newspaper clippings passed down from Pete's aunts.
"It was in our basement and we had never even opened it," Jan said. "So once they said there was a movie being made we started to go through all these papers."
One of those long-lost papers was a letter from Pete's Uncle Bobby, a letter addressed to "our dearest mother" that says her sons would come home soon.
But some of the Niland brothers never made it back to Western New York.
The movie portrays a rescue mission for Private Ryan after his three brothers are killed in Normandy. The real story is somewhat different.
On May 16, 1944, Edward Niland was shot down over Burma and presumed dead.
On D-Day, June 6, Bobby was killed after he refused to pull back from Neuville au Plain where he stayed with a medic to attend to wounded soldiers.
The following day Preston died while reportedly going after a wounded soldier. He was hit by a sniper near Utah beach.
The news traveled to Tonawanda in the form of Western Union telegrams over the course of several days. Back in France, Fritz learned about his brothers' deaths from his company's chaplain Father Francis Sampson.
"He asked Father Sampson, 'I heard my brother Robert was killed in action,'" Pete said. "Father Sampson was looking through the ledger and said, 'Oh good, we don't have a Robert here. We only have a Preston.' And he said, 'Well that's my brother, too.'"
But a year later, there was some good news for the Nilands. Another brother had survived. Edward, initially missing and presumed dead, had been found alive in a Japanese prison camp.
Unfortunately, two of the brothers still lie in Normandy, surrounded by thousands of other soldiers just like them. While Preston has a permanent resting place in the American Cemetery, Bobby was buried in another temporary cemetery in nearby St. Mere Eglise, all sites that Pete and Jan had to see for themselves.
"We were on Omaha Beach, we were on Utah Beach, we were actually crawling in the bunkers," Jan said. "We culminated the trip at the cemetery… It was quiet, it was serene, [and] it was eerie because you felt the presence of all those boys there."
On the evening of June 6, 1944, the 82nd Airborne Division's troops began to touch down in France. Over the next 24 hours, hundreds of gliders landed near Normandy to complete several missions across the region.
Mission Hackensack was the last to arrive. More than 1,000 men of the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment were on board. Their destination: Chef du Pont.
For two days, things seemed to go smoothly for the glider men whose mission was to keep the roads and bridges clear for troops landing at Utah Beach. But in the early morning of June 9, as the regiment approached La Fiere Bridge at the Merderet River, the men came under attack.
One of those men was young Clinton Riddle.
"I was pinned down in a wheat field and I kept crawling and crawling and crawling," he said. "I came out of the wheat field, but my pack was full of holes."
Clinton came out of that wheat field, he said, because of the sacrifice of Charles N. DeGlopper, a private first class from Grand Island, New York.
That day, D-Day plus three, the regiment got slightly off track and strayed between the farm fields that were separated by high mounds and thick hedges. As the men came around a corner, they were immediately caught in the crossfire of German snipers.
That's when Charles DeGlopper took his stand.
At that moment, Charlie jumped into the middle of the road with his heavy rifle and started firing at the Nazis. He took all the attention and gunfire upon himself so his platoon could escape. While the Germans were distracted with Charlie's automatic fire, his company was able to break free to join the rest of the regiment.
Charlie was 22 years old.
In 1946, Charlie's grieving father received the Medal of Honor on his behalf. He was the only soldier from the 82nd Airborne Division and 325th Glider Infantry Regiment to receive the award for his actions in the Battle of Normandy. It cites Charlie's "sacrifice and unflinching heroism" for drawing the enemy away from his fellow soldiers.
"[Pfc. DeGlopper] walked from the ditch onto the road in full view of the Germans, and sprayed the hostile positions with assault fire. He was wounded, but he continued firing. Struck again, he started to fall; and yet his grim determination and valiant fighting spirit could not be broken. Kneeling in the roadway, weakened by his grievous wounds, he leveled his heavy weapon against the enemy and fired burst after burst until killed outright."
In the 70 years since that day in the farm fields of Normandy, Charlie has been honored as a hero both across the U.S. and in Normandy. At the Brooklyn Army Base in New York, a U.S. Army transport ship was renamed the Pvt. Charles N. DeGlopper, and at Fort Bragg in North Carolina both a street and their Air Assault School are named after him. His portrait hangs in the hall of heroes on base.
Across the seas, a monument stands not far from where Charlie fell. A plaque hangs in a chapel at Couqegny that overlooks a churchyard still scarred from war. And he has his own exhibit in the airborne museum at St. Mere Eglise.
And in Western New York, in 1958, the U.S. Army Reserve Training Center in Tonawanda was renamed the Charles DeGlopper Center. Four years later, American Legion Post 1346 dedicated Charles DeGlopper Park on Grand Island Boulevard, and in 1965, Grand Island's VFW Post 9249 changed its name to Charles N. DeGlopper Memorial.
Still, despite this worldwide recognition, the story of Charlie's sacrifice was not well-known in Western New York. But Joe Synakowski wouldn't let us forget.
A trustee at post 9249 and a member of the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment in 1947, Joe helped organize the re-dedication of the memorial park on Grand Island in Charlie's honor. On June 9, 2002, the 58th anniversary of Charlie's heroics, the town council proclaimed the day as Charles DeGlopper Remembrance Day.
"It was a good thing to expose the history of somebody who did something from Grand Island," he said. "Most of the people didn't know anything about it."
As for Charlie's family, his nephew Ray DeGlopper says so far he's met three men from his uncle's company who said if it wasn't for Charlie, they wouldn't be here today.
"Charlie's a hero to the 82nd," he said.
And Clinton Riddle agrees.
"Frankly, I think he's a miracle."
In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, 17-year-old Monsieur Louis Marion lay in bed listening to a wave of C-47's overhead when he heard something hit the roof of his family's farm house in France.
For the better part of his youth, Monsieur Marion's small hamlet of Guetteville was overrun with Germans. But at daybreak that morning, he learned the Americans had arrived.
A U.S. paratrooper had hit his roof and landed in the garden.
"That's when we were kind of afraid of it," Monsieur Marion said. "We had Germans in the northern part of the hamlet and there would be Americans right at the juncture."
One of those Americans landing in Normandy on D-Day was 32-year-old Ignatius Maternowski. A paratrooper in the U.S. Army, Maternowski wore more than a captain's uniform that day. He also donned a chaplain's insignia and a Red Cross armband as a faithful chaplain to the 82nd Airborne Division of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
"He was probably the only chaplain at that time who was a paratrooper because he wanted to be with his men," Father Michael Sajda, president of St. Francis High School in Hamburg, said.
When the Franciscan father parachuted into the occupied town of Picauville that morning, he found an American glider full of U.S. soldiers had crashed in a nearby field, leaving most of them injured.
Father Maternowski immediately began ministering to the wounded. Together, he and a medic gathered the casualties and took them to a small country shop in the hamlet that was being used as a hospital for soldiers and villagers who were caught in the crossfire.
But the space simply wasn't big enough for the mounting number of victims.
"With his helmet hanging on his belt, Father Maternowski went up and used the path to meet with the German at the very upper part of the village," Monsieur Marion said.
The chaplain took it upon himself to negotiate with the Nazi medic up town.
"He crossed enemy lines to discuss using a house at the end of the village to take care of wounded soldiers on both sides of the lines," Father Sajda said.
Armed only with his faith, Father Maternowski walked up the road to another home being used as an infirmary and headquarters for the Germans. He knocked on the door and asked to speak with the officer in charge.
"The German doctor came back with him to check the information that he gave him that yes, there were some wounded," Monsier Marion said.
Hoping to combine their wounded in one common hospital, Father Maternowski then walked the Nazi medic back through the hamlet to ensure his safe return. But as he turned to leave, the chaplain got about 100 yards through the no-man zone to the American side before being shot in the back by a German sniper.
Father Maternowski was the first dead person Louis Marion would see. He was also the first and only U.S. chaplain to be killed on D-Day.
"He was laying here stretched out and his head was in the ditch," Monsieur Marion said. "Someone I talked to had seen the Germans kick the body so he kind of rolled into the ditch part."
Father Maternowski laid lifeless there for three days before it was safe enough for Allied forces to retrieve his body.
Some believe the Germans ordered Father Maternowski's execution after the Nazi medic also noticed military supplies stored in the small country shop alongside the injured.
"In the afternoon, that is when they give the order to the tanks to go down and they would be shelling the country shop where all the wounded… and all the residents were," Monsieur Marion said.
Seventy years later, he still remembers Father Maternowski's sacrifice that day. So, too, does Western New York, the home of the chaplain's alma mater.
Father Maternowski belonged to the first graduating class at St. Francis High School in Hamburg, N.Y. Today, the award for the school's top athlete bears his name, and now a St. Francis teacher is pushing to have his heroics honored on a larger scale.
So far, Father Maternowski has received a posthumous Purple Heart for his actions that day. But Kelly Carrigg, a retired lieutenant colonel with the 82nd Airborne who teaches French at the school, is asking leaders to also award Maternowski the Medal of Honor. She is working with Father James McCurry, the head of the Franciscans in Our Lady of Angels Province to convince Washington that the chaplain's sacrifice is worthy of the honor.
"It's so overdue," Carrigg said. "His story is about peace. He was trying to take care of wounded soldiers, not just Americans but also Germans… That's forgetting everything, self and your safety, just to ensure that wounded soldiers no matter where they came from were safe."
In 1962, the war film "The Longest Day" hit Hollywood.
A black and white docudrama, the film followed the landings at Normandy nearly 20 years earlier. Alongside stars like John Wayne and Henry Fonda, some of the actors had actually seen action as servicemen during the war. Actors like Richard Todd who was among the first British officers to land in Normandy in Operation Overlord.
It was this film that moved Frenchman Daniel Briard to take up his own mission decades after the war, a mission to remember the sacrifices of American liberators during the D-Day invasion.
Briard is the president of the Association U.S. Normandy, a French group that raises money for monuments to preserve the memory of some very special soldiers.
Soldiers like Grand Island resident Charles DeGlopper.
"He went out on the causeway and opened fire on the Germans," Briard said, recalling the moment when the 22-year-old gave his own life to save members of his platoon in the early morning hours of June 9, 1944.
Briard and the Association U.S. Normandy helped build a memory board for Charlie near La Fiere, not far from where he fell.
Of course, Briard wasn't the only one inspired by these soldiers' sacrifice.
In the 1990s, Steven Spielberg directed a war film based on the true story of the Niland brothers of Tonawanda, New York. Set during the Invasion of Normandy, "Saving Private Ryan" opens on June 6, 1944 with a very graphic portrayal of the attacks on Omaha Beach. The film follows a U.S. captain and his squad searching for Private First Class James Ryan, the last-surviving brother of four servicemen.
Private Ryan was modeled after real-life Sergeant Frederick "Fritz" Niland, whose three brothers were believed to be killed. It turns out, Fritz's brother Edward had survived the war in a Japanese prison camp, but brothers Robert and Preston had indeed died during the invasion.
More than 50 years later, Spielberg's film uncorked an entire chapter of the Niland family's history and it got veterans to open up about their experience in the war.
"We often talk here in Normandy of the 'Spielberg Effect' because the film 'Saving Private Ryan'… definitely excited a greater interest and understanding about what these men achieved and the sacrifices they made," William Jordan, a tour guide at the American Cemetery at Normandy, said.
Today, thanks in part to Private Ryan, the graves of Robert and Preston Niland are the second most-visited sites at the cemetery. The Roosevelt brothers are at number one.
Now, seventy years since victory in Europe, another Western New Yorker is getting air time in the HBO series "Band of Brothers." The show tells the story of Easy Company, the 506th regiment of the 101st Airborne which played a huge role in the Invasion of Normandy. One of the main characters is Skip Muck, a friend of the Niland brothers who also grew up in Tonawanda.
And while cinema style has changed over the years, the locations and events portrayed in Hollywood remain the same across the seas. Scenes like Brecourt Manor in Sainte-Marie-DuMont where a plaque commemorates the battle, and the bunkers and craters at Pointe du Hoc which look the same as they did in "The Longest Day" and on that longest day in 1944. A day that will be remembered in and out of Hollywood for decades to come.
In 1946, Joseph Synakowski was stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
A member of the 82nd Airborne Division, Joe served in the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment. As he walked the streets of Fort Bragg, one sign stuck out on base.
"I remember seeing DeGlopper Street, and I said, 'Why would they name that DeGlopper?'" Joe said.
That sign sent Joe on a road to remembering a soldier from his hometown. Grand Island native and Medal of Honor recipient Charles N. DeGlopper.
Across the seas, Charlie's story of sacrifice is very well-known in Normandy. Today, a monument stands not far from La Fiere, France, where Charlie once stood seventy years ago, drawing Nazi attention and gunfire on himself in order to save his platoon.
"When the DeGlopper [family] first went over in 2010, my French friends… literally wanted to shake their hands and touch them and say, 'Thank you,'" Kelly Carrigg, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the 82nd Airborne, said. "To see the legacy of the family continue."
Also in La Fiere is Vivian Roger, a member of the Association U.S. Normandy dedicated to commemorating the American men in the Invasion. Originally from North Carolina, Vivian married a Frenchman and moved to France, where she worked on her first major project for the Association—that monument of Charles DeGlopper.
"I never knew any of this when I was going to school," Vivian said. "We covered World War II in a few days and then moved on."
But Vivian wasn't the only one who hadn't heard the stories of the greatest generation on this side of the sea.
In Western New York, the Niland family had a lot to learn about their own history during the war. Preston and Robert Niland were killed in the Invasion of Normandy. At the time, their brother Frederick was believed to be the only Niland son who survived the war. More than 50 years later, their story would go on to inspire the film "Saving Private Ryan" and expose the sacrifice of one family from Tonawanda, New York.
"I know that my father dealt with a lot of different things that we never knew about because of his experiences," Bridget Niland, a cousin of the Niland brothers, said. "They just didn't talk about it."
In many cases, U.S. soldiers came home and never looked back. Until now.
"I learned more from Joe Synakowski than I did anywhere else," Ray DeGlopper, Charlie's nephew, said.
In Grand Island, Joe made it his mission to remember a local war hero. His efforts led to the rededication of the Charles DeGlopper memorial park at Baseline Road and Grand Island Boulevard, and today, VFW Post 9249 and the Reserve Center in Tonawanda also bear his name.
"It was a good thing to expose the history for somebody who did something from Grand Island," Joe said.
And as we celebrate the 70th anniversary of victory in Europe, more unknown stories of American heroes are making themselves heard here at home.
"We need to be thankful, and we need to pass it along to other generations," Vivian said. "It has to live on even past our years."
