Donald Stevens, 97, at his home in Harrisonburg, Va., on June 3. Two of his brothers were killed in France after D-Day. HARRISONBURG, Va. — Donald Stevens couldn’t make it to Normandy this year for the 80th anniversary of D-Day on Thursday, but he considers his spirit to be there anyway. It’s there with his brother Paul, killed two weeks after landing at Omaha Beach in the Allied invasion. And it’s there with another brother, Bill, killed nearly a year later in Germany as the war neared its end.
A grandson of the postmaster wrote the story of the three brothers in comic book form this year, hoping to appeal to young people and keep the memory alive. His cousin shared the tale with an online site called MyHeritage, which drew attention from French media and led to a round of TV interviews in the run-up to celebrations marking the Allied liberation of France from Nazi control.
Bill and Donald had been making plans to become football coaches, hopefully at rival high schools where they could compete against each other. But now Bill, who had just graduated high school and gotten a job, decided he had to enlist. He failed one physical and insisted on another until he qualified. Before heading off, Bill wrote a poem for Paul that concluded:Hobbled by infected feet, Bill wound up in the Army’s 10th Armored Division, crammed into a halftrack with four other young soldiers.
“War was on my mother’s mind almost all the time,” Donald Stevens said. “And she lost more than any of the rest of us because my brother Paul, who is the one killed in Normandy, was a carbon copy of her. They both had that idea that if the sun comes up in the morning, it’s going to be a great day.”Germaine Olard was someone with whom Lillian Stevens could share her feelings of loss and pride.
“We grew up with the story,” said Sylvie Laillier, 54, Adeline’s cousin and a granddaughter of the Olards . “I saw so many gifts coming from the States each Christmas. Flowers, cakes — many things. And when the American family came to visit my family, it was a very big moment.”The families began trading visits every few years in the 1970s.
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